The camp was eventually dissolved, and its attendees were sent to fight on the Eastern Front, or interned in concentration camps after 1943. Up to 22,000 prisoners who had died or been murdered, were buried in 32 mass graves within the local area of the camp. The red brick stables were converted to barracks to house prisoners when the site was converted to a POW camp in October 1939. The castle was first used as a camp in 1933-34, named KZ Hohnstein. It served also as a transit camp through which prisoners, including officers, were processed on their way to other camps. In 1943 a tunnel was being dug from a hut closest to the wires. A huge camp with many compounds and work sites away from the main camp, in fams and factories, partially within the old castle of Malbork. | | On 8 September 1943, the day of the Italian Armistice, the gates at the Bologna POW camp were thrown open and those inside invited by their guards to break for freedom. In June 1941 a new compound Oflag 62 was opened for high-ranking Soviet officers captured during Operation Barbarossa. In March 1945 two bombs dropped by a Soviet aircraft hit Block B killing eight POWs, and injuring several others. This camp was used after the armistice to house the 40,000 Jews from Modena/Bologna before their transfer to Auschwitz. All went well as the six escapers entered the office during the previous evening and opened up the tunnel. It was in Stanislau, a city that until 1918 was part of Austria-Hungary in the interwar years under the Polish name Stanislawow. Stalag I-B Hohenstein East Prussia Location N/E 53-20. Suffixes on camps relate to their parent camp: i.e. A number of camps were administered under this designation housing around 30,000 POWs/Internees as of February 1945, the camps liberation was controlled under the Twelfth Army Group (US). 101 min The camp was liberated on 1 February 1945 by the Soviet Army. Government Licence v3.0. The training and selection by Abwehr II and the German Army took place during the period from 1940-1943. District IX Nearest City Altona, near Hamburg in the middle North of Germany. Twice as many KL inmates were then housed in, the already overcrowded, British POW barracks here. The camp was divided into three groups of 900. April 1943: Part of the camp was turned into a hospital for POWs. In March 1943 a Lazarett ("Camp Hospital") was built there. In September 1942, British officers from Oflag VI-B Dssel, were transferred to VII-B after a mass escape (the "Warburg Wire Job"). Also known as Stalag 344, and connected to Stalag IV b/z and Stalag VIII-d. 64,000 POWs in 1944 with 150 officers and 13,625 being British. A POW camp for Soviets adjacent to Stalag VIII-B Lamsdorf, it also held Romanians, Greeks and Italians. After the Fascist authorities left Perugia and the British arrived at Sant'Arcangelo on 19 June they were eventually rowed to safety by the island's fishermen, to whom a monument has been erected in the open space next to the Lace Museum. A large number of the inmates made their way to the Swiss frontier and were interned when the Italian guards abandoned their posts after the armistice in 1943. Jack Watson, PG On 24 November 1941, N was put in a punishment cell after being found with a (home made) chitty and behaving against the rules. These buildings were not adjacent to each other and were surrounded by barbed-wire fences. The Italian camp nominal rolls are sourced directly from WO392/12. The Locations may be in German and also the country's language they are now located in. Edward Fox, Approved Discovered by dog on ground. Digital files of films and sound recordings are available at cost depending on intended use. Inmates were cleaned and transferred to an improvised hospital outside the camp and thence to convalescence camps. The first was about 12 m (40 ft) long, built from March to August 1943. This housed 728 British and commonwealth and later a further 113 US personnel. What a refreshing book. On reflection, these sources do show some relevant information and surprisingly confirm that Red Cross inspection visits were made to selected far east camps, although the integrity of these visits is debatable. 134 min It is worth noting that parcels from particular countries were distributed fairly randomly, and so a British POW might very well have received US, Canadian, British, Indian or any other type, all of whom had differing foodstuffs, the Indian ones designed for Sikhs had no meat ration for example. 45 min Afterwards a number of would-be escapees would borrow Dutch greatcoats as their disguise. At this same location there had been a prisoner camp during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Situated in a monastery in Bergamo district. By June 1940 most of the Poles had been transferred to other camps and replaced with Belgian and French troops taken prisoner during the Battle of France. Privacy Policy and
