Stalag XVIII A
The Stalag XVIII A (from 1939 to 1941 initially Oflag XVIII B ) was a prisoner of war camp of the German Wehrmacht in military district XVIII (Salzburg) south of Wolfsberg (Carinthia) during World War II . Up to 8,000 prisoners of war were interned in the main camp in Wolfsberg; Together with sub-camps in Carinthia , Styria and Salzburg there were up to 40,000 prisoners.
In 1939, Polish officers were initially interned ( attack on Poland ), from May / June 1940 Belgian and French soldiers ( Western campaign ), in the further course of the war British, Australian, New Zealanders (e.g. captured in the Balkan campaign ), Russians, Serbs, US -Americans and Italians. After the Warsaw Uprising was suppressed (summer 1944), Polish resistance fighters were imprisoned in the camp.
Most of the prisoners had to work in agriculture as farmhands or harvest workers; In addition, there were work commands in road construction and in industrial companies, in mining or, for example, during the construction of the two Drau power stations Schwabegg and Lavamünd. After the end of the war, the prisoners were able to return to their home countries; some settled in the Lavanttal region.
The British occupying power used the infrastructure of the camp to set up "Camp 373", in which up to 7,000 leading NSDAP officials in Styria and Carinthia were imprisoned. The prisoners were interrogated on suspicion of war crimes or high-ranking members of the Wehrmacht, SS and Gestapo and were later transferred to the courts of their country.
The so-called "Russenfriedhof" in the St. Johann district and the "Lagerstraße" in the village remind us of the former camp Stalag XVIII A. The last barrack in the camp was demolished in 1999.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ List of prisoner-of-war camps , Moosburg-online, v. 20th November 2013
- ↑ a b c d e f Flyer for the exhibition “Lagerstadt Wolfsberg” (PDF file; 970 kB), accessed on October 18, 2013