Transit camp (prisoner of war camp)

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Transit camp (abbreviation Dulag ) was the name of a camp for the short-term accommodation of prisoners of war according to the Second Geneva Convention during the First and Second World Wars . The Dulags were initially no stationary or fixed facilities, but rather improvised prisoner-of-war camps that were used to "smuggle through" prisoners of war. After they had been recorded in the Dulags and also checked by identification, the prisoners of war were usually divided into the individual Stalags and Oflags .

During the Second World War , the Dulags often did not even meet the most primitive hygienic requirements, in line with their character as mostly quickly improvised “accommodations” or temporary “custody”. As a result of the overcrowding caused by the huge number of prisoners brought in, but above all because of the extremely small amount of food made available by the Germans, the Dulags had a terrifyingly high mortality rate among the captured soldiers of the Red Army in the first year of the war against the Soviet Union . By order of Hermann Göring , the catering of the “Bolshevik prisoners” should not take into account international treaties ; Only those who work for Germany receive food. This situation improved only with the transition from movement to trench warfare , leading to a widespread disappearance of differences between Dulags and Stalags led. The Dulags now also became permanent institutions that had a more or less large group of prisoners of war, who now also received correspondingly better "care".

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Individual evidence

  1. a b “The communist is not a comrade”. In: Der Spiegel . February 13, 1978. Retrieved November 4, 2019 .