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

The Wehrmacht established Stalag III A on September 28, 1939, in Luckenwalde (map 4b), about 50 kilometers (32 miles) south of Berlin, in Defense District (Wehrkreis) III. On April 30, 1941, part of the staff of Stalag III A was used to create the headquarters of Stalag 333. On December 31, 1941, Oflag III A (also located in Luckenwalde) was dissolved and converted into a subcamp (Zweiglager) of Stalag III A. Additional sub-camps were located in Brandenburg, Pritzwalk, and Wustrau.¹ The camp was subordinate to the Commander of Prisoners of War in Defense District III (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen im Wehrkreis III).

Stalag III A comprised several compounds. All were enclosed within a larger outer camp (Aussenlager), which held administrative buildings and the canteen. Prisoners rarely entered the outer camp and, even then, only with special permission. The prisoners lived in about 40 stone barracks in the inner camp (Innenlager), which was further subdivided into several smaller sections. Additional German barracks, offices, and storage facilities were located in the forecamp (Vorlager). The main camp (Hauptlager) was the largest compound, which was divided into sections by nationality. Additional compounds for prisoners of war (POWs) included the East, West, Middle, and South Camps (Ostlager, Westlager, Mittellager, and Südlager).² The kitchen, infirmary, and quarantine barracks were located in the northern part of the camp. Most of the prisoners were concentrated in the southwestern part of the camp compound, but Soviet prisoners were confined to the northwestern part of the camp.³

The first commandant of Stalag III A was Oberst Bruno von Westernhagen. In October 1941, he was replaced by Oberst Carl Sturm. Sturm was succeeded by Oberst Georg Treiter in January 1943. In August 1944, Treiter was replaced by Oberst Julius Wolff. The final commandant was Oberst Alfred Lutter, who took over from Wolff in November 1944.⁴ The adjutant was Hauptmann Erich Haack and the counterintelligence (Abwehr) officers were Hauptmann Erwin Heuser and Hauptmann Dr. Werner Kieljahn.⁵ The first camp doctor (Lagerarzt) was Dr. Karl-Wilhelm Clauberg, who was succeeded in 1940 by Dr. Friedrich Heuer.⁶ The camp infirmary was led by Oberarzt Dr. Popovic, who was assisted by 12 British and 8 Serbian doctors.⁷ The camp was guarded by personnel from Reserve Battalions (Landesschützenbataillone) 303, 305, 307, 316, 326, 333, and 334.⁸ They were assisted by auxiliary police (Hilfspolizei) personnel, recruited from local civilians (who guarded Polish, Serbian, and Western Allied prisoners) and regular Wehrmacht personnel (who guarded the Soviet prisoners).⁹ In total, there were about 130 permanent staff and 1,000 guards employed at the camp.¹⁰

Stalag III A held American, Belgian, British, French, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, and Soviet POWs as well as Italian military prisoners. It was a large camp—the largest in Wehrkreis III and one of the largest in the entire Reich, with a constant population of more than 38,000 prisoners and maximum population of 53,617 prisoners in September 1944. Although the number of prisoners registered in Stalag III A was large, the majority of the prisoners did not live within the main camp and were instead deployed outside the camp in the numerous work details (Arbeitskommandos) that were subordinate to the camp.¹¹ Most of the Polish prisoners in the camp were employed in the agricultural and forestry sectors in the relatively rural areas surrounding the camp, while many prisoners of other nationalities were employed in various industrial concerns in Luckenwalde.¹² Their deployment outside the camp often brought them into contact with German civilians, with whom relations were mixed; French prisoners recalled that some civilians resented them and expressed a hatred for the French, while other prisoners were able to get along well with the civilian population.¹³

Special labor units (Sonderarbeitskommandos) were created for prisoners who had committed violations within the camp or who had attempted to escape. A select unit of guards worked with these units to maintain order within the camp.¹⁴ Serbian officers were for some time put to work in labor details—in contravention of the provision of the Geneva Convention that excepts officers from forced labor—until early 1945 when they were extended privileges under the convention.¹⁵

The first prisoners brought to Stalag III A were Polish prisoners captured during the invasion of Poland in September 1939. When they arrived, the permanent barracks had not been built yet and the prisoners slept in tents. By December [End Page 402] 1939, there were 19,337 Poles in the camp. The Poles were gradually transferred out to other camps or reclassified as civilian laborers. The first French and British soldiers arrived in the camp in the spring of 1940. The French became and would remain the largest prisoner group in the camp; as of September 10, 1940, there were 41,682 French prisoners, 77 British prisoners, and 1,284 Polish prisoners. Small numbers of Belgian prisoners were also intermittently present in the camp. In April 1941, Serbian prisoners who had been captured during the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia were brought to the camp; there were 4,451 Serbian prisoners in the camp by May 1941. The first Soviet prisoners were brought to the camp in November 1941. After the Italian capitulation, Italian military prisoners were brought to the camp in September 1943.¹⁶ A small number of Romanian prisoners were brought to the camp in November 1944. In January 1945, a group of about 1,500 Americans was transferred to Stalag III A from other camps in the Reich.¹⁷

Click for larger view
View full resolution

Stalag III A at Luckenwalde. Prisoners on kitchen duty, October 1940.

