THIS ITEM WAS SENT FROM CAMP NUMBER: OFLAG X A TO LWOW / LVIV IN GENERAL GOVERNMENT RUSSLAND (PREVIOUSLY POLAND AND NOW UKRAINE)
GERMAN CAMP LOCATED IN OR NEAR: Itzehoe
MILITARY DISTRICT: X Hamburg, (Germany)
CENSOR / GEPRUFT NUMBER: 11 (VIOLET CACHET)
Oflag X-A was used as a resettlement camp for Poles and an internment camp for Soviet, French, and British POWs.
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.
