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

KGL Kos was not part of the regular prisoner of war (POW) camp system but rather an ad hoc collection camp for interned Italian soldiers, guarded by regular German troops on temporary detail. The camp existed from October 1943 until March 1944, on the Greek island of Kos in the Aegean Sea (map 8). The camp was subordinate to the German commandant of the island of Kos/Admiral Aegean (Admiral Ägäis)/Army Group (Heeresgruppe) E.

The Germans (22nd Infantry Division/Kampfgruppe Müller) occupied Kos on October 3, 1943. They took more than 1,000 British troops and more than 3,000 Italian troops prisoner. They separated the British from the Italians and placed them in a separate camp, in which their treatment was strictly in keeping with the provisions of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (1929). As for the Italians, the Germans immediately separated the officers from the enlisted men and placed them in a barracks near the village of Linopotis. The following day, the Germans shot the officers in the nearest field, where they had been forced to dig their own grave; there were approximately 100 victims.¹ Between October 1943 and March 1944, the Germans transferred the remaining prisoners in groups to the Greek mainland by ship.