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

The Wehrmacht issued the order to form AGSSt 20 on March 7, 1941. Before June, the unit was assigned to the Rear Area Commander of the Second Armored Group (redesignated Second Armored Army from October 5, 1941, onward) (Kommandant rückwärtiges Armeegebiet, Korück, 532). AGSSt 20 deployed to different sites in Belorussia and Russia, including the cities of Borisov (German: Borissow; today Barysaw, Belarus) (map 9b), Roslavl’ (9c), and, from 1942 to 1943, Orël (9c).¹ The unit received field post number (Feldpostnummer) 42 355 between February 28 and July 29, 1941; the number was struck on February 17, 1944.

During deployment in Orël, AGSSt 20 was located in the city jail, on Krasnoarmeiskaia Street. The camp held both prisoners of war (POWs) and civilians. We know about the conditions of confinement from the Extraordinary State Commission’s Report on the Crimes of German-Fascist Invaders in Orël and the Orlovskaia oblast’.² The report notes in particular that

the nourishment of the prisoners of war did not even ensure a hungry existence. Per day, the prisoners were given 200 grams [7 ounces] of bread with an [End Page 51] admixture of sawdust and a liter of soup made with decayed soy and rotten flour. Major Hoffman, the camp boss, beat the prisoners of war and forced those exhausted by hunger to carry out heavy physical labor in the stone quarry and in the unloading of machines. The prisoners’ boots were taken away, and they were given wooden shoes. In wintertime, the shoes were very slippery to walk in, and, as they climbed to the second and third floors especially, the prisoners fell on the stairs and suffered serious injuries.

Doctor Kh. I. Tsvetkov, who was in the POW camp, gave the following statement:

From my own stay in the Orlovskii camp, I can characterize the attitude of the German command toward the prisoners of war as a deliberate destruction of living strength. Food containing a maximum of 700 calories, coupled with exhausting heavy labor, resulted in complete depletion of the body (cachexia) and led to death, occurrences of starvation edemas, and irreversible intestinal disorders. Despite our categorical protests and struggle against this massive murder of the Soviet people, the German camp doctors Kuper and Bekel’ maintained that the nourishment was quite satisfactory. Moreover, they denied that hunger was the origin of the prisoners’ edemas, and, with complete coolness, they classified [the edemas] as being due to cardiac or kidney phenomena. In their diagnosis, it was forbidden to note “hunger edema.” There was massive mortality in the camp. From the total number of the dead, 3,000 prisoners died as a result of starvation and complications caused by malnutrition. The prisoners of war lived in horrid conditions which defied description: complete lack of fuel, water, tremendous lousiness, unbelievable crowding in the prison cells—an indoor area of 15–20 square meters [about 160 to 215 square feet] housed between 50 and 80 people. There were 5–6 prisoners dead in the cell, and the living slept on the dead.

The assistant to Hauptmann Matern, the camp boss, placed some of the POWs and activists from the civilian population into the first building. They were housed together regardless of their sex or age. The prisoners called it the “Death Block.” Academician N. N. Burdenko, a member of the ChGK, determined that POWs were deliberately killed in the “infirmary.” Burdenko reported that

“Pictures, which I had to see, surpass any imagination. The joy at the sight of the liberated people was darkened by the fact that their faces were in stupor…. Obviously, the suffering of their past experience put them in a state between life and death. I observed these people for three days, bandaging them, evacuating—the psychological stupor did not change. In the first days, something similar also lay in the faces of the doctors. The patients died in the camp from disease, from hunger, from beatings, they died in the ‘infirmary’—prison from infected wounds, from sepsis, from hunger. Civilians died from shootings carried out in the prison courtyard with German punctuality, on schedule—on Tuesdays and Fridays, with groups of 5–6 people. The Germans also took the condemned out to a distant place, where there was a trench the Russian troops had made before leaving the city, and shot them there. Those shot in the city were taken away and thrown into the trench, primarily in a wooded area. Executions in the jail were carried out as follows: men stood facing the wall and a gendarme shot them in the occipital region with a pistol. With this shot, the vital centers were damaged, and death occurred instantaneously. In most cases, women lay face down on the ground, and the gendarme shot them in the occipital region. The second method: a group of people were driven to a trench and, turning to face one side, they were shot with automatic weapons. The weapons were also aimed at the occipital region. Children’s corpses were discovered in the trenches. According to witness testimony, these children were buried alive.” According to witnesses and eyewitnesses, “no less than 5,000 prisoners of war and peaceful Soviet citizens were buried in the cemetery near the city prison during the German occupation of Orël.”

The books of registered dead prisoners contain the names of 1,828 prisoners who died between December 3, 1941, and July 19, 1943. The date of death is known for 1,747 prisoners, while it is unknown for 81 others. Of the prisoners for whom the date of death is recorded, 254 died in December 1941, 1,365 in 1942, and 128 in 1943.³ In addition to the prisoners who died from hunger and disease, a number of prisoners were shot as “undesirables” (Jews and Communists).

The Germans disbanded the camp on December 23, 1943.