Oflag XC

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Aerial photo of the Oflag XC in April 1945; North is bottom right; the street on the left is Friedhofsallee

The Oflag XC was a German officers' camp for allied officers captured during the Second World War in Lübeck .

location and size

The camp was located on the site of the artillery barracks under construction from 1938 on the corner of Friedhofsallee and Vorwerker Strasse , near the city limits at Fackenburger Landgraben. The barracks of the camp were originally erected in autumn 1938 in a four-week construction period as a temporary solution for the 2nd Battalion of Artillery Regiment No. 66. At the beginning of the war in September 1939, the regiment received orders to march east, and construction work on the barracks ceased. Only the staff building and part of the team houses were ready for occupancy. Except for the prisoners of war (in the barracks) and the guards (in the barracks buildings), nobody else was housed there during the war. The camp was the third officer camp in military district X and was therefore given the designation Oflag XC. The Oflag XA was in Itzehoe , Oflag XB in Nienburg / Weser . Because of its proximity to Bad Schwartau , it is sometimes described in the literature as being in Bad Schwartau. It was intended for an occupancy of 700 officers. Most recently, in April 1945, it was occupied by 1,368 prisoners.

history

Oflag XC was established in June 1940 in the existing barracks and part of the barracks, first for French officers, who during the campaign in the west in German prisoner of war had fallen. In June 1941, British and Commonwealth officers were added, captured during the Battle of Crete and the Africa campaign . In 1941 and 1942, the camp was also used to accommodate shot down Allied aircraft crews who were later relocated to Oflag VI-B in Dössel . From 1942 Oflag XC a so-called "special camps" were transferred to those officers who in other camps as resisters or querulous striking had become or because they had made attempts to escape. There was a high number of academics: "Between 1942 and 1944 there were no fewer than 133 prisoners by profession professors and teachers, as well as around 50 doctors, 48 ​​priests and pastors."

In 1944, the so-called ball decree was implemented in the camp. The secret order instructed the camp management to hand over escaped officers to the security service (SD) after they were captured , to transfer them to the Mauthausen concentration camp and to have them shot there “as part of the Aktion Kugel”. In this way, Lieutenant Raymond Willemet (* 1913) died on April 29, 1944, who escaped on February 27, 1944 and was captured in Bad Schwartau. Between February and May 1944 , 11 officers disappeared after attempting to break out, and two more who broke out on April 27, 1944 were executed under unclear circumstances. The urns with the ashes of Capitaine Albert Lussus (35) and Lieutenant Michel Girot (25 years old) were given to the French camp elder on June 23, 1944 as a deterrent. The incident led to a protest by General Louis Bérard in front of the Armistice Commission and was introduced in January 1946 in the Nuremberg trial of the major war criminals as evidence of the illegal treatment of prisoners of war.

At the beginning of 1945, Polish officers from Oflag II D Groß Born and Officers Camp II C Woldenberg were sent on a march west until they reached Oflag XC.

British officers flying home, May 11, 1945

The camp was liberated by British 2nd Army troops at around 5 p.m. on May 2nd . The remaining British prisoners were repatriated on May 11, 1945 with RAF Lancaster bombers from Lübeck-Blankensee Airport (Operation Exodus).

After the end of the war, the barracks of the camp continued to be used as part of the DP camp artillery barracks . The barracks later served until 1993 under the name Trave-Kaserne for various units of the 6th Panzer Grenadier Division such as the Pionierbataillon 61 and the Panzerpionier Firmen 170 and 180. For this purpose, the barracks were demolished and technical buildings built over the area. Today the Lübeck municipal transport depot is located on the site of the Oflag XC . There is no clue or memorial stone.

