The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

The Wehrmacht formed AGSSt 17 in Defense District (Wehrkreis) XI on March 24, 1941, from the staff of Frontstalag 196.¹ AGSSt 17 received field post number (Feldpostnummer) 40 285 between February 28 and July 29, 1941. Beginning in April 1941, the unit was under the jurisdiction of the Eighteenth Army Rear Area Commander (Kommandant rückwärtiges Armeegebiet, Korück, 583). Following the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, AGSSt 17 was moved from East Prussia to Lithuania. In the late summer of 1941, AGSSt 17 was stationed in Krasnoe Selo and then in Vyritsa (both in map 9a), among other places.² In early 1942, the unit was reinforced with members of the 10th Reserve Battalion (Landesschützenbataillon). Throughout the rest of 1942, AGSSt 17 was moved to several locations, including Volkhov and Finëv Lug (map 9a). Finally, the unit absorbed a prisoner of war (POW) volunteers camp (Hilfswilligenlager), including three companies of Russians, in Vyritsa. The commandant was Hauptmann Ernst Lauckert for most of the camp’s existence, until late 1944.³

AGSSt 17 featured the same overcrowding and catastrophic sanitary conditions that prevailed in most such camps for Soviet POWs, especially during its operation in Krasnoe Selo and Vyritsa. Prisoners endured malnutrition, exhaustion, and abuse and, in the absence of proper medical care, suffered extremely high sickness and mortality rates. As in other camps, the Germans conducted selections of Jews and Communists among the prisoners. A Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, SD) detachment or guards then shot those selected, near the camp.⁴ In 1944, AGSSt 17 was pulled back through the Baltics and disbanded in the village of Stablack (today, Stabławki, Poland) (4c).⁵