The series contains dossiers relating to Italian prisoners of war interned at the Cowra and Liverpool camps, who were repatriated in late 1946 aboard the vessels Chitral and Katoomba. The Chitral, transporting prisoners of war from the Cowra Camp, departed from Australia on 23 September 1946, while the SS Katoomba, which carried passengers from both the Cowra and Liverpool camps, left on 6 October 1946. The dossiers were compiled by General Staff (Intelligence) Eastern Command and forwarded to the Commonwealth Investigation Service. The dossiers themselves contain fairly comprehensive personal details of each of the POWs, including their full name, birthplace, date of birth, next of kin and family details, occupation, and the date and place where they were captured. Many of the Italian internees described in this series were captured in Northern Africa, particularly during the Tobruk campaign. Details of the POWs' camp life are also contained in the dossiers, as are personal assessments of the POWs compiled by camp administrators. These details include information about their political activities, any disciplinary action they were subject to, their associates within the camp, excerpts from their letters home, medical reports, and details of their movements around Australia. A number of the POWs described within this series were also employed outside the Cowra and Liverpool camps as farm labourers, and details of this employment are contained in their dossiers. A small number of dossiers also have photographs of the POWs attached.

SYSTEM OF ARRANGEMENT AND CONTROLThe records in this series were basically divided into two major groupings by the Commonwealth Investigation Service - dossiers of POWs who sailed on the Chitral on 26 September comprised one group, and dossiers of those who sailed aboard the Katoomba on 6 October comprised the other. Within these basic divisions, however, the records were divided again.For the Cowra POWs who sailed aboard the Chitral, their records were divided into three collections based on alphabetical groupings - the files for POWs with surnames A-C were collected together, as were those for POWs with surnames D-M and those with surnames N-Z. The dossiers for Cowra POWs who departed from Australia aboard the SS Katoomba were grouped in a different fashion. Instead of alphabetical divisions, these POWs' files were arranged by Prisoner of War number, within camp division. Therefore, all files for POWs repatriated aboard the Katoomba from Cowra's A Compound were grouped together in POW number order, as were files for POWs held within both the B and C-D Compounds.POWs from the Liverpool camp were also repatriated aboard the Katoomba, and their files formed another division within the Katoomba collection. The Liverpool grouping was also arranged in Prisoner of War number order. To represent the fairly complex system of arrangement within this series, the Australian Archives has imposed a multiple number sytem on the dossiers. In this multiple number system, all files for POWs repatriated aboard the Chitral now begin with the number 1. The numbers 1, 2 and 3 have then been used as the second component of the system, to represent the alphabetical divisions imposed on these files. Therefore, files once held in the A-C folder have been given the number 1 as the second component of their multiple number system, while those files held in the D-M and N-Z divisions have been given numbers 2 and 3 respectively. The final component of the multiple number system used on the Chitral files represents the chronological placement of the file within its original division. Therefore, this system indicates that file 1/2/9, the dossier for Private Gabriele de Filippo, was contained within the D-M division of the Chitral grouping, and it was the ninth file in this grouping.Similar to the situation outlined above, within the multiple number system, all Katoomba files now begin with the number 2. To represent the various divisions by Compound that were imposed on the Katoomba files, the numbers 1-3 have again been used. The files of POWs held in Cowra's A Compound have 1 as the second number in their multiple number system, B Compound files have 2, and C-D Compound files use 3. The number 4 has been used as the second component of the multiple number system to represent the dossiers of POWs from the Liverpool camp. The final number in the system again represents the chronological placement of the file in its original division. Therefore the number for file 2/3/1 indicates that Gunner Guido Pezzoli was repatriated aboard the Katoomba from C-D Compound Cowra, and his file was the first in the original C-D Compound collection.All items from this series have been added to the Archives' item level database.