Weinsberg camp

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Weinsberg camp was a transit camp in the town of Weinsberg near Heilbronn . As Oflag VA it was a prisoner of war camp of the Wehrmacht between 1940 and 1945, in which prisoners of war officers and NCOs of various nationalities were housed ( officers' camp , hence the abbreviation after Wehrkreis V). After the war ended, it served as a refugee camp. It was closed in 1972.

history

The camp was established in the spring of 1937 as a Landwehr training camp. The first Landwehr men moved in on July 7, 1937; Until October 10, 1939, the camp was usually occupied by 800 soldiers and a 200-strong training company. After the outbreak of the Second World War , the camp served as the Oflag VA POW camp from May 20, 1940 to March 30, 1945 . After the end of the war, from April 15, 1945 to February 3, 1953, it was then used as accommodation for former forced laborers and displaced persons of Polish nationality ( DP camp ). After all, from March 3, 1953 until its closure on November 30, 1972, it served as a transit camp for refugees and repatriates from the former German eastern regions. Federal President Horst Köhler also lived here for a few days as a child in 1953.

Documentation center

The last remaining of the original 39 barracks of the former camp houses a documentation center that shows the eventful history of the camp and can be visited.

A chronological sequence of photos, drawings, documents, newspaper articles and explanatory texts provide information about the history of the camp. A wall curtain, almost 10 m² in size, printed with a general view of the camp, evokes the former appearance of the camp site. The exhibited objects such as letters and stamps from the POW camp's mail traffic show the everyday life of the camp residents.

literature

  • Gabriele Halter: Weinsberg camp. A documentation of the history of the camp 1937–1977 . City of Weinsberg, Weinsberg 1987

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ten years of “Documentation Site Lager Weinsberg” at Jahresbuch.weinsberg.org (accessed on December 29, 2011) ( Memento from July 12, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )

Coordinates: 49 ° 8 ′ 41.7 "  N , 9 ° 17 ′ 54.8"  E