In 1940 Schreck was interned as a so-called ‘enemy alien’ at the notorious Warth Mills camp outside Bury, Greater Manchester. There, his fellow artist internees included Peter Midgley (né Fleischmann), who described the experience as a ‘nightmare’ and Hermann Fechenbach, who went on hunger strike as a result. This sketch, entitled 'Agony', depicts the interior of a dilapidated building, sparsely populated with rudimentary camp beds and benches. Warth Mills camp had been hastily converted from an old cotton mill and still had broken machinery attached to the walls and oil and glass on the floors. Schreck's painting contains threatening undertones in its sombre brown palette and the rope hanging from the wall to the left like a noose. The agony of the scene leads the eye to a figure lying on a bed at the back, while at the foot of the bed sits another, his head bowed.

Schreck was subsequently moved to Onchan Camp on the Isle of Man, where further artist inmates included Jack Bilbo, Henry de Buys Roessingh, Ernst Eisenmayer, and Hermann Nonnenmacher. He contributed drawings on numerous occasions to the camp publication, 'The Onchan Pioneer' (August 1940–April 1941), and exhibited drawings and watercolours at the Interned Artists Exhibition held at Bilbo's Cabin in August 1940, as well as in the Art and Christmas Card exhibition (Oct–Nov 1940). He also held a solo show of portraits of fellow internees; among his subjects were Austrian-Jewish businessman Ernst Urbach (whose son, Alexander married refugee artist Eva Aldbrook), as well as John Duffield M.A.,Vicar of Onchan, who took a great interest in the internees and gave lectures at the informal Camp University.