Oflag VII A
In World War II was in the Werdenfelser barracks in Upper Bavaria Murnau that the Military District VII (Munich) Subordinate POW camp ( Oflag VII A) of the Wehrmacht . From 1939 to 1945 up to 5,000 prisoner-of-war officers and generals of the Polish army were temporarily housed here.
Development of Murnau into a garrison town
Murnau's first application as a location for a barracks was made during the time of the Reichswehr in 1928. This wish was then fulfilled a few years later when the Wehrmacht was rearming. Between 1936 and 1939, two barracks for the mountain troops were built on the road to Weilheim north of the town center . Both were built by the Wehrmacht construction office under the direction of the architect Sep Ruf from Munich.
The artillery barracks was built in 1938 and was renamed the following year in "Kemmel-Kaserne", to commemorate the Battle of the Kemmelberg in the First World War . On November 10, 1938, the mountain artillery regiment of the 1st Mountain Division moved into these barracks. The regiment left the Kemmel barracks on August 25, 1939 to go to war against Poland . During the further course of the Second World War, the Kemmel barracks housed various companies .
The topping-out ceremony of the Panzerjäger barracks was celebrated on February 28, 1939. This barracks, today Werdenfelser Kaserne, was intended to house the Panzerjäger detachment of the 1st Mountain Division, but this did not happen because the detachment under Major Rudolf Lang also took part in the attack on Poland in September 1939 without anyone of soldiers had ever seen the Panzerjäger barracks. Instead, the barracks was used as a prisoner-of-war camp for Polish officers until the end of the war.
The Murnau POW camp was liberated on April 29, 1945 by soldiers of the 7th US Army .
Well-known prisoners of war in Murnau
admiral
- Józef Unrug (also Joseph von Unruh ), Chief of the Polish Navy
Division generals
- Władysław Bortnowski (Commander of Armia Pomorze )
- Tadeusz Kutrzeba (Commander of the Armia Poznań )
- Tadeusz Piskor (Commander of the Armia Lublin )
- Juliusz Rómmel (Commander of the Armia Łódź and the Armia Warszawa )
Brigadier Generals
- Roman Abraham
- Franciszek age
- Władysław Bończa-Uzdowski
- Leopold Cehak
- Jan Chmurowicz
- Walerian Czuma
- Franciszek Dindorf-Ankowicz
- Juliusz Drapella
- Janusz Gąsiorowski
- Jan Jagmin-Sadowski
- Edmund Knoll-Kownacki
- Wincenty Kowalski
- Emil Krukowicz-Przedrzymirski (Commander of Armia Modlin )
- Jan Kruszewski
- Józef Kwaciszewski
- Stanisław Małachowski
- Czesław Młot-Fijałkowski
- Bernard moon
- Zygmunt Piasecki
- Wacław Piekarski
- Zygmunt Podhorski
- Zdzisław Przyjałkowski
- Antoni Szylling (Commander of the Armia Kraków )
- Stanislaw Taczak
- Wiktor Thommée
- Juliusz inflow
Other
- Major Seweryn Kulesza , silver medalist at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin
literature
- A view of the Alps behind barbed wire - the Polish officer prison camp VII A in Murnau 1939–1945 by Martin Lohmann
