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Stalag X-B was a
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
prisoner-of-war camp A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured by a belligerent power in time of war. There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, and military prisons. ...
located near
Sandbostel Sandbostel is a municipality in Lower Saxony (''Niedersachsen'') in northwestern Germany, 43 km north-east of Bremen, 60 km west of Hamburg. It is part of the Samtgemeinde Selsingen. In 2013, it had 830 inhabitants. History Sandboste ...
in
Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...
in north-western
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. Between 1939 and 1945 several hundred thousand POW's of 55 nations passed through the camp. Due to the bad conditions in which they were housed, thousands died there of hunger, disease, or were killed by the guards. Estimates of the number of dead range from 8,000 to 50,000.


Establishment and operation

Sandbostel lies 9 km south of
Bremervörde Bremervörde () is a town in the north of the district (''Landkreis'') of Rotenburg, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the Oste river near the centre of the "triangle" formed by the rivers Weser and Elbe, roughly equidistant from the cit ...
, 43 km northeast of Bremen. In what was then the
Province of Hanover The Province of Hanover (german: Provinz Hannover) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia from 1868 to 1946. During the Austro-Prussian War, the Kingdom of Hanover had attempted to maintain a neutral position ...
, the Lutheran Church of the State of Hanover opened a camp for out of work singles and employed them in public works (roadworks, amelioration) in 1932, during the Great Depression. In 1933, the ''
Reichsarbeitsdienst The Reich Labour Service (''Reichsarbeitsdienst''; RAD) was a major organisation established in Nazi Germany as an agency to help mitigate the effects of unemployment on the German economy, militarise the workforce and indoctrinate it with Nazi ...
'' took over the camp and used it later as a Nazi internment camp for undesirables. In August 1939, a commission of ''Heeresbauamt Bremen'' (military construction department) decided to create a ''Mannschafts-Stammlager'' (POW camp) for the local '' Wehrkreis X''. In September, construction of the camp began between the village of Sandbostel and the ''Arbeitsdienstlager'' in the
Teufelsmoor The Teufelsmoor is a region of bog and moorland north of Bremen, Germany. It forms a large part of the district of Osterholz, and extends into the neighbouring districts of Rotenburg ( Gnarrenburg municipality). Geography The depression is d ...
. The latter area was now used as barracks to house the
Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the '' Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previo ...
guards. Beginning in September 1939, Polish POWs were used to expand the camp. Initially, huts for around 10,000 prisoners were built. Once it began operating, the camp was divided into several sub-camps: * a '' Stalag'' holding enlisted men from the occupied countries (Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Southeastern Europe and Italy after the armistice) * an officers' camp ( ''Oflag'' ) for officers from the occupied countries. In 1941, this part of the camp was merged with Oflags elsewhere * a ''Marinelager'' ( ''Marlag'' ), controlled by the Kriegsmarine, holding British sailors, marines and officers. In the fall of 1941, this part of the camp was moved to
Westertimke Westertimke is a municipality in the district of Rotenburg, in Lower Saxony, Germany. Westertimke belonged to the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen, established in 1180. In 1648 the Prince-Archbishopric was transformed into the Duchy of Bremen, whi ...
* an ''Internierungslager'' ( ''Ilag'' ), or internment camp for civilian citizens of enemy nations, including members of the British merchant marine. This section was also moved in 1941 to Westertimke (see:
Marlag und Milag Nord Marlag und Milag Nord was a Second World War German prisoner-of-war camp complex for men of the British and Canadian Merchant Navy and Royal Navy. It was located around the village of Westertimke, about north-east of Bremen, though in some sourc ...
