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

The Wehrmacht established Stalag XVII B on October 26, 1939, in Gneixendorf, near Krems an der Donau, from Dulag Gneixendorf (map 4f). It developed into the largest prisoner of war (POW) camp in what was then the Ostmark [End Page 486] (present-day Austria). At one time, 66,000 POWs passed through the camp: French, Belgian, Serbian, Polish, British, and Soviet prisoners, as well as Italian military prisoners. The majority were housed in one of the camp’s many work detachments (Arbeitskommandos). In October 1943, a “Luftwaffe subcamp” was created in Gneixendorf for 4,300 US Army Air Forces (USAAF) noncommissioned officers.

More than one-third of the POWs were used for agricultural work, and the rest worked primarily for the Wehrmacht and in construction. For the Soviet POWs, in particular, labor deployment meant some degree of improvement in their living conditions. The advantages of working for farmers were well known to the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW): “The high demand on the part of the agricultural sector, especially as a result of the scattered farming settlements, accommodates the wish of the prisoners of war to be employed there, owing to the availability of better food and relatively greater freedom.”¹

For labor deployment outside the camp, POWs were put to work in detachments and housed directly at their place of work or in its vicinity. Their “employers” provided their lodging and rations. The camps for the work detachments, in comparison with the main camp, looked more basic, but here, too, above a certain size, various facilities were officially required. These included an infirmary and a housing space allocation of 5 cubic meters (177 cubic feet) per prisoner. However, the exact guidance was not always complied with, even in the labor camps, because of chronic overcrowding.

The size of the work detachments varied, depending on the deployment, but the demand for workers could not be met in either Defense District (Wehrkreis) XVII or Defense District XVIII: “The allocation of prisoners of war was and is not commensurate with the requests for manpower. Assistance by the relevant authorities was repeatedly asked for.” The numbers were mind-boggling: in September 1940 alone, there were 1,446 work detachments under the control of Stalag XVII B—with around 44,000 POWs altogether—and 823 additional detachments requested.

From 1941 on, with the establishment of POW Stalags in Defense District XVIII, the administrative ambit of the camp was reduced to the greater part of the Lower Danube Administrative Region (Gau) and the entire Upper Danube Administrative Region. As a result of the creation of Stalag 398 in Pupping, Stalag XVII B surrendered the supervision of Upper Danube. Nonetheless, until the end of the war it remained the largest administrative organization for the work deployment of POWs in the territory of the Ostmark.

A wide camp street cut through the quadrangular grounds of the Stalag, with prisoner accommodations on either side. Stalag XVII B consisted of 40 barracks, which in 1942 were subdivided by additional barbed wire fencing to create “battalions,” each with three barracks. In American reports, 12 sectors, or “compounds,” 5 of which, at the eastern end, were assigned to the American prisoners, were mentioned. The four double barracks in each sector were planned for 400 men, and each of these structures was divided into two parts by a washroom in the center, with six sinks. The latrine was outside near a playing field. The sectors for the Americans were separated from the areas for other nationalities by guard towers and barbed wire.

From the fall of 1943, when the first Americans came to Stalag XVII B, they were housed adjacent to the Soviet sectors. They were better fed and, in addition, received care parcels from the International Committee of the Red Cross. A lively barter trade across the barbed wire boundary separating the two groups soon developed, in which primarily the coveted American cigarettes were exchanged for onions or potatoes. The Soviet POWs, who worked outside the camp, were able to smuggle foods of this kind into their sector. Not until the fall of 1944 were the rations for Soviet POWs aligned with those for the other nationalities, and that alignment was often more theoretical than real.

The Soviet POWs were excluded from the aid provided by the Red Cross and thus from an additional source of foodstuffs. Also, in contrast to all the other nationalities, the Soviet POWs were not supplied with cooking areas for preparing additional food. Until the fall of 1942, they even received “Russian bread,” consisting of 50 percent coarse-grained rye meal, 20 percent sugar beet shreds, 20 percent cellulose powder, and 10 percent straw powder or leaves, leading to symptoms of deficiency. The presence of straw in the bread also acted as an irritant and ultimately caused disorders of the digestive system. The Soviets also received a soup, called balanda, which was made from millet or buckwheat, turnips, and uncleaned, sometimes rotten, potatoes.