COURTESY OF ICRC.

The prisoners in Stalag III A experienced conditions that varied by nationality. The Polish prisoners who arrived early in the war did not have adequate housing due to the lack of permanent buildings, and their food rations were usually insufficient. The Germans tended to treat Western Allied prisoners well, and their living conditions generally conformed to the requirements of the Geneva Convention. As of August 1940, food rations for the French prisoners consisted of coffee and bread with either marmalade or a piece of sausage at breakfast, lunch at their work site (provided by their employer), and soup and a piece of bread at dinner.¹⁸ The prisoners worked from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with an hour-long break for lunch.¹⁹ There were approximately 4,000 French colonial prisoners from various parts of Africa in the camp.

Health problems such as tuberculosis were common among these prisoners, who were not accustomed to the colder climate of northern Germany, and most of them were sent back to France in the fall of 1940. However, during their time in the camp, they were used as subjects for Max Kimmich’s propaganda film Germanin, which documented German doctors’ efforts to create a treatment for African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness).²⁰

The Polish, Western Allied, and Serbian prisoners in the camp had access to some cultural and recreational activities. Religious services for Catholic, Protestant, and Serbian Orthodox prisoners were provided by clergy within the camp. There was a small camp library and the prisoners organized educational courses on various subjects. A small theater troupe and orchestra were created, although their ability to perform together was limited by the distribution of most of the prisoners to work details.²¹ Prisoners also had access to a large sports ground, which was jointly shared: French prisoners had access four days a week, Serbians three days, Italians three days, and British four days.²² There was a French-language camp newspaper entitled La Double Gamelle (The double mess tin).²³ The American prisoners managed to hide two radios in their barracks, which they used to access Allied news sources, such as the BBC; this practice was officially forbidden and highly risky.²⁴

Unlike the Western Allied prisoners, the Soviet prisoners were treated terribly. Their quarters were overcrowded and they received minimal food and medical care. The poor living conditions and lack of proper hygiene and sanitary facilities led to an outbreak of typhus in November in which large numbers of Soviet prisoners died and that resulted in their section of the camp being quarantined.²⁵ As in other camps for Soviet prisoners, the counterintelligence personnel in the camp performed selections (Aussonderungen) to separate out “undesirable” prisoners, such as Jews and political commissars, who were taken out of the camp by the Gestapo, SS, or Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst) and executed.²⁶ Approximately 5,000 prisoners are known to have died in Stalag III A. More than 4,000 of the dead were Soviets, the majority of whom died in the fall of 1941 and the winter of 1941–1942 and whom the Germans buried in mass graves near the camp.²⁷

In addition to the mistreatment of Soviet prisoners, Nazi racial ideology manifested itself in the treatment of Jewish prisoners in Stalag III A. In late October 1944, camp offi-cials discovered 12 Jews among French prisoners that had recently been transferred to the camp from Stalag I A in Stablack. They were immediately transferred to Stalag II E in Schwerin, which had been officially designated as the primary site of confinement for French Jewish prisoners.²⁸ American Jews who arrived in the camp from Stalag XII A in Limburg in January 1945 were segregated from the other prisoners in a separate barrack. One of these prisoners, Private Jacob Blumenfeld, recalled that there were between 20 and 30 prisoners, some of whom were not actually Jewish but had Jewish-sounding surnames. Ironically, their segregation led to better living conditions, as the barrack to [End Page 403] which they were confined was less crowded than the main barracks and had radiators for heating, rather than stoves.²⁹ Another Jewish American soldier, Harry First, was not discovered as a Jew until early March 1945. He was held in solitary confinement for four or five days before the camp was evacuated.³⁰

As in most other camps, Italian military prisoners in Stalag III A were also treated poorly, as the Germans viewed them as traitors after Italy’s capitulation to the Allies in September 1943. The approximately 16,000 Italians in the camp lived in crowded barracks or in tents, where their living conditions were very primitive. The food and medical care they received was little better than that afforded the Soviets. The best chance for survival among these prisoners was to “volunteer” for service in the special Italian units created by the Wehrmacht, which promised better living conditions and rations than those they experienced in the POW camps. However, despite this incentive to collaborate with the Germans, some Italian prisoners remained defiant and organized a resistance movement within the camp.³¹

Late in the war, conditions deteriorated for all prisoners in the camp regardless of national groups. Prisoners from camps farther to the east, such as Stalag III B in Fürstenberg an der Oder and Oflag 64 in Schubin, were evacuated to Stalag III A.³² This influx of new prisoners resulted in significant overcrowding in the camp; in some places, barracks that had been intended to hold 200 men held as many as 400; other prisoners were forced to live in tents with only straw for bedding. The sanitary conditions in the camp became a serious problem. Food rations also decreased as the camp administration had to feed larger numbers of prisoners with the same amount of food supplies as they had received before the evacuations. Many prisoners bartered with others to obtain additional food. Harry First recalled that he traded his cigarette rations to other prisoners for bread.³³

In late February and early March 1945, as Soviet forces approached from the east, the Germans evacuated the prisoners in Stalag III A westward to Stalag XI A in Altengrabow.³⁴ The Red Army liberated Stalag III A on April 24, 1945.³⁵