Stalag VI-C
Stalag VI-C - Oberlangen was a World War II German POW camp located 6 km west of the village Oberlangen in Emsland in north-western Germany. It was originally built with five others in the same marshland area as a prison camp (Straflager) for Germans. From 1939 till 1945 the Oberlangen camp was a Prisoner of War camp, a sub-camp, first of Stalag VI-B Versen, then Stalag VI-C Bathorn. An exhibition of this and the other 14 Emsland camps 1933-1945 is shown in the Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) Emslandlager in Papenburg.
Timeline
- The camp was built in September 1933 and used as a prison camp for Germans considered undesirable by the Nazi government from 1934 till 1939.
- In September 1939 it became one of nine Prisoner of War camps in the Emsland area.
- June 1940 about 1,400 Polish officers from the German September 1939 offensive were brought here from other camps.
- April 1941 the Polish officers were transferred to another oflag, and that summer over 2,000 Soviet prisoners from Operation Barbarossa arrived. Conditions were appalling, starvation, epidemics and ill-treatment took a heavy toll of lives. The dead were buried in mass graves about 1 km north of the camp.
- September 1943 the subcamp Wesuwe was administratively combined with Oberlangen as Oflag VI-G and nearly 5,000 Italian officers were brought here after the Allied Armistice with Italy.
- September 1944 the Italian officers were reclassified as Internees, deprived of their rights under the Third Geneva Convention and shipped out to various labor camps throughout Germany.
- November 1944, 1,721 Polish women officers and soldiers from the Warsaw Rising arrived. The International Red Cross had been advised that the camp was closed and was unaware of the Polish prisoners [1].
- 12 April 1945 the camp was liberated by the Polish 1st Armoured Division. At that time there were 1,728 women in the camp.
References
- ^ Polish women soldiers in Oberlangen camp
Sources
See also