) At first, prisoners were housed in tents, but from spring 1940 inmates constructed masonry huts. Later, prefabricated wooded huts were added. By 1941, there were over 100 huts housing prisoners as well as latrines, kitchens, buildings for punishment confinement and the commandant's office. In addition, there was a hospital (''Reservelazarett X-B'') and a punishment work camp of two huts inside the moor. By 1940, after the German victory over France, the camp was filled beyond capacity. Stalag X-B was then expanded to house a total of 30,000 prisoners. From the fall of 1941, sections of the camp were cleared or moved to make room for
Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
prisoners taken during "
Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...
". The camp now administered hundreds of ''Arbeitskommandos'' each made up of around 30 forced labourers. These were supplied to local farmers and industry. There was a clear hierarchy among prisoners. At the top were British and American POWs, generally treated correctly according to the
Geneva Convention upright=1.15, Original document in single pages, 1864 The Geneva Conventions are four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term ''Geneva Conve ...
and receiving numerous aid packages from the
International Red Cross The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signato ...
. As a consequence, they were well-fed until the very end of the war, when transportation and supply links broke down. Prisoners from western Europe (French, Belgians) were also treated as POWs but received less outside help and were not as well-nourished. However, they were in contact with international help organisations. Serbian and Polish nationals were denied access to outside observers. Italians, who came here after September 1943, were deemed traitors by both the German guards and the other prisoners and were at the low end of the hierarchy. They were ill-fed and from the fall of 1944 forced to work with the Wehrmacht or be treated as civilian forced labour. Worst-off of all were the Soviet POWs. They were denied POW status, received no outside food, and were not allowed access to international observers. Guards had a special shoot-to-kill policy for them. Due to the ill-treatment of the Soviets and a lack of shelter, several epidemics broke out among them. Thousands of them died from disease, starvation and brutal treatment by guards. They were buried in mass graves on the camp graveyard (today's war cemetery). 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 Giovannino Oliviero Giuseppe Guareschi (; 1 May 1908 – 22 July 1968) was an Italian journalist, cartoonist and humorist whose best known creation is the priest Don Camillo. Life and career Giovannino Guareschi was born into a middle-class famil ...
, who wrote ''La favola di Natale'' ("A Christmas Fable") there on Christmas 1944. The Canadian Neurologist Charles Miller Fisher, who served as a Lieutenant Commander in the Canadian navy, was interned in this camp after being torpedoed and rescued by a German ship. In August 1944, all POW camps were removed from Wehrmacht control and were assigned to
Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
's ''
Schutzstaffel The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe duri ...
'' (SS). Although this was without immediate consequences at Sandbostel, in January 1945 POWs were evacuated here from other camps closer to the frontline. In the final phase of the war,
concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...
prisoners were relocated to Sandbostel. Around 9,000 former inmates of
Neuengamme concentration camp Neuengamme was a network of Nazi concentration camps in Northern Germany that consisted of the main camp, Neuengamme, and more than 85 satellite camps. Established in 1938 near the village of Neuengamme in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, th ...
and its subcamps were transferred to Stalag X-B in April 1945. They were housed in the former ''Marlag'' and guarded well but otherwise left to their own devices: they received no medical help despite rampant diseases, sanitary conditions were dire and the inmates went virtually without food. On 20 April, most of the SS members guarding that section of Stalag X-B marched out of the camp with several hundred prisoners. After that, the POWs were allowed to help the remaining former concentration camp inmates with some of their own food.


