ARMEE-GEFANGENENSAMMELSTELLE (AGSSt) 42
The Wehrmacht formed AGSSt 42 on September 20, 1944. It was assigned field post number (Feldpostnummer) 30 439 on September 22.1 The camp was subordinate to the Fourth Army Rear Area Commander (Kommandant rückwärtiges Armeegebiet, Korück, 559). AGSSt 42 was deployed in various locations in East Prussia.
AGSSt 42 held Soviet prisoners of war (POWs). No documentation regarding camp conditions is available. In general, by this late point in the war, conditions had improved over those that were prevalent in 1941 and 1942, but Soviet POWs were still not given housing, food, clothing, or medical care of sufficient quality or quantity, and certainly not of the quality that Western Allied POWs received.
The date on which the Germans disbanded the camp is unknown; existing records indicate that it was still in operation at the end of 1944.
SOURCES
Primary source material about AGSSt 42 is located in BA-MA; WASt; and BArch B 162/28914: Ermittlungen gg. ehem. Angehörige der Armeegefangenensammelstelle 42 wg. des Verdachts der Beteiligung an NS-Verbrechen; files 28819–28820: Anforderung von Erkennungsmarkenverzeichnissen und Urlisten bei der Deutschen Dienststelle (WASt) zur Überprüfung von Armeegefangenensammelstellen.
Additional information about AGSSt 42 can be found in the following publication: Gianfranco Mattiello and Wolfgang Vogt, Deutsche Kriegsgefangenen- und Internierten-Einrichtungen 1939–1945. Handbuch und Katalog: Lagergeschichte und Lagerzensurstempel, vol. 2 (Koblenz: self-published, 1987), p. 34.
NOTES
1. BA-MA, RH 49/3: Armee-Kriegsgefangenensammel-stelle; Mattiello and Vogt, Deutsche Kriegsgefangenen- und Internierten-Einrichtungen, p. 34.
