Stalag XI D
The prisoner-of-war team main camp Stalag XI D (321) in Oerbke near Bad 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 B (357) Fallingbostel, which were also located in today's Lower Saxony and XI A Dörnitz - Altengrabow which was in today's Saxony-Anhalt. They acted as intermediate stations for the prisoners of war used for forced labor in northwest Germany . Here they were registered after their arrival and subjected to a delousing and examination procedure. A branch of the employment office located in the Stalag then grouped the prisoners of war, mostly separated by nationality, into work detachments with an average strength of 30 to 40 men and rented them out to companies and communities as required.
Emergence
In May / June 1941 the Wehrmacht set up the main camp XI D Oerbke just a few hundred meters east of the already existing Fallingbosteler Stalag XI B. The Stalag was initially intended exclusively for the accommodation of prisoners of war of the Red Army . The plans envisaged a capacity of up to 30,000 inmates.
Time from 1941 to 1945
The Stalag XI D was built on an undeveloped open area of the Bergen military training area after the establishment of security systems by French and Serbian prisoners of war. The first Red Army soldiers arrived in July 1941. They had to stay in the open air because there were still no buildings to house the prisoners. According to eyewitnesses, they dug holes in the ground with their hands. It was not until November 1941 that the inmates were allowed to build makeshift shelters from simple caves in the ground and crates made from scraps of wood. Later on, barracks were built, mostly by the prisoners themselves. In Stalag XI D Oerbke, the mortality rate among inmates was particularly high due to poor accommodation and care. In the autumn of 1941, as in the other Stalags occupied by Soviet prisoners of war, a typhus epidemic raged, during which up to 90% of the prisoners died. Around 12,000 people died by the spring of 1942 alone. In 1941, a cemetery was built north of the site for the dead Soviet prisoners of war. The cemetery is a collective grave for up to 30,000 dead who perished in the camp until 1945 and can be visited. Today it is called "The Cemetery of the Nameless" in Oerbke.
From the spring of 1942 a new phase began for Soviet prisoners, they were assigned to work. In addition, the supply situation was improved slightly, which meant that the mass extinction also ended. However, it did not mean that the prisoners were now adequately fed; they were only given what was necessary to maintain their workforce. This resulted in a gradual decimation of the number of prisoners. The prisoners now died of exhaustion from the work assignments. From August 12, 1942, the camp became part of Stalag XI B. In 1944, the Stalag 357 was set up on the site. From November 9, 1944 to the beginning of April 1945, between 7,538 and approximately 12,000 Australian, English, Canadian, South African and US Air Force members were held here. On April 13, 1945, British units arrived in Oerbke as liberators.
Time after 1945
The British armed forces initially used the Stalag with the 63 wooden and 23 stone barracks that had been built after the war as an internment camp for National Socialists . In the early 1950s, displaced people were housed in the camp for a short period of around three years. The complex was named Ostsiedlung Oerbke. As a result, the British Army reclaimed the Bergen Training Area in its original size for military training operations. All the barracks and buildings of the eastern settlement were demolished. The only exception is the former delousing facility, which is used as a warehouse by the Bundeswehr site administration in Bergen, Oerbke site management. The rest of the area is now an open grassy area.
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 .
- ↑ Oerbke war cemetery "Cemetery of the Nameless" . memorialmuseums.org. Retrieved December 10, 2019.