Liberation

The camp was liberated on 29 April 1945 by the British Armed Forces of XXX Corps following fighting with the German 15th ''Panzergrenadier-Division''. The camp commandant, however, realizing that the end of the war was close, had already agreed to hand over control of the camp to the prisoners, led by the French Colonel Marcel Albert. On 21 April, the same day that the officer ordered to take control of the camp complained to his superiors about conditions there (see picture), two prisoners carried the call for assistance from the camp to the
Guards Armoured Division The Guards Armoured Division was an armoured division of the British Army during the Second World War. The division was created in the United Kingdom on 17 June 1941 during the Second World War from elements of the Guards units, the Grenadier ...
at
Zeven Zeven [] is a town in the Rotenburg (district), district of Rotenburg, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It has a population of around 14,000. The nearest large towns are Bremerhaven, Bremen (city), Bremen and Hamburg. It is situated approximately 22  ...
. Two armoured units were sent to Sandbostel but fighting delayed their arrival until 29 April. The British discovered around 15,000 surviving POWs in the camp, as well as around 8,000 KZ-inmates. The camp was divided into three sections when liberated. The first contained
allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
prisoners in unsatisfactory conditions, but generally in compliance with the International Red Cross Convention. Soviet prisoners, without the Convention's protection, were in substantially worse conditions. In the third section were around 8,000 civilian prisoners in appalling conditions, described in the Army medical history as "utterly horrifying"; "everywhere the dead and dying sprawled amid the slime of human excrement."''Two Weeks in May 1945'', Clifford Barnard, Quaker Home Service, 1999. According to members of the British forces present at the liberation, conditions were so bad, they referred to the Stalag as "Little Belsen" in a reference to the
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp Bergen-Belsen , or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concent ...
. The commander of the British Forces in north-western Germany, General
Brian Horrocks Lieutenant-General Sir Brian Gwynne Horrocks, (7 September 1895 – 4 January 1985) was a British Army officer, chiefly remembered as the commander of XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden and other operations during the Second World W ...
, was called in and ordered local German civilians and medical orderlies to help with the clean-up, and to bury the numerous dead bodies. Like at Bergen-Belsen, despite the best efforts of the British, hundreds of inmates died every day immediately following the liberation as a result of starvation,
typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure. ...
and other diseases. Estimates of the total number of people who died here in 1939-45 range between 8,000 and 50,000. There is evidence of at least 5,162 dead. Claims of up to 46,000 killed Soviets alone were made by the Soviet Union but are considered to be exaggerated. Inmates were cleaned and transferred to an improvised hospital outside the camp and thence to convalescence camps. The former ''Marlag'' was burned between 16 and 25 May to prevent a typhus epidemic and the last 350 patients left the hospital on 3 June. Other, more serviceable, huts were used by the British to house imprisoned Nazis and SS members, who were awaiting trial.


Cemeteries

POW camps were required by Wehrmacht regulations to have a cemetery close-by. Initially, the dead of Stalag X-B were buried in the war cemetery at Parnewinkel, where a World War I POW camp had been located previously. As the number of dead rose in 1940, a second cemetery was established near Sandbostel, about 1.2 kilometres from the camp. Non-Soviet and Soviet POWs were treated differently even in death. The former were buried with military honours in individual graves, the latter in 70 mass graves. At Sandbostel, the cemetery has two sections. ''Gräberfeld 1'' includes the mass graves. In 1954-56 ''Gräberfeld 2'' received the roughly 2,400 dead among the former concentration camp inmates who could not be identified.


Post-war use


British internment camp

As early as 8 July 1945, the British military authorities established one of nine civilian internment camps in a part of the former Stalag X-B. At "No. 2 Civil Internment Camp" or "No. 2 CIC" around 5,000 males, including SS members, were interned. Soon, inmates were subject to "re-education", intended to turn Nazi supporters in democrats. To further this goal, internees were allowed to publish their own newspaper ''Der Windstoss''. In June 1947, the trials began at the ''Spruchkammergericht'' at
Stade Stade (), officially the Hanseatic City of Stade (german: Hansestadt Stade, nds, Hansestadt Stood) is a city in Lower Saxony in northern Germany. First mentioned in records in 934, it is the seat of the district () which bears its name. It is l ...
. Internees were not charged with individual crimes but with membership in a criminal organisation, as defined by the
Nuremberg trials The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies of World War II, Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Between 1939 and 1945 ...
. The court handed down 3,500 verdicts, ranging from several months to six years imprisonment. However, the time of internment was counted as time served, so many of the defendants were released immediately following the trial. After the last inmates were released on 9 March 1948, the British closed the camp on 1 August 1948.


Prison

In March 1948, the Justice Department of the State of Lower Saxony established the ''Strafgefängnis Lager Sandbostel'' at the site of the Stalag. This prison soon housed around 600 male inmates, imprisoned for periods between two months and two years, mostly for property-related crimes, in six large huts. The prison featured a small hospital, workshops and a Protestant church. Around 110 people worked there, mostly German refugees from the eastern territories lost after WW II. In 1952, the prison was dissolved due to falling numbers of incarcerated.


