Monday, 08.09.2003

Introduction to the project, the prisoner of war camp 304 and the memorial site near Zeithain. 

  To read more about the founding of the camp, go to the website of the Memorial Ehrenhain Zeithain 

"Zeithain Russian Camp": Stalag 304 (IV H), 1941-1942

The first Soviet prisoners of war arrived in July, 1941. After registration, medical examinations and de-lousing, the prisoners were at first left to fend for themselves in the open. The camp consisted of little more than a double fence of barbed wire. No huts or tents were provided. The prisoners dug burrows for shelter against the elements. The construction of huts, latrines, kitchens, and wells for the prisoners began only once there were enough prisoners present to do the work.
 

Due to the lack of water, the severely undernourished prisoners were reduced to drinking from puddles of rain water. Under these conditions the prisoners, already weakened by deprivation during combat and the long journey, were further ravaged by rapidly spreading nutritional edema, scurvy, and chronic diarrhea. The lack of latrines, water for washing, and de-lousing resulted in abysmal hygienic conditions.
 

To read more about the treatment of Russians in the camp, go to the website of the Memorial Ehrenhain Zeithain

Zeithain POW Reserve Hospital, 1943-1945

The longer the war went on, the more important the Soviet prisoners of war became as a source of labor for the German war economy. Over the course of the year 1942, the need to maintain the labor force required by the German economy took priority over the objective of annihilating the Soviet prisoners. The steps taken to improve their nutrition and living conditions were insufficient, however, and under their exhausting forced labor the prisoners continued to weaken. They became especially susceptible to tubercular diseases, which spread at an epidemic rate.

The number of Soviet POWs with tuberculosis in Zeithain increased continuously. The patients were transferred to Zeithain from the work gangs and from other hospitals in Military District IV. Since the hospital hardly represented an improvement in their living conditions, and adequate medical treatment was not available, the patients had little hope of recovery. According to different sources, between 10 and 20 prisoners died each day. For the Soviet prisoners, the Zeithain hospital remained a death camp right up to the end of the war.

To read more about the Reserve Hospital, go to the website of the Memorial Ehrenhain Zeithain

Poles and other prisoners

After the uprising was ended on October 2, 1944, and with the assurance that they would be treated as prisoners of war in accordance with international laws of warfare, some 1400 members of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa, A.K.) arrived in Zeithain in two rail transports. They were wounded and sick soldiers, together with medical and other staff from various Warsaw hospitals.

A part of the camp with 25 huts was vacated in order to house them. Here the prisoners established the "Zeithain Polish Army Hospital". The nurses and other staff went to work with great dedication, and achieved a standard of hygiene that had never been seen before in Zeithain. Over 400 women and girls made up the majority of the industrious nursing and support staff. The high number of female prisoners of war was an unusual situation, and led among other things to the creation of a gynecological ward, where a number of post-natal patients were subsequently cared for. Their babies were prisoners of war from birth.

The Polish prisoners were treated in accordance with international law until the liberation of the camp. Unlike the Italian and the Soviet prisoners, they received regular supplies from the International Red Cross, which also conducted several inspections in the Polish army hospital. Prisoners were able to send mail home, and officers and non-commissioned officers were prohibited from working.

The same was true of the over one thousand British POWs who were interned in Zeithain for three months in the winter of 1943-44 and again in 1944-45. They had been transferred, not for health reasons, but due to overcrowding in Stalag IV B Mühlberg. It is not certain how many non-Soviet POWs were present in the Zeithain POW reserve hospital before the first Italian and British prisoners arrived in October, 1943.

To read more about the Poles and other POWs, go to the website of the Memorial Ehrenhain Zeithain

Remembrance, 1945-1985


The end of the Second World War did not bring an end to the suffering of the Soviet prisoners of war. In Stalin's eyes they had violated Order No. 270 of August 16, 1941: prisoners of war were considered the same as "traitorous deserters", regardless of whether they had resisted or collaborated with the enemy. After their liberation, they were interrogated in "filtration camps", and many of them were sentenced to long terms in the Gulag. Those who survived were only released after Stalin's death. For the rest of their lives, the former prisoners were subjected to discrimination in their occupations and in their daily lives. They were only fully rehabilitated in Russia in 1995, by an edict issued by President Boris Yeltsin in connection with the 50th anniversary of the end of the war.

On August 1, 1946, the head of the Soviet Military Administration in Saxony, General Mikhail Katukov, issued Order 233, "Investigation of the Atrocities Committed Against Soviet Prisoners of War in Stalag 304, Zeithain". The investigating commission, headed by the Soviet Major-General Khorun, consisted of Soviet officers, GDR People's Police officers and German coroners. The mass graves in the four Zeithain cemeteries were examined and some of the gravesites laid open. Former Nazi party members were forced to do this work.

The primary objective of the investigation was to determine the causes of death, since it was suspected that mass shootings had taken place. This suspicion was not confirmed, however: the investigation established beyond a doubt that the high death toll had been caused by hunger and disease.

The commission found some 35,000 dead Soviet prisoners of war in the opened graves.

To read more about the official remembrance, go to the website of the Memorial Ehrenhain Zeithain

In January, 1997, the memorial association "Gedenkstätte Ehrenhain Zeithain e.V." was founded with the purpose of building and maintaining the memorial, and conserving the ruins of the former POW camp as an open-air museum. With funding from the Saxon Memorial Foundation, the memorial association took responsibility for the administration of the memorial through 2001. As of January 1, 2002, the memorial has been placed under the direct administration of the Saxon Memorial Foundation as its fifth memorial site.

To read more about the history of the memorial site, go to the website of the Memorial Ehrenhain Zeithain