Forty years of research has resulted in this exceptional photographic history of life within the 'Sonderlager' of Colditz castle, the famous prisoner of war camp in Germany during World War Two, which housed such illustrious names as Douglas Bader, Lorne Welch and Jack Best. The Italians held them in holding camps in the desert until transportation to the Italian mainland a few days or weeks later. 88 min Thinking back, she recalls the Australian man who made a great sacrifice to aid her and her fellow prisoners of war. The camp was partially located on the grounds of the Tannenberg Memorial and initially included a set of wooden structures intended to house World War I veterans during Nazi festivities. Among the Italian prisoners, who were mostly soldiers who did not surrender to the German army after the Cassibile armistice, was journalist and writer Giovannino Guareschi, who wrote here La favola di Natale (A Christmas Fable) on Christmas, 1944. Within the camp, British POWs were controlled by the Senior British Officer (SBO) or Senior British Non-Commissioned Officer (SBNCO). The largest POW camp in Austria and 2nd largest in the entire German Reich. Between 1939 and 1945 1 million POWs of 46 nations passed through. Conditions initially were very poor, with more than 1,000 men accommodated in tents while huts were being constructed. A Lazarett (hospital) cared for prisoners that were sick or had been injured in industrial accidents or air-raids. Tell us what you think about this feature. That day the Kommandant, Hauptmann Steiner, had handed over control of the camp to the Senior British Medical Officer and the "Men of Confidence". An improvised camp for Soviet prisoners of war (August 1942) It is estimated that at least 3.3 million Soviet POWs died in Nazi custody, out of 5.7 million. that had been held in Italian prisoner of war camps were transferred to Oflag IV-D. Stalag 221B Saint-Medard-en-Jalles, France. These men were responsible for security, seemed to be able to over-rule the Army commandant of camps, no matter what his rank, conducted the most rigorous and unexpected searches of personal belongings, and sometimes treated prisoners with the brutality which (presumably) had become habitual to them in dealing with civil offenders. In February 1942, the new headquarters of the camp was opened in Offenburg. The evacuation was frightening and arduous to POWs of all compounds, especially to those of the South Compound who made the 40 miles from Sagan to Muskau in 27 hours with only 4 hours sleep. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google
From the port of disembarkation prisoners of war went to transit camps in the south of Italy. A cocky German fighter pilot is shot down over England in 1940 and makes numerous attempts to escape to fight again. This route into Switzerland was discovered by Larive in 1940 on his first escape attempt from an Oflag in Soest. In January 1945 the officers were marched out westward, finally arriving at Oflag III-A in Luckenwalde, south of Berlin. In October 1944 a small number of higher ranking officers arrived from the Warsaw Uprising. Two hundred NCOs were transferred to Stalag XVIII-C at Markt-Pongau in June 1944. Originally opened in May1941 the camp reported having 144officers and 1,785 other ranks on 26th February 1943. An alphabetical list of British and Dominion Air Force PoWs in German hands in 1944-1945 is in AIR 20/2336. These records, in the series WO 416, consist of British and Allied prisoner of war records created by the Germans and captured by the Allied forces when the camps were liberated at the end of the war. Marlag und Milag Nord, the camps for captured Navy personnel and civilian sailors respectively, were originally in two separate enclosures at the Sandbostel camp. Details of ships captured or lost due to enemy action are in BT 373/1-359, searchable in Discovery, our catalogue, by ship's name. It is uncertain whether official red cross food and medical supply parcels were ever tampered with by MI9, however, up to 10% of organisations listed who donated clothing/sports equipment and books were, in fact, a front for MI9. The local German forces refused free access to the camp, so an assault into the area was made by the Guards Armoured Division and the camp was liberated on April 29, 1945. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The "entertaining yet objective and often-moving account" (The Wall Street Journal) of one of history's most notorious prisonsand the remarkable cast of POWs who tried relentlessly to escape their captors, from the author of The Spy and . In 1941 and 1942 Soviet prisoners arrived. I was fortunate enough to visit Colditz Castle, 25 miles south-east of Leipzig, in July last year when on holiday in Germany. May 1940: The camp was built to house Belgian and French enlisted men captured in the Battle of France; initial count: 600. Ben Macintyre has done it again. The dormitory huts were made of double wooden walls located on concrete foundations, with a felt roof, and one heating stove, although there were reports fuel was never supplied. This is sometimes confusing as Italy also had concentration camps in the normal sense of the word for holding of Political opponents and Jews. Stalag I-E Prostken (Protski, Poland). Most of these Italian prisoners were suffering from tuberculosis or had been injured while working. In 1943, the camp was enlarged and a new camp was constructed alongside the earlier one. Director: Director: Located at coordinates 54 degrees 25 minutes North, 20 degrees 32 minutes 5 seconds east. Which are released under the terms of the creativecommons.org/licenses/by-s/3.0/. Steve McQueen, Virginia McKenna, Four were recaptured. Colditz Castle 1943. the areas where Stalags began with the number II), this was a forced marchaway from the soviet armys advance in awful weather, taking up to 3 months in total, up to 8,000 men some suffering with dysentry were marched away, stragglers being shot or dying of hypothermia during this ordeal. At this point all Senior British Officers (SBOs) informed their men of Field Marshal Montgomerys so-called 'standfast' order. SHAEF reports numbers as at Feb 1945 as: 200 British, 559 US, 7531 Soviet,757 Poles,1976 Yugoslavs,638 Italians and 10734 French. Naturally all incoming and outgoing mail was censored. 