The accommodations of the individual nationalities also reflected the differences in their treatment. “One camp—two systems” was the slogan. American POWs were housed in a sector of their own, as were the Soviet POWs. The rest of the prisoners lived in the so-called international sector.

In September 1941, when the first “Russian transports” arrived in the “East camp,” which was separate from the rest of the camp, deaths began to occur at an extremely high rate. An infirmary was set up in a tent, but the seriously ill men there were largely left to their own fate. In December 1941, an epidemic of spotted fever and typhus broke out, causing the entire camp to be placed under quarantine. Four French Jewish POWs were assigned to take care of the sick, and in the process the French assistant physician Rosenberg died from an infection, on New Year’s Eve 1941. Within one month, approximately 700 Soviets died as a result of the epidemic.

All told, around 1,700 Soviet POWs perished in Stalag XVII B, most of them during 1941–1942. During the period from August 1943 to April 1945, there were 360 deaths in this group of prisoners. These deaths, although the mortality rate had significantly declined, still represented 83 percent of all prisoners who died during that time period. In addition to the Soviets, 19 Yugoslavs, 20 French, 1 Belgian, 2 Poles, 4 Americans (two of whom were shot while trying to escape), 22 Italians, 4 Romanians, and 1 Slovak—73 POWs altogether—were buried in the camp cemetery.² [End Page 487]

Oberst Kühn (Army) was the commandant for most of the camp’s existence, and Major Eigl (Luftwaffe) was camp officer in charge (Lageroffizier) or first camp leader (Lagerführer). Hauptmann Paletta (Luftwaffe) was assigned as second camp leader.

Reserve battalions (Landesschützenbataillonen) were used as guard personnel. They were ordinarily under the control of the Commander of Prisoners of War (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen) in each district and were replaced at regular intervals.³

The American POWs exhibited amazing creativity in Stalag XVII B. Many of them kept “wartime logs,” which they filled with poems, drawings, caricatures, and the like, and they also kept diaries. The latter consist of short phrases in note form, frequently lacking verbs, which mention the most important facts, written down in great haste. They record the food situation, theater performances, bomb alarms, correspondence, weather conditions, birthdays, Christmas celebrations, and important military events.

In addition, the American POWs published a camp newspaper, The Gremlin. They organized their own camp school, an orchestra, and a camp theater known as the Cardboard Theatre. Here, the two American prisoners Don Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski authored a play that had its Broadway premiere in 1951. It served as the basis for Billy Wilder’s Oscarwinning film Stalag 17.

Most of the other national groups of POWs in Stalag XVII B also developed cultural activities. From July 1941, the French published the camp newspaper Le Gai Mât, whose title was a play on the Austrian dialect expression “Gemma” (“Gehen wir,” “let’s go”). Published twice a month, it contained poems, discussions of the cultural events in the camp, stories, announcements by the man of confidence (homme de confiance) for the French, and editorials intended to maintain a mood of patriotism in the French sector. There was a typical struggle between collaborators and resistance fighters over the editing of the newspaper and over the political orientation of its content.

By contrast, the Soviet POWs were, to the greatest possible extent, forbidden to engage in artistic and literary activities. The most basic preconditions for the creation of literature and art were absent, with inadequate light and space conditions, hunger, cold, illnesses, and time-consuming labor deployment not the only obstacles. Even keeping a diary was risky; writing materials had to be hidden, and, if they were discovered, the prisoner in question could expect harsh punishment. Countless preparations for escape attempts were made in Stalag XVII B; some were prevented by the Germans, some were punished with solitary confinement, and occasionally they even ended in death.

Of the four American POWs who died in Stalag XVII B, three died while attempting to escape. For example, Sergeant Proakis, in the course of his attempted escape together with Sergeant LaVoie on December 3, 1943, was shot by the guards. Immediately thereafter, the guards returned to the American sector of the Stalag, where they fired additional shots and wounded one POW in his barracks. The wounded man, William E. Binnebose, had to wait for almost an hour at the main gate and then was carried to the camp medical facility and subjected to three hours of surgery. Only three months later, in late February 1944, was he able to return to his barracks in the camp.

