Marlag und Milag Nord
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Marlag und Milag Nord was a German Prisoner-of-war camp in Military District X, located near Westertimke, Germany.
There were over 5,000 Allied Merchant seamen captured by the German forces during World War II. Some 4,500 of these mariners were held at the Merchant Navy Internment camp at Westertimke, near Bremen, Germany.
Milag (for Marine Internierten Lager), was first created as one of two compounds inside Sandbostel Stalag X-B,Concentration camp, south of Bremervorde, Germany, for the purpose of housing captured Merchant seamen. An adjoining compound, Marlag (for Marine Lager) was for captured Royal Navy personnel.
Between the Autumn of 1941 and the Spring of 1942 the occupants of these compounds were transferred to Marlag und Milag Nord, two separate but adjacent camps at Westertimke, 20 kilometres away. It is this virtually self-contained Merchant Navy POW camp that was referred to by the Merchant Seamen as MILAG, their previous compound in the concentration camp being generally known just as Sandbostel or Stalag X-B.
On 27 January 1945 Allied POW's from Stalag Luft III at Sagan in Poland were force marched in sub-zero temperatures hundreds of miles westwards towards their destination of Spremberg in Germany. At Spremberg they were loaded onto cattle trains, seventy to a truck without windows. One of their destinations was Marlag Nord, where they arrived after a three day journey to Bremen. The Red Cross had already condemned Marlag Nord as unfit and insanitary.[1]