Camp for refugees from the GDR

Beginning in 1952, parts of the camp were used as an emergency reception centre for refugees from communist Eastern Germany or GDR. On 1 April 1952, the Federal Ministry for Refugees established the ''Notaufnahmelager Sandbostel'' for young male refugees aged 15 to 24. In September 1952, a similar camp for women was established at the site of the POW camp at Westertimke. These two camps were under the supervision of the ''Durchgangslager Uelzen-Bohldamm'' and a committee decided on individuals' admission to Western Germany or to West-Berlin. Refugees also received help in finding jobs or apprenticeship positions. Most of the young people were in the camp for just one or two weeks. At Sandbostel, their number averaged around 800, at Westertimke around 300. Daily intake at Sandbostel was up to 100, with roughly the same number leaving each day. In total, around 250,000 young men and 80,000 young women passed through the camps. This use ended around 1960.


Bundeswehr and business park

In 1963, the
German armed forces The ''Bundeswehr'' (, meaning literally: ''Federal Defence'') is the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. The ''Bundeswehr'' is divided into a military part (armed forces or ''Streitkräfte'') and a civil part, the military part con ...
took over the remaining huts of the camp and used them to store medical supplies. Ten years later, in 1973, the Bundeswehr stopped using the facility. The Ministry of Defence for a while considered building a barracks at the site, but eventually chose Seedorf as the location. In 1974, the business park "Immenhain" was established in the area of the camp not given over to agricultural use. Businesses set up there included a horse-riding establishment, a reject shop, a militaria shop and a brothel. This use of the former camp area only ended with the establishment of the memorial in the 2000s.


Memorial

A Soviet memorial erected at the cemetery site in 1945 was dynamited in 1956 by orders of the Bremervörde district authorities and the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior, due to the memorial's excessive claims regarding the number of victims. Its inscription had read "''Hier ruhen 46.000 russische Soldaten und Offiziere, zu Tode gequält in der Nazigefangenschaft''" ("Here lie 46,000 Russian soldiers and officers, tortured to death in Nazi imprisonment"). The remains of most non-Soviet POWs were repatriated to their countries of origin. The Italians were reinterred at the Italian war cemetery at Hamburg-Öjendorf. Only around 170 individual graves of POWs from Poland, Yugoslavia or of unknown nationality remain in the graveyard at Sandbostel. A private club was founded in 1992 to work for the maintenance of the camp site. Since that year, most of the huts were treated as listed or protected buildings. The creation of a memorial at the site of the former camp met with substantial local opposition. In 2004, a foundation (''Stiftung Lager Sandbostel'') was established. Following three years of preparations, the ''Gedenkstätte Sandbostel'' was opened in 2007. In April 2013, the permanent exhibition was opened. Out of a total of around 150 huts, more than 20 remain (largely in the area that used to house the Soviet prisoners). Some appear mostly as they did in the 1940s, others have been altered to serve changing needs in the post-war period.


See also

*
List of German World War II POW camps For lists of German prisoner-of-war camps, see: * German prisoner-of-war camps in World War I * German prisoner-of-war camps in World War II Nazi Germany operated around 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps (german: Kriegsgefangenenlager) during World Wa ...
*
List of POW camps in Germany For lists of German prisoner-of-war camps, see: * German prisoner-of-war camps in World War I * German prisoner-of-war camps in World War II Nazi Germany operated around 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps (german: Kriegsgefangenenlager) during World War ...


References

;Notes ;Bibliography * Borgsen, W./Volland, K. (2010), Stalag X B Sandbostel, Edition Temmen, . * Ehresmann, A. (2013), Das Stalag X B Sandbostel. Geschichte und Nachgeschichte eines Kriegsgefangenenlagers (German). In: Gedenkstättenrundbrief Nr. 171 (09/2013), p. 19-31. Available online a


External links


Documentation and Memorial Site Sandbostel (German)

The camp on the website of the ''Stiftung Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas''
{{Authority control World War II prisoner of war camps in Germany, Stalag X-B Sandbostel Neuengamme concentration camp Buildings and structures in Rotenburg (district)