Stalag V-A (5-A) was a German prisoner of war camp located on the southern outskirts of Ludwigsburg, Germany, during World War II.
Contents |
The prison camp had been constructed on the site of a former German military installation, which had once billeted German cavalry troops and their horses. The red brick stables that had once been used for horses were converted to barracks to house prisoners when the site was converted to a POW camp in October, 1939. Additional wooden barracks were also constructed on the grounds, to accommodate the camp's growing prisoner population.
The roofs of the buildings within the camp were marked ‘KG’ for kriegsgefangenen, the German word meaning "prisoner of war". Large red crosses were also painted on the roofs, to further insure that allied planes would not mistakenly target the camp.
The sprawling prison complex was divided into compounds. The perimeter of the each compound was secured by a double barbed-wire fence, fifteen feet in height, on top of which ran a high-voltage wire. The space between the two fences was a tangled mass of barbed-wire. On the prisoners’ side of the fence, a wire ran parallel with the fence, staked to the ground approximately ten feet distance from the fence, six to eight inches above the ground. Any man who stepped between the wire and the fence was shot on sight. Every so many yards along the fence was a guard tower, fully armed and manned.
The first prisoners detained at the camp had been Poles, taken captive during the German invasion of Poland in 1939. As the war progressed, prisoners of other nationalities would arrive at Stalag 5-A. By the time of the camp’s evacuation in April 1945, allied prisoners of every nation at war with Germany were present within the camp. The largest population present within the camp was Soviet, followed by the French, Belgian, Dutch, British and Commonwealth, Italian, and American prisoners were also present in large numbers.
There were several attempts to escape, primarily from Arbeitskommandos.
One such escape attempt was by the Dutch prisoner Arie Verouden in October 1943. He was recaptured in December and sentenced to two years solitary confinement.
After the end of the war thousands of Displaced Persons, mostly Poles were housed here, but were quickly transferred to permanent buildings of German Army barracks around the city.