Oflag VIII-F

Oflag VIII-F
Wahlstatt, Silesia
Abbey at Wahlstatt
Type	Prisoner-of-war camp
Site information
Controlled by	Nazi Germany
Site history
Built	1719-1731
In use	1940–1944

Oflag VIII-F was a World War II German prisoner-of-war camp for officers (Offizierlager) located first in Wahlstatt, Germany (now Legnickie Pole, Poland) and then at Mährisch-Trübau, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now Moravská Třebová, Czech Republic).

Camp history

Oflag VIII-F was first established at Wahlstatt in July 1940^[1] and housed French and Belgian officers taken prisoner during the Battle of France. It was located in a former Benedictine Abbey dedicated to Saint Hedwig of Silesia, that had been a military school between 1840 and 1920, and used by the Nazis as a "National Political Educational Institution" from 1934.^[2]

In July 1942 a new camp at Mährisch-Trübau, about 200 km (120 mi) to the south, was designated Oflag VIII-F, while the original camp was redesignated Oflag VIII F/Z, a sub-camp of Mährisch-Trübau.^[1] The prisoners were transferred to other camps, though a small number stayed behind to carry out construction work as the site was adapted for the use of GEMA (Gesellschaft für und mechanische elektroakustische apparate) in developing radar systems.^[3] The sub-camp was closed in June 1943.^[1]

The camp at Mahrisch-Trubau contained around 2,000 officers, mostly British captured in North Africa and the Greek Islands, but there were also numbers of Greek, French and American POW.^[4] In April 1944, most of the prisoners were transferred to Oflag 79 near Braunschweig and the camp was closed.

See also

• List of prisoner-of-war camps in Germany
• Oflag

References