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

HFL Belaja Kalitwa, the “main refugee camp” at Belaja Kalitwa (today Belaia Kalitva, Rostov oblast’, Russian Federation) (map 9i) existed from the end of September 1942 until January 1943. The town lies 168 kilometers (104 miles) northeast of Rostov-na-Donu and approximately 300 kilo-meters (186 miles) southwest of Stalingrad (today Volgograd). In German documents, Belaja Kalitwa was called Vorstadt.

The camp was subordinate to the Commanding General of Security Troops (Kommandierender General der Sicherungstruppen) and Commander of the Army Group Don Rear Area (Befehlshaber Heeresgebiet Don). Belaja Kalitwa was the location for the Chief Field Command (Oberfeldkommandantur) 398, with the subordinate Local Command (Ortskommandantur) I/926; indications are that they exercised direct control over the camp.

The Germans created the camp to temporarily confine civilians from Stalingrad, which, by order of the Sixth Army headquarters, was subject to evacuation to the west because it was located in the zone of combat operations.¹ The camp was also called a reception camp (Auffanglager) or a prisoner of war (POW) camp (Kriegsgefangenenlager), although it was not connected to the POW camp system in any way and did not hold POWs. “Refugee camp” was itself a deliberate misnomer or euphemism for what was really a forced evacuation or internment camp.

The conditions in the camp were unsatisfactory: food was inadequate and meager, medical assistance was absent altogether, and, as a consequence, infectious diseases broke out and some people died. For example, according to a report from the head of the camp in Vorstadt, “Among the refugees during the period [of] October 27, 1942, to November 2, 1942, 24 refugees died from exhaustion, injury, and starvation.”²

A 22-year-old from Stalingrad, S. A. Ivanova, who was in HFL Balaja Kalitwa, described the conditions there as follows:

On October 26 we arrived at the Chir [German: Tschir] station, where we were loaded onto open flatcars and taken to the Belaia Kalitva station in Rostov oblast’. We reached the Belaia Kalitva station on October 29 and lived out in the open there until November 13. It rained, and later there were freezing temperatures as well. The old people, the sick, and the children were dying and freezing to death. A great many were buried right there at the station. Graves for them were dug by those who were still able to hold spades in their hands. It was right there that I witnessed the following: a Soviet citizen, who had worked on building a railroad bridge at the Belaia Kalitva station and no longer had the strength to work, said as much to a German soldier and asked for something to eat. He was taken off the job and led away somewhere. The next morning he was hanged in the presence of all the remaining people busy at the construction site. People were sorted at the Belaia Kalitva station: the healthy adult men, young men, and young women were torn away from their families by the Germans, and some were taken to Germany, while some were taken to work in other places. The grief of the families left behind was boundless. The specter of an agonizing and terrible death hovered over both those who left and those who stayed behind. But the German slave owners were touched by neither the tears nor the cries of the unfortunate. In early February 1943, not long before their retreat, the Germans shot 66 Stalingrad families in the Grushevskaia ravine, Belaia Kalitva raion, Rostov oblast’. The shooting took place over the course of three days, from February 3 to February 6. During the nights, the Germans took people in trucks from the small village of Sinegorsk to the Grushevskaia ravine, located 18 kilometers [11 miles] from the small village. Entire families were taken. There were both old people and children. Before the departure their last belongings were taken away. Officially it was announced that these families were being sent farther into the rear [End Page 559] area of the German army. But in fact they were taken into the ravine, where they also were shot. The Germans planned to shoot 158 more people, but on February 8, 1943, the Red Army put an end to this nightmare. Found at that time was a list of people subject to execution by shooting, consisting entirely of people from Stalingrad. Among them was my family as well. The list was headed “List for removal of politically unreliable families.”³

The testimony of S. A. Ivanova supplements a report dated June 8, 1943, that described the conditions in the camp as follows:

By early October 1942, the Germans herded around 10,000 Soviet citizens from the German-occupied raions of Stalingrad into Belaia Kalitva and placed them in the poultry houses and stables of a sovkhoz [state-owned collective farm]. The excessive congestion of human beings in impractical accommodations without provision of food of any kind resulted in diseases, and every day as many as 100 prisoners died of disease and starvation. Soon thereafter the German command suggested that the Soviet citizens volunteer to go off to work in Germany. When there proved to be no one willing to leave, the Germans organized a forcible selection of those who were fit for work, for the purpose of slave labor. Adhering to the principle of driving a strong, healthy workforce into slavery, the Germans selected Soviet citizens who were fit for work, not taking into account that they were separating children and parents. All the citizens who were selected were placed in special barracks surrounded with barbed wire and, after being subjected to a medical examination, they were sent off to Germany in railroad cars under strict guard.⁴

The selection of able-bodied civilians for use at forced labor was handled in the camp by Economic Detachment (Wirtschaftskommando) 3 (Major Schütte), which was subordinate to Economic Inspectorate (Wirtschaftsinspektion) Don-Donez (Generalmajor Hans Nagel). Economic Detachment Rostow, which was subordinate to Army Group (Heeresgruppe) Don, was responsible for supplying the civilians in the camp with food. In the entire period of the camp’s existence, 72,000 passed through it.⁵ Some of them were sent to Germany to work, and some were placed in other raions and oblasts, including the General Region (Generalbezirk) Dnjepropetrowsk (Dnepropetrovsk, today Dnipro, Ukraine).