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

The Wehrmacht formed Dulag 230 in September 1941 from Frontstalag 230. It deployed to Viaz’ma (map 9c) and then, in April 1942, to Orsha (9b). In Orsha, it was not initially used as a prisoner of war (POW) camp but instead as a site for equipping and managing sites for quartering military units.¹ Later, it deployed to Vitebsk (9b) and Rzhev (9c), and at one time it had a subcamp in Iartsevo (Iartsevskii raion, Smolenskaia oblast’) and in the village of Prechistoe (Dukhovshchinskii raion, Smolenskaia oblast’).² On September 20, 1944, the camp was reorganized as AGSSt 44.³ Dulag 230 received field post number (Feldpostnummer) 20 054 between February 15 and July 30, 1942. The number was struck on September 22, 1944.

The camp was subordinate to the 3rd Panzer Army and Prisoner of War District Commandant J (Kriegsgefangenen-Bezirks-Kommandant J), the 286th Security Division (Sicherungsdivision), and, in 1944, to the Commander of Prisoners of War in Operations Area III (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen im Operationsgebiet III).

Dulag 230 held Soviet POWs. The conditions in the camp were similar to those in other camps for Soviet POWs. Overcrowding, malnutrition, unsanitary conditions, and lack of proper medical care, led to widespread starvation and disease, which produced a high mortality rate. For example, while the camp was deployed in Viaz’ma in mid-January 1942, it held 5,000 prisoners, of whom 60–100 died each day. There were no stocks of winter supplies, the camp received no food supplies, and 4,200 prisoners were classified as unfit to work.⁴ In the camp’s three infirmaries, according to the lists of deceased prisoners, 2,153 prisoners died in January 1942, 643 died in February, and 949 died in March.⁵ As in other such camps, the Germans screened the prisoners to separate out Jews and political commissars, who were executed near the camp by the guards or the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, SD).

In late 1943 and in early 1944, the camp was located in Vitebsk and was used as both a prisoner of war camp and a transit camp for members of the civilian population who were suspected of giving aid to the partisans. After interrogation by the SD, the civilians held in the camp were deported to the Majdanek or Auschwitz concentration camps.⁶ [End Page 113]

In early 1944, all residents of Vitebsk who were unfit for work were placed in the camp. In total, there were approximately 12,000 prisoners, including people who had typhus and other infectious diseases. By order of General Friedrich Gollwitzer, the commander of the LIII Army Corps, and Oberst Schmidt, the corps chief of staff, the surviving prisoners in the camp were used as human shields during the Soviet offensive of that spring; for this purpose, they were placed in another camp closer to the front line, near the Krynka railroad station (Liozno raën, Vitsebskaia voblasts’). About 4,000 people perished in this camp; the remaining prisoners were liberated by the attacking Soviet troops. A witness questioned in this case, I. Solov’ev, testified that “in April 1944, I and my family, consisting of my wife and four children, came down with typhus. From the Letsy station they took us all to Vitebsk and put us in the same hospital, where we received no treatment at all. In early June, we and other typhus patients were sent to the Vitebsk station, where we were loaded into a train and taken to the front line.” Witness A. Zhuravskii testified that “in March 1944, the Germans established a death camp in Vitebsk. In early June 1944, I was one of 12,000 people who were taken to the front line, to the Aleksandrovskii forest, where the Germans killed 4,000 people, while the rest were herded to the front line, as a ‘human shield,’ and consequently found themselves on the side of the Soviet troops.”⁷