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

The Wehrmacht established Stalag 358 from Frontstalag 358 on October 25, 1942. From September 15, 1941, until November 26, 1943, the camp was located near Zhitomir, in Ukraine (map 9e), where it replaced Dulag 201. The camp had one sub-camp (Zweiglager), Stalag 358/Z, which was located in Berdichev until April 1943, when it was taken over by Stalag 339 from Kiev-Darnitsa. The Prisoner of War Camp Hospital (Kriegsgefangenen-Lazarett) Bohunia (disbanded in October 1943) was also subordinated to the camp. By order of the Armed Forces High Command (OKW) on October 19, 1943, the staff of Stalag 358 was transferred to Tost (today Toszek, Poland), where it took over Ilag VIII H, which was converted into Oflag 6.¹

During its time in the USSR, Stalag 358 was subordinate to the Commander of Prisoners of War with the Armed Forces Commander Ukraine (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen beim Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Ukraine). Stalag 358 received field post number (Feldpostnummer) 23 656 between February 16 and July 18, 1941. The number was struck between July 31, 1942, and February 9, 1943.

The camp commandants were Majors Hagedorn, Pawliska, and Max Schroeter (from the fall of 1942 to November 25, 1943). Their deputies were Hauptmann Schmidt and Hauptmann Zander. The administrative section was headed by Oberzahlmeister Hans Messerschmitt and Oberzahlmeister Bernhard Kamps. The camp was guarded by the 2nd Company of the 351st Reserve Battalion (Landesschützenbataillon).²

Stalag 358 held Soviet prisoners of war (POWs). The camp population peaked at 21,533 in October 1942, before falling to just over 3,000 shortly before the camp in Zhitomir was closed.³ The camp was located near the village of Boguniia (today the Bohuns’kyi District). The conditions in the camp were similar to those in other camps for Soviet POWs. Malnutrition, disease, and abuse led to a high mortality rate. The prisoners’ daily food ration consisted of about 4 grams (0.14 ounces) of fat and 250 grams (almost 9 ounces) of bread, largely made of substitutes; no one received sugar. However, even these meager rations were rarely given in full, as the German noncommissioned officers in the camp stole from the rations to send packages home to Germany.⁴ The prisoners received little medical care and lived in crowded, unsanitary conditions, which facilitated the spread of infectious disease. In July 1942, an epidemic of typhus spread through the camp, killing hundreds of prisoners.⁵

New arrivals were screened to separate out Jews and Communists, which a Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, SD) detachment then shot in a forest near the camp. Friedrich Buck, who served as a driver at the camp for several months starting in the fall of 1941, stated that during his service in the camp, he, together with five or six other drivers, on 8 to 10 occasions took Jewish prisoners to be shot in a nearby forest. In total, he said, 1,200–1,400 prisoners were taken away.⁶

It is not possible to determine with accuracy the total number of prisoners who lost their lives in Stalag 358. According to Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) materials, more than 65,000 prisoners died of starvation and disease in the camp in Zhitomir and were buried in 28 graves. In addition, 2,150 more prisoners were shot and buried in two ditches.⁷ The ChGK stated that an additional 7,590 prisoners died in the branch camp in Berdichev.⁸ However, casualty figures from the ChGK are often significantly inflated and should be viewed accordingly.

At the end of October 1942, the camp handed over a number of prisoners who were not fit for work to the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei, Sipo), expecting that the Sipo would shoot them. However, SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Franz Razesberger, at that time the commander of the Sipo and SD in [End Page 361] Zhitomir, was unwilling to carry out this “dirty” job for the Wehrmacht. On his orders, a small number of prisoners who were marginally fit for work were selected from among the prisoners handed over at Zhitomir, while the remaining 78 were moved to an educational and labor camp run by the Sipo in Berdichev.⁹

The prisoners sent to Berdichev had all been severely wounded in battle. Some were missing both legs, others both hands or arms, and others just one limb. A few had all their limbs but had other injuries and could not work. During an inspection of the educational and labor camp on December 23, 1942, SS-Hauptsturmführer Friedrich Kallbach, Dr. Razesberger’s successor, ordered the 68 or 70 prisoners who were still alive to be shot immediately. On December 24, members of the SD office in Berdichev (Paal, Vollprecht, Hesselbach, and Schäfer) first shot 18 prisoners, almost all of whom had no legs. During the shooting of a second group of 28 prisoners, many of whom lacked one or even both hands or arms, these prisoners attacked the two SS men (Paal and Vollprecht) who were guarding them (the other two SS men at this time were carrying out the execution in a pit), managed to take away their weapons, fired the weapons at these SS men, and ran away. Searches for the escaped prisoners were quickly initiated but were unsuccessful. The 20 remaining prisoners were shot the following day.¹⁰

Stalag 358 was formally disbanded on November 26, 1943. In 1969, the central prosecutor’s office in Dortmund began a preliminary investigation into the matter of former personnel at the camp headquarters (also among them was the last camp commandant, Schroeter) and former members of the guard company. The investigation was closed on November 13, 1973, due to lack of evidence. The case of the former driver at the camp, Friedrich Buck, was transferred to the prosecutor’s office in Osnabrück. Although Buck admitted that he repeatedly drove prisoners to an execution site, the prosecutor’s office nonetheless declined to prosecute him.