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

This “refugee camp” existed from the end of September 1942 until November 1942 in the town of Kalatsch (map 9d) (today Kalach, Volgograd oblast’, Russian Federation), 70 kilometers (43.5 miles) west of Stalingrad (today Volgograd). The Red Army liberated the town and the camp on November 23, 1942, during the initial phase of the Stalingrad counteroffensive. The camp was subordinate to the Sixth Army Rear Area Commander (Kommandant rückwärtiges Armeegebiet, Korück, 585; as of October 1942, Korück 593).

The Germans created the camp in order to confine civilians from the city of Stalingrad, who were subject to evacuation westward by order of the Sixth Army headquarters, because Stalingrad was in the zone of combat operations.¹ Thus, the designation “refugee camp” was a misnomer or euphemism for a forced evacuation or internment camp.

The prisoners received wholly inadequate treatment in the camp: the food was lacking in both quality and quantity, and there was no medical aid; as a result, the prisoners developed [End Page 556] infectious diseases, and some died. A document dated June 27, 1943, described the civilians’ conditions of confinement as follows:

In the transit camp at Kalach [sic], the people being sent on were kept outdoors, in snow, in rain, and they were starving. Food was given out once a day. It consisted of two spoonfuls of hot wheat and a small piece of uncooked horsemeat. Water was not provided at all. The mortality rate in this transit camp was very high. The weeping and groaning of the women, children, and sick here continued unceasingly. The German soldiers and bureaucrats looked at it all with indifference. People who had lost their strength were forced to do work that was too much for them, such as carrying logs and the like. Those who were unable to work were kicked by the Germans and beaten with rubber truncheons and rifle butts.²