Stalag 318/VIII F (344) Lamsdorf
Stalag 318/VIII F (344) Lamsdorf
It functioned between July 1941 and March 1945, having been set up in the place where POWs – soldiers of the Entente were interned during World War (Lager V, Lager VIa), and in the years 1921–1924, it was a camp designed for German immigrants coming from the territory incorporated into Poland, that is Upper Silesia, Greater Poland and Pomerania.
World War 2 was the most tragic period in the history of the place: the camp, which was organized here, accommodated the most numerous group of POWs – the Soviets, who suffered the harshest treatment from the Germans. To many of them the place became one of their extermination. Of about 200 thousand Soviet POWs who stayed in the camp during World War 2, about 40 thousand died in Lamsdorf.
The area to be developed for the needs of the camp was prepared in Spring 1941, yet construction works had not started. Soldiers of the Red Army who were being brought here starting from July that year were kept under the open sky. It was not until the fall that bunkhouses were begun to be erected. However, since it had not been possible to finish the construction works before the onset of winter, the POWs were forced to take shelter from cold in makeshift pits they dug in the ground themselves. The basic part of the construction works in the camp was completed the following year, in 1942.
During the four years of its existence the camp underwent reorganizations several times. Until the Fall of 1941 it had functioned as Stalag 318, next as Stalag VIII F Lamsdorf. In the middle of 1943, it was subordinated to the nearby Stalag VIII B Lamsdorf, which – in turn – at the end of 1943 was transformed into Stalag 344 Lamsdorf. Due to the presence in it of a large number of the Red Army POWs it was called “The Soviet Camp” (Russenlager). Still, there were also soldiers of other armies detained here: Italian, Yugoslavian, Greek and – in smaller numbers those of – the Polish, French and Romanian Armies. In 1944, there were Warsaw insurgents (about 6 thousand) and Slovakian ones (1.6 thousand) brought here, too. The group of the former included, among others, the following people: writers Roman Bratny, Stanisław Ryszard Dobrowolski and Józefa Radzymińska; historians Aleksander Gieysztor, Witold Kula and Stanisław Płoski, a ”Silent Unseen” and a photographer of the Warsaw Uprising – Stefan Bałuk, or Captain Witold Pilecki, well-known for his brave action of revealing the truth about the KL Auschwitz in the years of World War 2.
The living conditions in the Russenlager were far worse than those in the neighboring British camp. The POWs had to overcome hunger, cold, diseases; they were accommodated in overcrowded bunkhouses, were forced to do backbreaking work and bear exceptionally bad treatment on the part of the camp authorities. It was their cultural-educational and religious activities which aided them in their survival. However, in the case of the Soviet POWs such activities were possible but to a very limited extent.
Similarly as in the case of the so-called Britenlager, also the POWs of the Soviet camp were evacuated from the camp in January 1945: they left the place on foot, the sick – mostly Soviet POWs – being left behind. Many of them died before detachments of the Red Army reached the place on 17 March.
Today, the material trace left after Stalag VIII F Lamsdorf is the fenced area with the reconstructed sentry tower and remnants of the bunkhouses. It covers merely a small part of the real area of the camp. Thanks to the efforts of the veterans’ environment (soldiers of the Home Army), the stay of the Warsaw insurgents here was also commemorated in 1997 – a large granite obelisk crowned with a massive cross was placed here. It was designed by Adam Zbiegieni, an artist sculptor of Opole.