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

The Wehrmacht established Stalag 362 from the staff of Oflag X A on April 17, 1942. In July 1941, the camp deployed to Slutsk, Belarus (map 9b), about 98 kilometers (61 miles) south of Minsk.¹ The camp was subordinate to the Armed Forces Commander Ostland (Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Ostland). Stalag 362 received field post number (Feldpostnummer) 05 956 between January 27 and July 14, 1942; the number was struck between July 15, 1942, and June 24, 1943.

The commandant of Stalag 362 was Oberst Otto Witt (1871–1952) and his deputy was Major Ernst Herrschel (b. 1874). The adjutants were Hauptmann Otto Machledt (b. 1890) and Hauptmann Friedrich Vogelsang (1895–1961). The counterintelligence (Abwehr) officer was Hauptmann Ramm. The camp doctor was Dr. Wilhelm-Heiner Brandt (1900–1970). The camp was guarded by personnel from the 551st, 624th, 861st, and 959th Reserve Battalions (Landesschützenbataillone).² They were assisted by Russian and Ukrainian POW volunteers (Hilfswillige, Hiwis), who served as guards in the camp in exchange for improved food rations and living conditions.

Stalag 362 held Soviet prisoners of war (POWs). The camp consisted of a number of wooden barracks surrounded by barbed wire. The conditions were similar to those in other camps for Soviet POWs. The camp was severely overcrowded, the prisoners did not receive adequate food rations, and little medical care was provided, as the camp’s medical personnel were given almost no supplies. The prisoners were also expected to perform hard manual labor in the camp’s work detachments (Arbeitskommandos), despite the fact that they were already suffering from malnutrition and exhaustion. As a result, the death rate from starvation and disease was very high. One witness estimated that between 6 and 10 prisoners were dying every day in the fall and winter of 1941. The Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) estimated that in total, about 14,000 prisoners perished in Slutsk.³ New arrivals in the camp were screened by counterintelligence personnel to separate out “undesirables,” such as Jews and political commissars, that the guards or Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst) personnel then shot near the camp.⁴

Witness testimony indicates that, when Stalag 362 was initially deployed to Slutsk, there were about 12,000 prisoners in the camp and that the camp population soon thereafter swelled to nearly 25,000. However, this number was substantially reduced during the winter as thousands of prisoners died from starvation and disease.⁵ Thus, by the spring of 1942, the population of the camp was significantly smaller [End Page 365] than it had been during the previous fall. In 1942, the number of POWs in the camp ranged from a little over 2,800 to just over 3,900.⁶ Stalag 362 was disbanded by an order dated October 27, 1942.⁷