Volume IV: Camps and Other Detention Facilities under the German Armed Forces
Encyclopedia

SONDERLAGER IBBENBÜREN

Alexander Kruglov
Translated by Kathleen Luft

This special camp (Sonderlager) existed from the end of 1941 until March 1945. The camp was deployed 0.5 kilometers (0.3 miles) from the town of Ibbenbüren (20 kilometers [12.4 miles] west of Osnabrück) in a specially built barracks installation (map 4a). Officially, the name of the camp was Sonderlager 1750.

Administratively and managerially, the camp was subordinate to the commanding officer of Defense District (Wehrkreis) VI, but, for its special purpose, it was subordinate to the Armed Forces High Command/Office of Counterintelligence (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht/Amt Abwehr).

The camp held Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) who were natives of Ukraine and whom the Germans had specially selected in POW camps as potential collaborators. In Sonderlager Ibbenbüren, the Germans evaluated the prisoners’ worth as propagandists and counterintelligence agents, for use in the occupied territory of Ukraine and in Germany itself, in POW work detachments (Arbeitskommandos), and in camps for eastern workers (Ostarbeiter).

SOURCES

Additional information about the Sonderlager Ibbenbüren can be found in the following publications: S. G. Chuev, Spetssluzhby Tret’ego reikha: Kniga II (St. Petersburg: Neva, 2003), pp. 248–249; and A. V. Okorokov, Osobyi front: Nemetskaia propaganda na Vostochnom fronte v gody Vtoroi mirovoi voiny (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo “Russkii put’,” 2007).

Share