Stalag II-D Stargard was a
World War II German Army Prisoner-of-war camp located near
Stargard, today Stargard Szczecinski
, in western Pomerania, 30
km east of Szczecin
.
Timeline
- The
camp was established on military training ground in September 1939
to detain Polish
prisoners
from the German September
1939 offensive. For the first several months they lived
in the open or in tents during a very cold winter, while they built
the wooden and brick huts for the permanent camp.
- in May
and June 1940 French
and Belgian
soldiers
taken prisoner during the Battle of
France arrived.
- These
were followed by Soviet
prisoners
from Operation Barbarossa in
the summer of 1941.
- In September and October 1943 Italian prisoners arrived after
the Italian capitulation
- Canadian prisoners from the unfortunate Dieppe Raid of August 1942 were transferred to
Stargard from Stalag VIII-B in January
1944.
- The camp was liberated by the Red Army
mid April 1945
Evacuation and Repatriation
On
25 February 1945
most of the prisoners were forced to march westward in advance of
the Soviet offensive and endured great hardships before they were
freed by Allied troops in April 1945 .
Living conditions
The lower ranks prisoners at this camp fared much better than those
in many other camps further south. They worked predominately on
farms and had the possibility to obtain better nourishment.
Escape
It was relatively easy to escape from a farm, but much more
difficult to evade recapture. Prisoners working on farms did not
have the essential assistance that was provided in Oflags by teams
of dedicated specialists who forged documents and prepared maps.
Without these it was extremely difficult to traverse hundreds of
miles past frequent checks by the Nazi police.
Gabriel Regnier, a French prisoner, describes his failed attempt
23 March 1942 with a
French companion. A Polish civilian worker at the farm had helped
them by hiding civilian clothes for them. It was a dark night and
they successfully reached a freight train that was switching cars
at the station that was close to the farm. They successfully hid in
one box-car full of boxes.
But then the train stopped in Stettin for
unloading, they switched to another car loaded with sacks of barley
with destination Aachen
in western
Germany, which they reached four days later. There again
they got out to search for a car going to the Netherlands.
Unfortunately the driver of a vehicle noticed two persons moving
hesitantly along the train and alerted the military police.
Recaptured they were returned to Stargard and spent 24 days in
solitary confinement. It could have ended much worse.
Sources
See also
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