Known prisoners

literature

  • Yves Congar : Leur résistance: mémorial des officiers évadés anciens de Colditz et de Lubeck, morts pour la France, témoignages d'Yves Congar. Paris: A. Renault, 7, rue de Rambouillet; (Avesnes-sur-Helpe: Impr. De "l'Observateur") 1948
  • Jean-Marie d'Hoop: Lubeck, Oflag XC. In: Revue d'histoire de la deuxième guerre mondiale 10 (1960), pp. 15-29
  • Antony Sternberg: Vie de Château et Oflags de discipline. Souvenirs de captivité (Colditz, Lübeck). Paris 1948
  • Gerhard Hoch : Lübeck. Officers camp XC. In: Gerhard Hoch, Rolf Schwarz (ed.): Deported to slave labor. Prisoners of war and forced laborers in Schleswig-Holstein. Alveslohe 1985, pp. 59-68
  • Ben Waters: Six years in the RNVR . In: BBC WW2 People's War . 2012. Retrieved April 29, 2012.
  • Charles Rollings: Wire and Worse: RAF Prisoners of War in Laufen, Bibarach, Lubeck and Warburg 1940-42. 2004 ISBN 0-7110-3050-2
  • Peter Schöttler : The French historian Fernand Braudel as a prisoner of war in Lübeck. In: ZVLGA 95 (2015), pp. 275–288

Web links

Commons : Oflag XC  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Georg Fink : Lübeck and his military. From the beginning until 1939 . Edited by Otto Wiehmann and Antjekathrin Graßmann . Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 2000, ISBN 3-7950-3115-X , ( Small booklets on city history 16), p. 100
  2. ^ Jean-Marie d'Hoop: Lubeck, Oflag XC. In: Revue d'histoire de la deuxième guerre mondiale 10 (1960), pp. 15–29, here p. 15
  3. ^ W. Wynne Mason: The Crete Campaign — Prisoners in Greece and Germany . In: Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–45 . 1954. Retrieved April 29, 2012.
  4. ↑ Søren C. Flensted: Whitley V Z6498 ditched in Grønsund off Stubbekøbing on 12 / 9-1941. . In: Airwar over Denmark . 2012. Retrieved April 29, 2012.
  5. ↑ Peter Schöttler : The French historian Fernand Braudel as a prisoner of war in Lübeck. In: ZVLGA 95 (2015), pp. 275–288, here p. 276
  6. ↑ Peter Schöttler : The French historian Fernand Braudel as a prisoner of war in Lübeck. In: ZVLGA 95 (2015), pp. 275–288, here p. 279
  7. ^ Raymond Willemet 1913-1944 , Mauthausen Memorial, accessed on May 17, 2020
  8. ↑ Jean-Marie d'Hoop: (Lit.), p. 26
  9. ↑ See both the obituary by Yves Congar
  10. ↑ Both urns were buried in the Vorwerk cemetery ; Lussus in field XXI 2 F 20 and Girot directly next to it in field XXI 2 F 21 (according to the funeral book), accessed via ancestry.com on May 16, 2020; Both were exhumed on May 19, 1949 and transferred to France (grave book of the Vorwerker cemetery for grave sites XXI-2-F-20 and 21 (AHL, 3.9-3 Kirchhofs- und burialdeputation 315), information from the archive of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck from 20 May 2020)
  11. ^ Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 6: FORTY-SEVENTH DAY Thursday, January 31, 1946 ; The Nuremberg Trial: Main hearings: Forty-seventh day. Thursday January 31, 1946
  12. ^ British occupy Hamburg & link with Russians . In: The Age . May 3, 1945. Retrieved April 29, 2012.
  13. ^ Trave barracks , accessed on May 16, 2020
  14. ↑ Peter Schöttler : The French historian Fernand Braudel as a prisoner of war in Lübeck. In: ZVLGA 95 (2015), pp. 275–288; Anne-Marie Pathé, Fabien Théofilakis (eds.): Wartime Captivity in the 20th Century: Archives, Stories, Memories. (= Contemporary European History 19) Berghahn Books 2016, ISBN 9781785332593 , pp. 106-108
  15. ^ Peter J. Bernardi: A Passion for Unity . America Magazine. Retrieved January 21, 2013.
  16. ↑ Peter Schöttler : The French historian Fernand Braudel as a prisoner of war in Lübeck. In: ZVLGA 95 (2015), pp. 275–288, here p. 280


Coordinates: 53 ° 53 ′ 58.9 "  N , 10 ° 40 ′ 36.8"  E