47083 (5191 British) POWs with 927 officers held here. Sylvester Stallone, Mark Robson Also listed as 'Gavi-Serravalle Scrivia Piedmont'. Behind the imposing walls of . The German Navy also operated a Dulag (Durchgangslager, "Transit camp") in Wilhelmshaven, where newly-arrived prisoners were processed before being sent to other camps. Destroyed by air raids and fire in late 1944 - POWs transferred to Dulag Metzlar. Only operated for 3 months from August until November 1942. The barracks were divided into rooms each accommodating 14 to 18 men who slept in two and three-tiered bunks. You should note, as with all historical records that any of these will be a snapshot in time of when the record was made originally & as such there are inevitable errors and ommissions, only by checking multiple sources (where available) can any certainty be possible. These were prisoners who defied the Nazis, attempted to escape , or were just generally hard to handle. Other mainly administrative and policy files on merchant navy POWs are dispersed among FO 916, MT 9 (code 106), FO 371, WO 32 (code 91A). Under contruction according to USSME reports in 1943. By 1941 a theatre had been built. Eventually, all 65 were recaptured, but had occupied over 50,000 police, soldiers, home guard and Hitler Youth for a week. Sometimes, due to the shortage of parcels, two or even four prisoners would be compelled to share the contents of one Red Cross parcel. A different POW camp in Germany was Colditz Castle. Oflag 64 or XXI-B Schubin (Moved to Usedom) Poland, Altburgund. Clothing was misfit being the most dominant, gathered from what they could; the German government provided no clothing. Many prisoners died, mainly Soviets, as their living conditions and rations were substantially inferior to the other prisoners. Basil Dearden Feigned heart disease by smoking heavily and drinking concentrated black coffee prior to medical examination and was repatriated. All items (2) # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Other E But then the train stopped in Stettin for unloading, they switched to another car loaded with sacks of barley destined for Aachen in western Germany, which they reached four days later. The camp was built on the site of an old chicken farm, approximately 300 yards north of the main Frankfurt to Bad Homburg road. The march from Gross Tychow lasted approximately 86 days. (Small camp with around 25 prisoners at any one time). There was a camp theatre in Marlag and the POWs performed concerts and plays. | Reports from SHAEF in 1945 show although the camps had a designated holding capacity of 5000 it actually (had) held: 1090 British, 23 US, 11135 Soviets, 7 Poles, 2211 Yugoslavs, 19 Dutch, 257 Italians, 13987 French. It opened in the spring or early summer of 1941, operating until the end of the war. Twelve ounces of C-ration vegetable soup concentrate. As a sub-camp of Ilag VII, it was designated Ilag VII/Z. We are particularly interested in lists of names and individual photographs, letters and diaries of this period. According to the German Security Officer, Captain Reinhold Eggers, the Dutch officers appeared to be model prisoners at first. Camp E715 Buna/Monowitz where POWs worked alongside Jewish inmates from the adjacent Auschwitz III KZ (Konzentrationslager) -otherwise known as Extermination through work (Vernichtung durch Arbeit) camp. Michael Caine, POWs were transferred from camps in Italy, mainly British Commonwealth officers from the Battle of Crete and North African Campaign. However other reports show on 25th January 1945, as Soviet troops approached, the camp was abandoned and all prisoners were evacuated to the west. Originally, Stutthof was a civilian internment camp under the Danzig police chief. The camp was organised into huts about 40 yards long and 8 yards wide. Lazarettnormally a Kreigslazzarett or field hospital, (literally war hospital). Major-General Gustave Marie Maurice Mesny was killed on the way from Knigstein to Colditz Castle. Moved from Spittal to Wagna in 1942. Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated. The form consists of 25 questions relating to topics such as the work of escape committees; escape aids and their usefulness; German censorship; receipt and dissemination of coded messages; a collection of geographical information that might assist future escape attempts; and internal communications. Six months later, after 76 Allied airmen escaped from Stalag Luft III, 50 were murdered by the Gestapo. Moved to Hotel Golden Lion - an annex of the Leipzig Warren lazaretto in February 1944. But, between 1939 and 1945, it was famously used as a prisoner of war camp to house British and Allied Officers who had previously escaped from other camps, or were deemed to be a high security risk. On 26/2/43 there were 247 officers and 2898 other ranks interned here. 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