Shortly before the war ended, a summary court martial in Stein an der Donau tried the commandant of the Gneixendorf camp, Franz Schweiger, as well as his subordinates Kilian and Zelenka, for attempted resistance to the regime. They organized a unit of guards that left the camp; the guards had planned to surrender to the Soviets but were captured. The guards were set at liberty; Schweiger, Kilian, and Zelenka were sentenced to death in Stein on April 21, 1945, and publicly hanged on the Südtiroler Platz in Krems an der Donau. Their bodies were left hanging for three days, as a cautionary example.

The public prosecutor’s office in Vienna, on the basis of these two summary court-martial verdicts and other evidence, brought charges of high treason and other crimes against Higher Regional Court Counsellor, retired Higher Counsellor to the State Court (Oberlandesgerichtsrat, ausser Dienst) Dr. Viktor Reindl; director of Public Prosecutions, retired States Attorney General (Generalstaatsanwalt, ausser Dienst) Dr. Karl Stich; and the bookkeeper Franz Dobravsky. On June 18, 1948, the Vienna Regional Court, functioning as the People’s Court, sentenced Reindl to five years of strict confinement, Stich to eight, and Dobravsky to two.

On April 6, 1945, after the Soviets broke through toward Vienna, the decision was made to evacuate the POW camps in the eastern part of the Ostmark. All the POW camps in Defense District XVII—with the exception of Stalag 398 in Pupping—were evacuated in the direction of Braunau am Inn. Some of the prisoners from Kaisersteinbruch, on their way westward, stopped over for a few days in Stalag XVII B.

The evacuation of all Americans who were transportable or able to walk began on April 8, after the Soviet prisoners had marched away several days before. They were followed two days later by the French and Belgians in four columns of 500 men each. The American POWs were arranged in eight columns of 500 men apiece, each column led by a POW and guarded by 20 German home guards (Volkssturm) with two dogs. The march, approximately 300 kilometers (186 miles) in length, led, with minor deviations from the route by the individual march columns, through the Wachau region, via Mauthausen to Linz, and finally via Erferding and Altheim to the Weilhartsforst reception camp, located 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) north of Braunau am Inn.

On May 3, 1945, the first Americans soldiers—six men from the US 13th Armored Division in three Jeeps—encountered the 15,000 POWs, guarded by 205 men. Soon thereafter, additional units of the 13th Armored Division arrived to coordinate the prisoners’ return to their various home countries. On May 12, the removal of the former POWs from the Weilhartsforst began. They were taken in American trucks to the Pocking airfield, and from there transport planes flew them to Châteaudun, Reims, and Le Bourget.

After the evacuation of the majority of the POWs from Stalag XVII B, the only ones remaining there were those who [End Page 488] could not move for reasons of health or who had returned from work detachments, including around 200 Americans and 300 French. The remaining German guard forces proved accommodating during this final phase. The situation changed abruptly, however, on April 20, when SS troops assumed control of the camp. They remained in the camp until May 8, one day before the arrival of the Soviet troops.

Stalag XVII B was liberated on May 9 by elements of the Soviet 49th Rifle Division. A Soviet general permitted the liberated prisoners to move about freely inside the campgrounds in the daytime, but at night they were forbidden to be outside the barracks. Conditions in the camp are said to have been worse after liberation than before.

At least three former members of the camp staff at Stalag XVII B were tried by Soviet military courts in the postwar years. Two of them had been arrested as civilians in the Soviet zone of occupation in Austria. Found guilty of “war crimes,” they were sentenced to 15 and 25 years, respectively, in a Gulag prison camp. Hauptmann Johann E., for example, who had worked from 1943 as a company commander engaged in guarding POWs, was accused of having forbidden the Soviet POWs to search through the garbage for something to eat and of having ordered his subordinates to use weapons to compel the POWs to work. In addition, he was said to have placed under his protection two guards who had shot Soviet POWs.

Although Johann E. pled not guilty, he was sentenced to 25 years of camp imprisonment. Johann E. returned to Austria in 1955 with the 70th transport of returnees. His application for rehabilitation was denied by the Russian Main Military Prosecutor’s Office in 1998 on grounds of “proven cruel treatment of prisoners of war.”