POW camp 5110/48 Woikowo

Ivanovo Woikowo

The Woikowo prisoner-of-war camp in Cherntsy was 25 kilometers southwest of the city of Ivanovo in the Ivanovo Oblast

The prisoner of war camp 5110/48 Woikowo was a camp of the USSR for prisoners of war from the opposing generals of the Second World War . The camp was located in Cherntsy in Ivanovo Oblast, around 300 km northeast of Moscow between the Volga and Klyazma rivers in the middle of the Eastern European lowlands. It existed from 1943 to 1955.

Extent of internment

Around 400 German , Japanese , Hungarian , Italian , Romanian and Austrian officers were taken to the general camp Woikowo (5110/48).

On July 3, 1943, the first generals captured during the Battle of Stalingrad were admitted to the camp. The highest ranking among them was Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus . After the defeats of the Wehrmacht in Kursk ( Operation Citadel ), the Baltic States ( Baltic Operation ) and Belarus ( Operation Bagration ), between 1944 and 1945, more and more German generals were taken prisoner by the Soviets and transferred to the camp.

After the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht on May 7, 1945, 185 other German Wehrmacht generals were interned here.

Interned officers (selection)

Prisoners of war in the camp were:

Wilhelm Adam , Major General Friedrich Altrichter , Lieutenant General Oskar Audörsch , major general Leopold Graf Fugger von Babenhausen , Major General Hans Baur , SS group leader, lieutenant general of the Waffen SS and the police Ehrenfried Boege , General of the Infantry Ernst Bormann , major general Walter Bremer , General Alexander Conrady , Major General Rudolf August Demme , Major General Wilhelm Eckhold (or Eckold ), SS-Obersturmführer Sigismund von Falkenstein , major general Friedrich Foertsch , Lieutenant General Alfred Gause , Lieutenant General Erwin Gerlach , major general Karl-Hans Giese , Major General Günther Horstmann , Rear Admiral Otto Korfes , major general Richard Kretzer , major general Wilhelm Kries , veterinarian general of the police Wilhelm Kunze , major general Arno von Lenski , Lieutenant General Gustav Lombard , Major General of the Waffen SS Alfons Luczny , Lieutenant General of the Air Force

Werner Marcks , Lieutenant General Wilhelm Mohnke , Major General of the Waffen SS Dietrich-Ernst von Müller , Lieutenant General Kurt-Peter Müller , Major General of the Waffen SS Friedrich Paulus , Field Marshal General Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch , SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS and General of the Police Richard Reimann , General of the Air Force anti-aircraft artillery Willi Reitel , Lieutenant General Hans Ritter , General of the Air Force Aviators Friedrich Roske , major general Franz Sattler , Lieutenant General Dietrich von Saucken , General of the Panzer Force Werner Schartow , Lieutenant General Arthur Schmidt , Lieutenant General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach , General of the Artillery Ernst Sieler , Lieutenant General Karl Strecker , General of the Infantry Gottfried Weber , Lieutenant General Otto Weber , Major General Hans Wesemann , General Labor Leader Hans Wulz , major general Rudolf Wuttmann , General of the Artillery

German prisoners of war who died in the camp were buried in the German military cemetery in Tschernzy. These included:

Wilhelm Kries (1887–1953), veterinarian general of the police Erwin Barends (1880–1952), major general Louis Tronnier (1897–1952), Major General Paul Stoewer (1890–1953), Lieutenant General Friedrich Bayer (1887–1953), Lieutenant General Gerhard Hans Medem (1893–1953), Lieutenant General Walter von Boltenstern (1889–1952), Lieutenant General Friedrich Niehus (1898–1951), major general Karl Wilhelm Specht (1894–1953), General of the Infantry Gerd-Paul von Below (1892–1953), major general Rudolf Noack (1890–1954), major general Hans Busch (1887–1951), major general

Ernst Ruhe (1891–1951), general practitioner Wilhelm Runge (1888–1954), major general Heinrich-Anton Deboi (1893–1955), Lieutenant General Friedrich Hochbaum (1894–1955), General of the Infantry Wilhelm von Stubenrauch (1887–1950), Lieutenant General Hans Boeckh-Behrens (1898–1955), Lieutenant General Anton Ebert († 1955), major general Hans-Joachim Baurmeister (1898–1950), major general Heinz Thoma (1891–1948), Lieutenant General Otto Ullmann (1899–1955), major general Reiner Stahel (1892–1955), Lieutenant General Max Pfeffer (1883–1955), general of the artillery

Cemetery, Cherntsy German military cemetery in Cherntsy

Conditions of detention

The goal of the leading Interior Ministry of the USSR (NKVD) and thus of Institute 99 was to win the interned generals to join the Bund Deutscher Officers , with the help of which German soldiers were to be induced to defeat and fight against the Hitler dictatorship . According to the Russian historian Sergei Totschenow, the officers' stay in the camp was made relatively pleasant.

