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

The Wehrmacht established Stalag 328 (map 5) from Frontstalag 328 on August 3, 1941, in Defense District (Wehrkreis) VI. Until January 1943, the camp was deployed in Lwów (German: Lemberg; today L’viv, Ukraine). In January 1943, it was relocated to Drohobycz (today Drohobych, Ukraine), where it remained until it returned to Lwów in November 1943, with a subcamp established in Tarnopol (today Ternopil’, Ukraine). On February 1, 1944, Stalag 328 was converted into Oflag 76.¹ The camp was subordinate to the Commander of Prisoners of War with the Armed Forces Commander in the Generalgouvernement of Poland (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen beim Wehrmachtbefehlshaber im Generalgouvernement Polen). In 1942, the camp in Lwów was guarded by Reserve Battalion (Landesschützenbataillon) 620. The camp in Drohobycz was guarded by the 1st and 3rd Companies of Reserve Battalion 405. Stalag 328 received field post number (Feldpostnummer) 21 917 between February 16 and July 18, 1941.

In Lwów, the camp was located in the Citadel (Zitadelle), constructed between 1852 and 1856. The Citadel consisted of two large bastions, two small fortifications, and a central fortification. The forts were located at the corners of a rectangle, and the central fortification was in the middle. The entire complex was surrounded by a moat. In the interwar period, Polish military units were quartered in the Citadel. After the camp was chosen as the site of the Stalag, the Germans reinforced the camp’s defenses by encircling it in addition with a system of small concrete pillboxes built on the slopes of the hill.

The camp itself consisted of the fortifications of the Citadel along with 3 three-story barracks and 14 other buildings. Four rows of barbed wire surrounded the camp. Inside the camp, there were many 100–200 square meter (1,076–2,153 square foot) cells, in which prisoners slept under the open sky;² these were primarily used for the Soviet prisoners, while the later-arriving French and Italian prisoners were quartered in the barracks. Even in the barracks, however, the rooms were not heated, so those prisoners were also exposed to freezing conditions during the winter months.

Stalag 328 primarily held Soviet prisoners of war (POWs). In addition to the Soviet POWs, in the fall of 1942, the Germans placed 778 French and 6 Belgian prisoners from Stalag 325 at Rawa Ruska in Stalag 328 as punishment for various infractions. From October 1943 onward, the camp also held Italian military internees, some of whom the Germans murdered in late October and early November of that year.³ The maximum number of prisoners in the camp was 5,088 (2,647 Soviet and 2,441 Italian) in January 1944.⁴

The conditions at the camp were incredibly harsh, especially for Soviet POWs. According to their postwar testimony, the Germans created living conditions and a supply situation they knew would kill the inmates.⁵ The prisoners’ rations were insufficient. At breakfast, they received two cups of ersatz coffee, which was actually brewed with sawdust, along with 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of bread, also largely composed of sawdust. Lunch consisted of a thin soup made from food scraps. In the evening, the prisoners received another portion of soup that was essentially nothing more than hot water. In “exceptional circumstances,” they would receive an additional 50 grams (1.8 ounces) of poor-quality bread.⁶ The men were left so hungry that some resorted to hunting in piles of garbage for something to eat; the guards frequently beat or shot those who did so. Starvation was such a widespread problem that the guards had to make an addition to the camp rules to curtail cannibalism: “It is forbidden to cut pieces from or tear apart the bodies of prisoners.”⁷ Many dying prisoners wrote inscriptions on the camp walls to inform the future liberators of the camp of their suffering. Such messages (as reported by liberating soldiers) included “whoever from the Red Army comes here can tell his brothers in arms that the Russians were excruciatingly starved” and “Glorious Russian Army, not only the people but the prisoners here who are condemned to starve await you. It is so hard to die.”⁸

Despite the starvation rations and poor housing conditions, the men were expected to perform “hard physical labor” from morning to night.⁹ The German guards and Ukrainian volunteers (Hiwis) exacerbated the prisoners’ suffering by treating them with unrelenting brutality. Those who could not work anymore due to exhaustion were beaten with rifle butts and rubber truncheons. According to Soviet survivors, the Germans deliberately induced epidemics of typhus and dysentery among the prisoners by sending those who were infected with these diseases to be quartered among the healthy men. Soviet prisoner Karel Vasilievich Peet, who was interned at Stalag 328, testified that killings of prisoners were commonplace. On one occasion, Peet watched a Hiwi, Andrei Iakushevich, beat a Soviet officer to death with a truncheon. Peet reported that many men were also shot within the camp or bound hand and foot and taken in trucks to a nearby forest to be shot.¹⁰ Those who were found to be part of the special forces, members of the Communist Party, or Jews (if they were not taken away by the Gestapo to be shot) were sent to the starvation cells in Block 8, where they were left for 17 days without food or water; anyone who survived this treatment was taken to the cemetery and shot, and the bodies burned. During the deployment in Lwów, there were regular screenings to separate out “undesirables,” such as Jews and political commissars, who were then shot by the camp guards.¹¹

Disease was also rampant in the camp, both because of the horrible conditions and because of the actions of the camp personnel. Nikovor Grigorevich Goliuk, who was imprisoned [End Page 324] at Stalag 328 from July 1941 to April 1942, reported that between August and November 1941, 3,000 prisoners died from dysentery; the Germans made no effort to stop the spread of the disease.¹² In late 1942, 385 sick men from Rawa Ruska were brought to Stalag 328; their internment among the other prisoners resulted in an outbreak of typhus that killed 5,000 prisoners. The bodies of those who died in the camp were burned on open pyres. Former prisoner Mikhail Iakovlevich Sheptshinskii recalled at least eight such burnings during the winter of 1942 alone. He described the stench of burning flesh as being so strong that one could not breathe.¹³

According to the postliberation Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) investigation, 284,000 prisoners passed through Stalag 328 in Lwów, of whom over 140,000 died, primarily from malnutrition and disease.¹⁴ In Drohobycz, an additional 10,800 prisoners are reported to have died.¹⁵ However, casualty figures from the ChGK are often significantly exaggerated and should be viewed accordingly.