Stalag XI B
The prisoner-of-war team main camp Stalag XI B (357) in Fallingbostel was one of four team main camps in the military district XI Hanover. The other Stalags were: XI C (311) in Bergen-Belsen and Stalag XI D (321) in Oerbke , which were also located in today's Lower Saxony and XI A Dörnitz - Altengrabow which was in today's Saxony-Anhalt . The Stalag XI B was the operations center for work details of prisoners of war of all nations in the Hanover / Braunschweig area. The maximum number of registered prisoners of war in September 1944 was given as 95,294 people, who were assigned to around 1,500 commandos for work in agriculture and industry.
Emergence
A barrack camp was built on the road from Fallingbostel to Oerbke from 1937 onwards for the workers who built the western camp of the Bergen military training area , today Oerbke NATO camp. The Stalag XI B was put into operation on September 23, 1939. It had 58 barracks on an area of 30 hectares.
Time from 1941 to 1945
According to an incomplete list of prisoner numbers, there were between 54,581 and 95,294 prisoners of war from Australia , Belgium , France , Great Britain , Italy , the Netherlands , Poland , Serbia , the Soviet Union , Czechoslovakia and from September 1, 1941 to December 1, 1944 registered in the USA . Of these, between 51,760 and 82,902 were posted to work during the same period. Only about 2,500 sick people, incapable of work and auxiliary workers stayed in the main camp. From July 1941, around 10,000 Red Army officers were quartered in the rear of the Stalag . The majority of the Soviet soldiers, however, were assigned to Stalag XI D Oerbke, which is only a few hundred meters to the east . As in all camps, the detainees fared depending on their nationality. While the inmates from Western countries got over the time relatively well, Eastern Europeans in particular received completely inadequate care. The cultural activities organized by the prisoners of war themselves, such as theater performances, sports festivals, further education and the operation of a library, could not hide the fact that hunger and illness were present. In the winter of 1941/42 there was a typhus epidemic in the Stalag Fallingbostel due to a lack of medical care and hygiene , during which thousands of prisoners died. By the end of 1941 alone, the number of deaths in the Stalag XI D camp was 9,000, the number of which had increased to 12,000 by the spring of 1942. As in the other Stalags occupied by Red Army soldiers, selections were carried out in autumn 1941. Party officials, leading figures, Jews and Asians were transferred to the SS . This killed all those transferred in the concentration camps Sachsenhausen (Oranienburg), ( Brandenburg ) and Neuengamme (Hamburg) by shooting or gassing.
From the spring of 1942 the situation of the Soviet prisoners changed and they were earmarked for work. In addition, the supply situation was improved so that at least sufficient physical strength should be available for work. However, the calculations continued to be so inadequate that many prisoners eventually died of exhaustion. From August 12, 1942, Stalag XI D, only a few hundred meters away, was incorporated into Stalag XI B.
British troops reached the POW camp on April 13, 1945 and freed the inmates. By 1945 it is estimated that up to 30,000 of the prisoners in the three camps near Fallingbostel had died from cold, malnutrition or illness, most of them from Russia.
Time after 1945
From the end of the war, the barracks of Stalag XI B were used as accommodation for refugees. After the barracks were demolished at the end of the 1940s, a housing estate was built on the western part. All traces have been built over in the area of the housing estate. In the part of the camp to the east of the building, some foundations of large barracks in the undergrowth have been preserved.
literature
- Hinrich Baumann The Heidmark - Change of Landscape - The History of the Bergen Walsrode military training area , Gronemann 2005, ISBN 978-3000171857 .
- Soviet prisoners of war 1941 - 1945. Suffering and dying in the Bergen-Belsen, Fallingbostel, Oerbke, Wietzendorf camps; Lower Saxony State Center for Political Education, 1991.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ City of Bad Fallingbostel - archival document of the month April 2017: Notarization of ... Accessed on October 27, 2019 .
- ↑ City of Bad Fallingbostel - archival document of the month April 2017: Notarization of ... Accessed on October 27, 2019 .