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

The Wehrmacht established Stalag 237 (map 5) from Stalag XVII B/Z (formerly Stalag XVII D) on November 5, 1941, in the Generalgouvernement.¹ The camp was located in Petrikau (today Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland). The camp was subordinate to the Commander of Prisoners of War with the Armed Forces Commander for the Generalgouvernement of Poland (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen beim Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Generalgouvernement Polen). Stalag 237 was assigned field post number (Feldpostnummer) 41 235 between July 30, 1941, and March 11, 1942; the number was struck between March 12 and September 7, 1943.

The commandant of Stalag 237 was Major (later Oberstleutnant) Adolf Rengert, later the commandant of Stalag 371 in Stanislau (Stanisławów, today Ivano-Frankivs’k, Ukraine). His deputy was Hauptmann Karl Flügel and his adjutants were Hauptmann Wilhelm Hoch and Hauptmann Karl Strolz. The camp officers (Lageroffiziere) were Hauptmann Alexander Beschorner and Hauptmann Paul Fournier. Hauptmann (later Major) Richard Grabner served as the counterintelligence (Abwehr) officer in the camp.² The camp doctors were Dr. Hans Schüpferling and Drs. Scharmacher and Schneider. The camp was guarded by personnel from the 1st and 3rd Companies of the 354th Reserve Battalion (Landesschützenbataillon).

Stalag 237 held Soviet prisoners of war (POWs). The camp was divided into two sections: Lager A, which held both Russian and Ukrainian prisoners, and Lager B, the “Quarantine Camp,” which held only Russians. On May 1, 1942, the camp contained 783 prisoners; on June 1, 1942, there were 3,628; and on August 1, 1942, there were 2,013.³ As was the case in other camps for Soviet POWs, living conditions in the camp were poor. The prisoners suffered as a result of overcrowding, malnutrition, lack of proper medical care, and abuse by the German guards, leading to a high mortality rate in the camp. Many prisoners who died of starvation or disease were buried in graves near the camp. Prisoners deemed fit for factory labor were transferred to the Reich to work.⁴ Other prisoners were forced to work in the vicinity of the camp; the camp’s labor detachments (Arbeitskommandos) were under the supervision of Hauptmann Karl Auer.⁵

Camp personnel directed by Hauptmann Grabner screened the new arrivals at the camp to identify “undesirable” prisoners, such as Jews and political commissars, who were then shot near the camp by a 10-man Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, SD) “task force” (Einsatzkommando) led by SS-Obersturmbannführer Hermann Altmann. In some cases, these prisoners were required to dig their own graves before they were shot. Some of the prisoners in the camp were given the opportunity to volunteer as auxiliaries (Hilfswillige, Hiwis), who were trained to be concentration camp guards at a school established for that purpose in Petrikau. These prisoners lived in Lager A. They were taken to the school every morning and returned to the camp in the evening. While this job was undesirable, it offered an opportunity to escape the terrible conditions in the camp and the high probability of death.

On September 2, 1942, the Germans ordered the camp to be renamed Stalag 397, and transferred it to Iasinovataia (today Iasynuvata, Ukraine), while the camp in Petrikau became a subcamp of Stalag 367 in Tschenstochau (today Częstochowa, Poland) and was redesignated Stalag 367/Z.⁶ Hermann Altmann was captured by the Soviets at the end of the war and held in various prisons in Poland until 1955, when he was sentenced to death for his participation in the execution of Soviet POWs. However, his sentence was commuted, and, in 1959, he was released from prison and allowed to return to Germany.⁷