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

The Wehrmacht established Stalag VI J (map 4a) in August 1940, in Krefeld-Fichtenhain, in Defense District (Wehrkreis) VI. In September 1944, the main camp was transferred to Dorsten, which had formerly been a subcamp (Zweiglager).¹ The camp was under the Commander of Prisoners of War in Defense District VI (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen im Wehrkreis VI). Even though it was a permanent camp on German soil, Stalag VI J did have a field post number (Feldpostnummer) for a brief time, 09 222, issued between April 28 and September 14, 1940, and struck between September 15, 1940, and January 31, 1941.

Stalag VI J held French, Belgian, British, Serbian, Soviet, and American prisoners of war (POWs) as well as Italian military internees. The largest number of prisoners held at one time was 72,000.² Most prisoners were assigned to the more than 2,000 labor detachments (Arbeitskommandos).³ The Germans treated the Western Allied prisoners decently and the conditions were generally satisfactory and in compliance with the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (1929).

The camp occupied a roughly triangular patch of land east of Dorsten, bounded to the north by the Lippe River and to the south by a canal.⁴ The camp storage, administrative units, a German infirmary, and a small jail cell were located at the western end of the camp. To the south, off the main road to Dorsten, was the main entrance to the camp. While the entire camp was surrounded with barbed wire, a second row of fencing and wire further divided and secured the prisoners’ living quarters, at the eastern end of the complex. Guard towers stood beyond the fencing. Within the prisoner complex, prisoners were divided into subunits by nationality. Prisoners lived in large barracks. By the end of November 1944, the main camp had 18 prisoner barracks. A large recreation area was located in the center of the prisoner compound. Several rows of ditches for air-raid protection were located along the southern edge of this field.

During the last years of the war, conditions deteriorated sharply. By the time the first American prisoners arrived in the camp in 1944, the living conditions were quite poor. The American prisoners’ barracks were of poor construction and allowed cold air to blow in from the outside. The heating stoves functioned properly, but the prisoners were not given sufficient fuel to keep them lit. They slept in wooden bunks with burlap mattresses filled with straw. The barracks were filled with lice, fleas, bedbugs, and other vermin, which multiple attempts by the Germans to fumigate the barracks failed to eradicate.⁵

The prisoners’ food rations were also poor. They received a cup or two of ersatz coffee in the morning, a bowl of soup at noon, and one-seventh of a loaf of bread in the evenings. Occasionally, they received some margarine or molasses. The Germans sold the potatoes that were sent to the camp rather than distributing them to the prisoners. To get the potatoes, prisoners had to resort to selling clothing and jewelry to the Germans; Russian prisoners acted as intermediaries for these sales, in order to procure some potatoes for themselves.⁶ American prisoners received half of a Red Cross food parcel every two weeks.

The camp hospital was one of the largest in the German POW camp system. Established in large stone barracks, the hospital had a 1,200-bed capacity. The hospital was divided between two barracks, one for prisoners with minor injuries and illnesses and another for more severe cases. Overcrowding, however, led to a patient load of as many as 1,600 by May 1944.⁷ The majority of beds were two-tiered wooden bunks, while severely ill cases had single metal beds. Individual sections were allocated for treatment of dermatology and otolaryngology cases. The hospital also included an X-ray room and laboratory for analysis.

While facilities were generally above average in the early years of war, the hospital was characteristically undersupplied with medicine.⁸ Moreover, as in the main camp, conditions deteriorated significantly later in the war. Food became a problem in the hospital by late July 1944 because it remained dependent on the main Stalag for rations. The food rations were similar to those in the main camp: ersatz coffee in the morning, soup at noon, and bread in the evening. The water at the camp hospital was sufficient in quantity but had to be boiled prior to consumption. The prisoners’ beds were infested with lice and bedbugs.⁹

The doctors at the camp were mainly French and Russian. The Germans gave them virtually no supplies; almost everything they had came from the French Red Cross. The German sergeant in charge of the hospital was described as an enormous man whom the prisoners called “The Pig” due to both his size and his cruel treatment of the prisoners.¹⁰ After the liberation of the camp, he was shot by American soldiers.

Soviet POWs, by contrast, were treated horribly throughout the entire war. They received only minimal food rations and lived in extremely unsanitary conditions. Thousands of Soviet prisoners died from malnutrition,¹¹ from diseases such as tuberculosis and meningitis,¹² and at the hands of the camp guards.¹³ American prisoners in the camp reported that the Soviet prisoners frequently died of starvation and that bodies were carried out of the Soviet section of the camp to be buried [End Page 438] on a daily basis late in the war.¹⁴ Soviet prisoners in the work details in the Düsseldorf area also occasionally fell victim to Allied bombing raids on or near their work sites, such as the attack on Stockum on January 11, 1943; by the last months of the war, even Western prisoners were not immune to the same fate.¹⁵ Regular selections (Aussonderungen) were made from among Soviet POWs of “undesirables” (Jews and Communists), who were put to death in a nearby concentration camp.¹⁶

On February 20, 1945, a number of the wounded prisoners in the camp were evacuated to Stalag XI B in Fallingbostel; these men were driven nearly 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) to Düsseldorf in an open truck in the rain, despite the fact that many of them had open wounds or had had limbs amputated.¹⁷ Allied forces liberated Stalag VI J on March 28, 1945.