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

The Wehrmacht established Dulag 182 on April 2, 1941, from Frontstalag 182. The unit was deployed to the occupied Soviet Union following the German invasion on June 22, 1941. From the end of October 1941 to August 1942, the camp was located in Zaporozh’e (map 9f), with a subcamp in the town of Orekhov (today Orikhiv). In the fall of 1942, the camp was located in Yasinovataya (today: Yasynuvata) (9f). In early 1943, it was in Stalino (today Donets’k) (9f). The camp received field post number (Feldpostnummer) 01 265 between July 15, 1942, and January 24, 1943. The number was struck on November 11, 1944.

In the summer of 1941, the camp was subordinate to the 444th Security Division (Sicherungsdivision). During the deployment in Zaporozh’e, the camp was subordinate to the Commander of Prisoners of War of the Commander of the Army Group South Rear Area (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen beim Befehlshaber Heeresgebiet Süd).

Dulag 182 held Soviet prisoners of war (POWs). On December 20, 1941, the camp held 7,507 prisoners.¹ In late January 1942, there were 4,100, in late February, there were 4,143 prisoners, and in late March, there were 6,207. In late April 1942, 5,166 remained.² The conditions in the camp were similar to those in other camps for Soviet POWs. Overcrowding, inadequate food supplies, forced labor, and a lack of proper shelter or medical care all contributed to a high mortality rate. For example, according to the report of the Commander of the Army Group South Rear Area (Befehlshaber rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Süd) on December 21, 1941, an average of 18 people were dying each day of typhus; in total, there were about 540 deaths in December 1941 alone.³ According to the report of the Commander of the Army Group South Rear Area on January 31, 1942, 12 people were dying in the camp each day; the total was 360 for that month.⁴ In February 1942, 125 prisoners died in the camp, and in March, 157 died.⁵ Overall, from December 1941 to the end of April 1942, around 1,300 prisoners died in the camp; for the entire period of the camp’s deployment in Zaporozh’e from late October 1941 until August 1942, the death toll may have been as high as 5,000.

The Germans disbanded the camp on August 5, 1944. During the postwar–West German investigation of crimes committed at the camp in Yasinovataya (which later became Stalag 397), one witness stated that the former commandant of Dulag 182 committed suicide after he learned that he was being investigated for murder, although he did not provide the commandant’s name or the date of his supposed death.⁶