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

The Wehrmacht established Stalag 346 on April 30, 1941, in Defense District (Wehrkreis) VI.¹ From October 1941 to February 20, 1943, the camp was located in Kremenchug (map 9f), in Ukraine, and then in Starokonstantinov (9e). The camp was disbanded on August 12, 1943.² Stalag 346 received field post number (Feldpostnummer) 22 797 between February 16 and July 18, 1941. The number was struck between July 31, 1942, and February 9, 1943.

At first the camp was subordinate to the Commander of Prisoners of War with the Commander of the Army Group South Rear Area (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen beim Befehlshaber des Heeresgebiet Süd). From June 1942, the camp was subordinate to the Commander of Prisoners of War with the Armed Forces Commander Ukraine (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen beim Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Ukraine). Starting in March 1943, the camp was again under the Commander of the Army Group South Rear Area, and from mid-1943, when the camp was redeployed to Starokonstantinov, it was subordinate once again to the Commander of Prisoners of War of the Armed Forces Commander Ukraine.

The first camp commandant was Major Hucklenbroich (until January 24, 1942), who was succeeded by Major Pohlenk. The deputy commandant was Major Rudloff, the camp adjutant was Hauptmann Hamacher, and the camp officer (Lageroffizier) was Hauptmann Seidel. The head of the camp administrative section was Oberzahlmeister Rudolf Prinzenberg, the head of labor deployment was Hauptmann Wätzmann, and the counterintelligence (Abwehr) officers were Hauptmann Günster (until February 9, 1942) and Oberleutnant Ernst Stage. Until the spring of 1942, the camp doctor was Unterarzt Dr. Orland, and his assistant was Hilfsarzt Dr. Hermann Schülke; Orland was succeeded by Oberarzt Dr. Lohr and Stabsarzt Dr. Redlin. In 1941 and early 1942, the camp was guarded by the 4th Company of the 560th Reserve Battalion (Landesschützenbataillon). The company commander was Hauptmann Steffal, and his deputy was Oberleutnant Halm. In late 1942 and 1943, the camp was guarded by the 2nd Company of the 842nd Reserve Battalion. A unit of Russian volunteers (Hilfswillige) assisted the German guards.

Stalag 346 held Soviet prisoners of war (POWs). The camp population as of December 20, 1941, was 22,776 prisoners;³ at the end of January 1942, it was 15,761; at the end of February 1942, it was 14,012; at the end of March, it was 13,943; and at the end of April, it was 11,581.⁴ On June 1, 1942, there were 7,000 prisoners in the camp; on August 1, 8,820; on September 1, 21,852; on October 1, 21,709; on November 1, 7,915; on December 1, there were 5,845. On January 1, 1943, there were 7,120; and on February 1, there were 8,067.⁵ Beginning on May 15, 1942, the camp also was used as an assembly camp for Muslim prisoners who had volunteered for or been conscripted into the “Eastern Legions.”⁶

The camp began operation in October 1941, when about 20,000 prisoners from an overcrowded transit camp in Khorol’ (Dulag 160) were sent to Kremenchug. On the way, the guards shot prisoners who were unable to walk due to exhaustion.⁷ The prisoners lived in the former barracks of the Soviet 12th Battalion (Lager A) and in a mirror factory (Lager B); the prisoners at the latter location were involved in the construction of a wooden bridge over the Dnieper River.⁸

Because the barracks could not hold all the prisoners, many prisoners were forced to sleep outside. To accommodate the prisoners, the internal area of the camp was divided into 10 blocks, each of which was enclosed by barbed wire. The barracks were not heated, even in winter. Newly arrived prisoners were given no food for several days, and the food rations they eventually received were inadequate. In October and November 1941, the prisoners’ rations consisted of a thin soup called balanda, made of flour and grain husks. Each prisoner received half a liter (one pint) of balanda, which caused constipation and upset stomach. Starting in December 1941, the balanda was made from burnt rye, resulting in a black, oil-like substance. Later, the prisoners’ balanda ration was “supplemented” with 150–200 grams (5.3–7 ounces) per day of ersatz bread.⁹

The malnutrition induced by these inadequate rations, along with severe overcrowding and lack of medical care, led to a high mortality rate in the camp. For example, according to the report of the Army Group South Rear Area commander dated December 21, 1941, 50 prisoners were dying in the camp each day, mainly of typhus.¹⁰ According to a similar report dated January 31, 1942, 110 prisoners were dying in the camp each day, mainly of typhus, at a time when the camp population was 15,761 men.¹¹ In February 1942, 1,367 prisoners died, and in March, there were 862 deaths.¹² In total, from [End Page 346] December 1941 to the end of April 1942, around 8,000 prisoners died in Stalag 346.

Prisoners were also subject to severe mistreatment at the hands of camp personnel. For example, one prisoner recalled the camp doctor, Dr. Orland, severely abusing a prisoner; the doctor “beat him, twisted his arms, put out his eye with a pen, broke his tibia, then ordered [a guard] to shoot him.”¹³ The conditions in the forced labor units were also harsh. Prisoner V. G. Khoridze, who worked on the wooden bridge with the other men from Camp B, reported that of the 1,500 men working there, 700 died within a period of two months. Some of them were beaten to death by the Germans at the work site.¹⁴

As in other camps, newly arrived prisoners were screened to separate out Jews and Communists, who then were shot near the camp by a Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst) detachment or by the camp guards.¹⁵ According to the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK), more than 37,000 prisoners died in Stalag 346 in Kremenchug. Near Lager A, 11 mass graves, which contained the bodies of about 30,000 prisoners, were found after the town was liberated. Four additional mass graves were found near Lager B, in which about 2,000 prisoners were buried. About 5,000 additional POWs were buried in the area of Peschanaia Hill, on the northeastern edge of town.¹⁶ However, it should be noted that casualty figures from the ChGK are often significantly inflated and should be viewed accordingly. Little information is available about Stalag 346 during its brief deployment in Starokonstantinov, although it can be safely assumed that conditions were similar to those in the camp in Kre-menchug.