An "old manor house with large and high old rooms" was used as a bedroom and living room. They got up at 6.30 a.m. and went to sleep at 10.30 p.m. Breakfast was at 8 a.m. and lunch at 1 p.m. The prisoners' daily meals were 3500 calories. The residents of the camp were allowed to organize their free time themselves; many were gardeners and vegetable growers or worked in the carpentry workshops. Many prisoners went for walks through the camp grounds or read books that could be borrowed from the Lenin Library in Moscow, others learned the Russian language . There were regular cinema screenings, as well as musical evenings with piano, guitar and violin.

Long conversations were held with the prisoners. Monitoring systems were installed in all rooms, and the prison orderlies kept the NKVD staff informed on a regular basis. Between 1943 and 1944, around ten generals were persuaded to join the Association of German Officers, after which they were able to leave the camp. Among them were Otto Korfes, Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, Arno von Lenski and Hans Wulz.

End of captivity

At the end of 1948, almost all the generals in the Italian and Hungarian armies and some of the Austrian generals had been dismissed. As a result of the agreements made between Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Prime Minister Nikolai Bulganin in 1955, the 150 German generals detained in the Woikowo camp were released from war custody and returned home by the end of the year . The camp was then disbanded.

Before leaving, the freedmen were given an “expensive [blue Sunday] suit with tie, coat, chrome leather shoes, a felt hat and two pairs of underwear. Everyone was given a meal package for four days: smoked sausage, oil, cheese, smoking tobacco, caviar, confectionary ”. At the transit station in Moscow, a city tour was waiting for the officers. Some have been asked to sign a guest book.

Web links

Commons : Pictures of the Cherntsy Military Cemetery  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Tschernzy is at 56 ° 51 '43 "  N , 40 ° 45' 54"  E , about 7.5 km northwest of Leschnewo .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Recovery from the war in the prison camp. According to historian Sergei Totschenow. In: Moskauer Deutsche Zeitung of December 6, 2001.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Return transport of sick people from Stalingrad - rescue with German medicines. In: Ostpreußenblatt of January 14, 1956, Volume 7, Volume 2, Page 2.
4. ^ ^{A b c} Karl-Hans Giese : Generalsfeme. The revenge of the late comers. In: Der Spiegel from November 27, 1957
5. ↑ Gerald Kolditz: Adam, Wilhelm In: Sächsische Biografie , Ed. Institute for Saxon History and Folklore , edit. by Martina Schattkowsky . Retrieved August 13, 2016.
6. ↑ ^{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 aa} Manfred Zeidler: Stalin justice versus Nazi crimes. The war crimes trials against German prisoners of war in the USSR from 1943 to 1952. State of knowledge and research problems. Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism, Dresden 1996. ISBN 3-93164-808-7 , p. 70 "Transport list for returnees from October 1955 with those released from the Vojkovo general camp."
7. ^ Ian Baxter: Wolf's Lair: Inside Hitler's East Prussian HQ. The History Press, 2016. ISBN 0-75097-933-X , p. 54
8. ^ LA Besymenski: This is how Adolf Hitler died. In: The time of August 2, 1968.
9. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach : "We went through hell". In: Der Spiegel from August 29, 1977
10. ^ Howard Margolian: Conduct Unbecoming. The Story of the Murder of Canadian Prisoners of War in Normandy. University of Toronto Press, 2000. ISBN 0-80208-360-9 , p. 184
11. ^ Antony Beevor: Stalingrad. Penguin Books, London 1999. ISBN 0-14024-985-0 , p. 422.
12. ↑ Marcel Stein: Field Marshal von Manstein, a Portrait: the Janus Head. Helion & Company, Solihull 2006. ISBN 978-1-90603-302-6 , p. 132.
13. ↑ "General Strecker: We have been through a lot!" In: Rhein-Zeitung of October 10, 1955
14. ↑ Cherntsy German Soldiers Cementary, Ivanovo area. ( Memento of the original from March 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
15. ^ Jörg Morré: Behind the Scenes of the National Committee. The Institute 99 in Moscow and the German policy of the USSR 1943-1946. Munich 2001, ISBN 3-48670-294-7 , p. 104
16. ↑ Woikowo. In: Lexicon of the Wehrmacht
17. ↑ ^{a b} Jan Molitor : The last soldiers of the Great War. In: Die Zeit of February 16, 2006