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

The Wehrmacht established Stalag XI A on September 20, 1939, in Altengrabow, in Defense District (Wehrkreis) XI (map 4a); until November 1939, the camp was officially known only as Stalag XI. It was subordinate to the Commander of Prisoners of War in Defense District XI (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen im Wehrkreis XI). The camp was liberated by the Red Army on May 3, 1945.

The camp was located near a military parade ground and a munitions depot. The site had functioned as a prisoner of war (POW) camp during World War I as well, holding about 12,000 French prisoners, who worked in nearby farmers’ fields. At the start of World War II, Stalag XI A had 15 multistory masonry buildings, 35 masonry barracks, 25 wooden barracks, and 25 horse stables. The camp was guarded by personnel from the 718th, 720th, 740th, and 741st Reserve Battalions (Landesschützenbataillone).

The first prisoners to arrive at Stalag XI A were Polish, but the majority of the prisoners in the camp in the first years of the war were French. Most of them were sent to work in industrial concerns in the region, mainly in Stendal, Magdeburg, and Dessau. After the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the prisoner population of the camp increased substantially. Despite the large number of structures on the grounds, the camp became severely overcrowded, as 49,500 prisoners were crammed into it; as a result, many of the Soviet POWs had to sleep in the stables. About 70–80 percent of the prisoners were assigned to one of the camp’s approximately 1,600 work detachments (Arbeitskommandos), most of which were located in the eastern part of Defense District XI. Most of the prisoners who remained in the camp were not physically capable of agricultural or industrial labor, whether through weakness induced by the conditions in the camp or through combat injuries.

Forced labor by POWs was generally administered along the same lines in each Defense District, but the types of work the prisoners performed took on a local character unique to each region, based on the interests of the organizations that were concerned with POWs. In Defense District XI, many of the POWs were sent to the industrial center of Magdeburg, where they worked for companies such as Krupp, Wolf, and Strube producing goods that were important for the war effort. Approximately 4,500 prisoners worked in 30 work detachments in Magdeburg’s industrial area. Even in early 1942, observers from the International Committee of the Red Cross decried the conditions for the work detachments in Magdeburg, including the poor quality of the housing and food provided to the prisoners. The situation became much worse as work detachments for Soviet POWs were created; these prisoners were afforded essentially no rights and lived in atrocious conditions. At least 3,229 Soviet POWs are known to have died in Stalag XI A and its associated work detachments.

The large number of work detachments from Stalag XI A virtually ensured that restrictions on “forbidden relationships” between prisoners and the German civilian population would be violated, particularly in areas where women were also working in the war-related industries.

The prisoners’ cultural and recreational activities in the camp were mainly possible because of the intervention of the YMCA, which provided them with books, films, and sports equipment. Polish and Western Allied POWs were able to celebrate holidays and hold religious services. French painters received preferential treatment and were allowed to create an “artists’ workshop” in which they produced artworks; 38 caricatures produced by the prisoners in the camp have survived. There was a Dutch-language Protestant Church in the camp, which operated from 1943 to 1945.

Western Allied prisoners had access to the large camp hospital, which had a capacity of over 1,200 beds. This hospital primarily dealt with more severe ailments requiring surgery, with lesser cases handled in smaller medical wards in the camp. The hospital was generally adequately supplied; patients received sufficient food rations, medications, and dressings. By contrast, the facilities within the camp clinics were old and insufficient for the number of patients. International observers characterized the hospital as overcrowded and in need of cleaning. Patients were kept in bunk beds with older straw mattresses. As late as mid-1944, there were no separate facilities for prisoners with communicable diseases such as tuberculosis.¹

As of January 1, 1945, there were 62,300 prisoners in Stalag XI A, including Americans, British, Poles, Belgians, French, Dutch, and Soviets. On April 25, 1945, some Western Allied prisoners were evacuated from the camp by British, French, and American commandos led by Major Philip Worrall, in an action code-named “Operation Violet.”

In the 1960s, the prosecutor’s office in Hamburg began an investigation of “weeding out” operations (Aussonderungen) performed by camp personnel in collaboration with the SS.