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

The Wehrmacht created Dulag 125 on March 16, 1941. In July 1941, the camp was located in the village of Lososno (map 4c). From August 1941 to mid-1942, it was in Polotsk (9b); from July to December 1942, it was in Millerovo (9d); and, in the first half of 1943, it was in the village of Sinezërki (9c). It carried field post number (Feldpostnummer) 25 079, which was assigned between February 15 and July 30, 1942, and struck on September 22, 1944. While it was in Polotsk, the camp was subordinate to the 201st Security Division (Sicherungsdivision). While it was in Millerovo, it was under the 403rd Security Division.

The staff of Dulag 125 consisted of 25 officers and non-commissioned officers and around 40 enlisted men. The camp commandant in 1943 was Oberstleutnant (later Oberst) Hensel, and his deputy was Oberleutnant von Saher; the names of previous and subsequent commandants are unknown. The counterintelligence (Abwehr) officer was Hauptmann Neiss.¹ The camp doctors were Dr. Reinert, Dr. Gaedke, and Dr. Klopsch. The camp’s other officers included Major Hans Blank, Hauptmann Starke, and Oberleutnant Feldheim.²

In Polotsk, the camp was located on the grounds of the former Eisenbahn-Regiment 5 (today: Titov Street). It consisted of several dilapidated barracks no longer suitable for habitation, which were located on either side of a gully and surrounded by barbed wire. The conditions in the camp were similar to those in other camps for Soviet prisoners of war (POWs). Overcrowding, inadequate food, absence of proper medical care, and abuse from the guards led to widespread malnutrition and disease, resulting in a high mortality rate. During the period from September 1941 to April 1942, as many as 12,000 prisoners (of a population of 15,000) died in the camp. In April 1942, nine railroad cars with prisoners supposedly were sent to Frankfurt am Main.³

In Millerovo, the camp was located on the southern outskirts of the town, in a natural hollow, on the Glubokaia River. The camp was in the open, and around 40,000–50,000 people occupied it at one point. The camp population turned over continually; as new prisoners arrived, those already in the camp were sent west by rail. The camp was so overcrowded that the prisoners drank nearly all the water in the Glubokaia River and ate all the vegetation in the region, including the large blackthorn shrubs and their roots. Once every six or seven days, the camp inmates were given mess tins of burnt wheat, each tin to be shared by three prisoners. Prisoners who were malnourished or too exhausted to work were shot. For example, according to a statement on December 29, 1945, by former Generalleutnant Kurt von Oesterreich, who in 1942 was Commander of Prisoners of War with the Commander of the Army Group B Rear Area (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen beim Befehlshaber Heeresgebiet B), “During a visit in summer 1942 to Dulag 125 in Millerovo, the camp commandant, in reply to my question about how he treated the Russian POWs who were not fit for work, reported that over the course of the past eight days they had shot around 400 Russian POWs for the above-mentioned reasons.”⁴

A Russian auxiliary police force was formed in the camp to maintain order, and it was notable for special cruelty toward the other prisoners. Shoes and boots of good quality were taken away from the prisoners by the police. If a prisoner resisted, he was dragged off to the “police station” and dealt with there: two policemen undressed him and tied him to a plank, and each policeman gave him 10 lashes. They beat him almost to the point of death and then took his shoes. The prisoners would deliberately damage their footwear (make holes, tears, and cuts on the outside), but if the police noticed that this had been done, they beat the prisoner. The policemen in the camps meted out punishments for the slightest offenses, such as getting too close to the barbed wire, failing to salute a policeman, cutting in line when the balanda (watery soup) was being distributed, or wasting time getting into formation for roll call. Former prisoner S. Fisher recalled:

At Millerovo, no fewer than 50 people were punished in a day. The guilty man had to strip naked [End Page 78] and lie down on a bench. When the man on duty gave the order, 10 or 15 whiplashes were administered. If the person resisted, they added on 10 more. But if he “snapped and cursed,” then 4 policemen beat him and he got 40 lashes. After such corporal punishment, the person no longer moved; he was carried to one side and doused with water. For the police, this was entertainment. A senior policeman had 3 whips. Each one had its own name. The first was the “magic whip,” up to 50 blows could be given with it, and it “magically” cured, so reasoned the senior policeman. The second was the “officer’s whip,” and with it one could strike the face for no reason, just for amusement. The third was the “royal whip,” a special whip. It consisted of multiple metal switches, and at the tip of each was intertwined a little tin ball. If you were slashed with it once, you wouldn’t ask for a repeat …⁵

Female prisoners were also held in the camp. The commandant of the women’s barracks was a Volga German woman. The conditions in the women’s camp were also dreadful: S. Fisher recalled that “the police often dropped in there. Every day, in return for half a liter, the commandant would give a policeman any girl of his choosing for two hours. The policeman could take her to his room in the barracks. They lived two to a room. For these two hours he could use her like an object, commit outrages, humiliate her, do everything he could think of.”⁶ Women who resisted faced torture at the hands of the commandant.

The Germans disbanded the camp on September 15, 1944.