Main camp IV B

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Entrance to the main camp IV B

The main camp IV B ( Stalag IV B, also spelled Stalag IV-B ) was a main camp for prisoners of war in Wehrkreis IV Dresden built by the Wehrmacht in 1939 . It was 5 kilometers northeast of Mühlberg / Elbe near the Neuburxdorf train station in the Prussian province of Saxony, and from 1944 in the province of Halle-Merseburg .

The dimensions of the camp

The camp was built in 1939 by the Wehrmacht on 30 hectares for prisoners of war. The buildings no longer exist. Only the foundations with information boards can still be seen. The initiative group Lager Mühlberg e. V. documents the function and structure of the camp. The camp was fenced in with barbed wire and had a preliminary storage facility for the administration. A main road ran through the actual camp, with a total of 40 accommodation barracks on both sides.

  • View over the Lagerstrasse

  • Appeal of the German guards

  • Watchtower

The prisoners of war

Information board on the history of Stalag IV B

After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, 17,000 Polish prisoners of war had to spend in the camp outdoors or in tents. Belgian, French, North African, Serbian, British and Commonwealth soldiers as well as Dutch soldiers were held there until 1940. From 1941 Soviet, Italian in 1943 and American prisoners of war after the invasion in 1944, as well as over 1,500 Danish police officers. After the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 thousands of Poles came and after the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 / January 1945 7,500 Americans joined them. A total of up to 16,000 men could be held at the same time. The prisoners of war were assigned to external work units, were transferred to other camps or stayed in the camp. The Soviet soldiers were badly treated.

Everyday warehouse life

Prisoner number Stalag IV B

According to contemporary witness reports from 1940, the prisoners of war arrived at the Neuburxdorf train station after several days of transport in closed freight wagons and were brought from there to the camp on an accelerated walk lasting several hours. They were given an inmate number that had to be worn day and night and were photographed. Personal items had to be handed in, clothes and wooden shoes were handed out.

The camp was sealed off by barbed wire. Inside was a preliminary storage facility. Camp IV B was divided into two parts with barracks by the central camp road. The prisoners slept in three-story beds. The camp boundaries were monitored from watchtowers. The prisoners were woken up at 5 a.m. and had to be back in their quarters by 10 p.m. There were work details inside and outside the Stalag. The prisoners who were not assigned to work had to be available within the barracks. Post and parcels were allowed, as were Sunday services. There was a hospital.

Neuburxdorf military cemetery

Military cemetery with memorial in Neuburxdorf

Around 3000 prisoners of war were killed in the camp, 2350 of them Soviet soldiers. The Soviet prisoners were not treated according to the Geneva Conventions . The deceased prisoners of war of most nations were buried in individual graves at the Neuburxdorf military cemetery during the war, while the Soviet soldiers were mostly buried in mass graves.

After 1945 most of the bones of the buried prisoners of war were exhumed and transferred to their home countries. The remains of the Soviet soldiers were also reburied and buried in the cemetery in Elsterwerda .

Today there is a memorial for the prisoners of war of Stalag IV B in the cemetery.

The dead of Stalag IV H

In 1942 the main camp Stalag IV H near Zeithain was subordinated to the Mühlberg camp as a subsidiary camp. A large number of prisoners of war from Stalag IV B were transferred to Stalag IV H, which served as a hospital camp, either directly or from a work detachment. Around 25,000 to 30,000 Soviet prisoners of war and over 900 prisoners of war from other countries died there.

Liberation of the camp

On April 23, 1945, the camp guards withdrew and the Red Army liberated the camp. It was not closed, but used as a transit camp for liberated Soviet prisoners of war or members of the Vlasov Army . The latter were executed for treason or taken to gulags .

Known people in Stalag IV B

Prisoners of war

Guards

After 1945 - special camp No. 1 Mühlberg

After the end of the Second World War, the camp was operated as special camp No. 1 Mühlberg by the Soviet NKVD and SMERSCH , from September 1945 to 1948. About 22,000 people were detained during this time, of which about 7,000 did not survive captivity. The deceased were buried in mass graves on the edge of the site.

memorial

Replica of a barrack front in the memorial for Stalag IV B

Today there is a memorial on the grounds of the Stalag IVB. Only a few foundation fragments of the buildings of the Stalag IVB remain. Since 2012, visitors have been able to find out about the conditions in the Stalag IVB and in the Soviet special camp on a path through the site on 17 glass steles. Dutch war veterans have symbolically recreated a barrack front. In mid-2016, the federally owned Bodenverwertungs- und -verwaltungs GmbH was looking for buyers for the mine property on the site of the memorial in order to use the area for gravel extraction. This met with diverse opposition. In February 2017, however, in a consultation with the State Office for Mining, Geology and Raw Materials Brandenburg , it was decided to exclude the area of ​​the special camp Mühlberg from gravel mining.

See also

literature

  • Achim Kilian : Mühlberg: 1939–1948. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar 2001, ISBN 3-412-10201-6 .
  • Florent Silloray: On the trail of Rogers. avant-verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-939080-85-5 .
  • Tom Swallow, Arthur H. Pill: Flywheel: Memories of the Open Road. Fraser Stewart, 1993, ISBN 1-874723-21-4 .
  • Tony Vercoe: Survival at Stalag IVB: soldiers and airmen remember Germany's largest POW camp of World War II. McFarland, 2006, ISBN 0-7864-2404-4 .

Web links

Commons : Stammlager IV B / Special Camp No. 1  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Laurent Guillet: Il s'appelait Joseph. Editions Laurent Guillet, Limerzel 2011, ISBN 978-2-918588-03-0 , pp. 103-104, 113 (camp stations of a French prisoner of war until his death).
  2. ↑ Laurent Guillet: Il s'appelait Joseph. Editions Laurent Guillet, Limerzel 2011, ISBN 978-2-918588-03-0 , pp. 104-105 (camp stations of a French prisoner of war until his death).
  3. ↑ Laurent Guillet: Il s'appelait Joseph. Editions Laurent Guillet, Limerzel 2011, ISBN 978-2-918588-03-0 , pp. 104-133 (camp stations of a French prisoner of war until his death).
  4. ↑ Laurent Guillet: Il s'appelait Joseph. Editions Laurent Guillet, Limerzel 2011, ISBN 978-2-918588-03-0 , pp. 131–132 (camp stations of a French prisoner of war until his death).
  5. ↑ Glass steles commemorate the victims of two dictatorships. In: Lausitzer Rundschau from April 24, 2012
  6. ^ Frank Claus: Indignation about the gravel tender . In: Lausitzer Rundschau from December 28, 2016
  7. ↑ Frank Claus: Messages ( Memento of the original dated February 11, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lr-online.de 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. . In: Lausitzer Rundschau from February 3, 2017

Coordinates: 51 ° 27 '  N , 13 ° 17'  E