OFFIZIERLAGER (OFLAG) X D
The Wehrmacht established Oflag X D (map 4a) in April 1940, in Defense District (Wehrkreis) X. The camp was deployed in Hamburg-Fischbek.1 British troops liberated the camp on May 3, 1945. The camp was subordinate to the Commander of Prisoners of War in Defense District X (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen im Wehrkreis X).
Oflag X D held Allied officers. On June 22, 1943, Belgian officers were transferred into the camp from Oflag II A, and, on October 1, 1944, the camp held 1,594 Belgian officers.2 The German administrators and guards treated the officers [End Page 266] humanely, and the conditions in the camp were generally satisfactory and in compliance with the main provisions of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War (1929).3
In 1944, members of the Masonic organization Grand Orient of Belgium (Grand Orient de Belgique) established a Masonic lodge, L’Obstinée (“persevering, determined”).4 The orator of this lodge was Jean Rey, who after the war became president of the European Commission, the highest executive body of the European Union, from 1967 to 1970.
SOURCES
Primary source material about Oflag X D is located in BA-MA (RW 6: 450–453) and WASt Berlin (Stammtafel Oflag X D).
Additional information about Oflag X D can be found in the following publications: Georges Hautecler, Evasions réussies (Liège: Soledi, 1966); G. Mattiello and W. Vogt, Deutsche Kriegsgefangenen- und Internierten-Einrichtungen 1939–1945. Handbuch und Katalog: Lagergeschichte und Lagerzensurstempel, vol. 2 (Koblenz: self-published, 1987); and Raymond Troye, Meurtre dans un Oflag (Brussels: Atalante, 1947).
