THIS ITEM WAS SENT FROM CAMP NUMBER: OFLAG II C TO LVIV (LWÓW, LEMBERG), GALIZIEN, POLAND
GERMAN CAMP LOCATED IN OR NEAR: Woldenberg (Dobiegniew, Poland)
MILITARY DISTRICT: II Stettin (Germany)
CENSOR / GEPRUFT NUMBER: 24 (RED CACHET)
Oflag II-C Woldenburg was a German World War II prisoner-of-war camp located about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) from the town of Woldenberg, Brandenburg (now Dobiegniew, western Poland). The camp housed Polish officers and orderlies and had an area of 25 hectares (62 acres) with 25 brick huts for prisoners and another six for kitchens, class-rooms, theater, and administration.
Work on the camp began in October 1939 when 500 Polish prisoners from the September campaign arrived to build the camp, and who lived initially in tents. In May 1940 as the building work progressed small groups of Polish officers were transferred in from other POW camps. In July 1941 a group of officer-cadets (podchorąży) were brought from Stalag II-A. They were divided among the 25 huts to work as orderlies, in addition to the lower ranks that were already doing this work. In April 1942 the last group of Polish officers arrived from Oflag X-C near Lübeck. The number of inmates reached its peak of 5,944 officers and 796 orderlies. In October 1944 a small number of higher-ranking officers arrived from the Warsaw Uprising. On 28 January 1945 the POWs were assembled and marched westward, but after two days they were liberated by the Soviet Red Army.
There were several escape attempts, but only two were successful. In early 1942 three officers managed to hide inside empty boxes in a truck that was unloading food supplies. They were successful. On Christmas Eve 1942 a number of officers arranged a fight outside one of the huts. While the guards were engaged in breaking up the fight, toward which the searchlights were all directed, three officers managed to cut through the barbed wire and escape from the camp. A larger scale attempt was unsuccessful. In 1943 a tunnel was being dug from a hut closest to the wires. About 150 officers were preparing to get out through it. Unfortunately, as the tunnel was within a few metres of its end it was discovered.
Cultural life in the camp was very extensive. A large number of classes were conducted by the 80 officers who were professors or teachers in civilian life. These classes included philosophy and law, as well as French and English. Mathematics was taught by the architect Professor Jerzy Hryniewiecki. A number of the prisoners were able to complete full university courses which were recognized after the war.
In the theater a number of plays were presented by two professional directors - Kazimierz Rudzki and Jan Kocher. Some new plays were written, including a three-act drama called Mały ("The Little One") written by Andrzej Nowicki. There was also a symphony orchestra under the direction of Józef Klonowski.
In 1942 a secret radio receiver was built and the news distributed throughout the camp in newsletters.
In the summer of 1944 the prisoners were granted permission to stage an unofficial POW Olympics from July 23 to August 13. An Olympic Flag was made with a bed sheet, and pieces of colored scarves was raised.
An
OFLAG (from the German:
Offizierslager) was a type of Prisoner of War (POW) camp for officers which the German Army established in World War II (WW2) in accordance with the requirements of the Geneva Convention of 1929.
STALAGs (from the German:
Stamm
lager, itself short for
Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschafts-Stammlager) were intended to be used for non-commissioned personnel (enlisted ranks) in the US Army and other ranks in British Commonwealth forces. Thus Officers were held in separate camps called Oflag. During World War II, the Luftwaffe (German air force) operated
Stalag Luft in which flying personnel, both officers and non-commissioned officers, were held. The
Kriegsmarine (German navy) operated
Marlag for Navy personnel and
Milag for Merchant Navy personnel.
Civilians who were officially attached to military units, such as war correspondents, were provided the same treatment as military personnel by the Conventions.
The Third Geneva Convention, Section III, Article 49, permits non-commissioned personnel of lower ranks to be used for work in agriculture and industry, but not in any industry producing war material. Further articles of Section III detail conditions under which they should work, be housed and paid. During World War II these latter provisions were consistently breached, in particular for Russian, Polish, and Yugoslav prisoners. According to Nazi ideology, Slavic people were regarded as
rassisch minderwertig ("racially inferior").
Prisoners of various nationalities were generally separated from each other by barbed-wire fences subdividing each Stalag into sections. Frequently prisoners speaking the same language, for example British Commonwealth soldiers, were permitted to intermingle.
At each Stalag the German Army set up sub-camps called
Arbeitskommando to hold prisoners in the vicinity of specific work locations, whether factories, coal-mines, quarries, farms or railroad maintenance. These sub-camps sometimes held more than 1,000 prisoners, separated by nationality. The sub-camps were administered by the parent Stalag, which maintained personnel records and collected mail and International Red Cross parcels and then delivered them to the individual
Arbeitskommando. Any individuals who were injured in work, or became ill, were returned to the
Lazarett (medical care facilities) at the parent Stalag.
Although officers were not required to work, at some Oflags when the POWs asked to be able to work for more food, they were told the Geneva Convention forbid them from working. In some Oflags a limited number of non-commissioned soldiers working as orderlies were allowed to carry out the work needed to care for the officers.
The German Army camp commanders applied the Geneva Convention requirements to suit themselves. An example was as to the amount of food/meat to be provided to each POW. In Oflag XIII-B when a dead horse was brought into the camp, its total weight (including head, bones, etc.) was used in computing the amount each POW was to receive, which resulted in each POW receiving only a few ounces of meat per week. Red Cross parcels were seldom distributed.
There were other notable exceptions to how the Geneva Convention was applied, for example the execution of recaptured prisoners, specifically from Stalag Luft 3 and Oflag IX-C. However, the inhumane treatment of Soviet prisoners, soldiers as well as officers, did not comply with these provisions, according to Joseph Goebbels "because the Soviet Union had not signed the Convention and did not follow its provisions at all".
In March 1944 SS General Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the head of the SS-Reichssicherheitshauptampt, enacted the
Kugel Erlass ("Bullet Decree"), or Aktion K known aAktion Kugel. It declared that prisoners who had tried to escape and were recaptured, prisoners who could not work, and prisoners who refused to work would be executed. It also stated that all officer POWs (except the Americans and British) were to be eliminated. They were supposed to be shot but instead were usually overworked, denied needed medical care, and/or starved to death. American and British POWs were originally exempt from it (except in special cases - like air force bomber crews and commandos). The “Great Escape” at Stalag Luft III later that month caused the Germans to remove this protection from British POWs.
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