Stalag XIII-D Nürnberg Langwasser was a

German Army The German Army (, 'army') is the land component of the armed forces of Federal Republic of Germany, Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German together with the German Navy, ''Marine'' (G ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

prisoner-of-war camp A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured as Prisoner of war, prisoners of war by a belligerent power in time of war. There are significant differences among POW camps, inte ...

built on what had been the Nazi party rally grounds in

Nuremberg Nuremberg (, ; ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the Franconia#Towns and cities, largest city in Franconia, the List of cities in Bavaria by population, second-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Bav ...

, northern

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

Camp history

In September 1939 an internment camp for enemy civilians was created within the buildings of the

Sturmabteilung The (; SA; or 'Storm Troopers') was the original paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party of Germany. It played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and early 1930s. I ...

camp at the rally grounds. Within a couple of months, the civilians were moved out and prisoners from the

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Second Polish Republic, Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak R ...

arrived. From May 1940, after the

invasion of Norway Invasion of Norway may refer to: *1033 invasion by Tryggvi the Pretender *1567 Swedish invasion during the Northern Seven Years' War *1658 Swedish invasion during the Second Northern War *1716 Swedish invasion during the Great Northern War *1808 S ...

and the

Battle of France The Battle of France (; 10 May – 25 June 1940), also known as the Western Campaign (), the French Campaign (, ) and the Fall of France, during the Second World War was the Nazi Germany, German invasion of the Low Countries (Belgium, Luxembour ...

, prisoners arrived in large numbers, until they totalled 150,000 from all occupied countries, except

Britain Britain most often refers to: * Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales * The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...

. British prisoners were held in separate camps all over Germany. Part of the facilities were used as Oflag XIII-A for officers. In this camp during August 1940, prisoners of war celebrated a "special Olympics" called International Prisoner-of-War Olympic Games where prisoners of Belgium, France, Great Britain, Norway, Poland, Russia and Yugoslavia took part. In August 1940 most enlisted men were shipped to other camps: Stalag XIII-A,

Stalag XIII-B In Germany, stalag (; ) was a term used for prisoner-of-war camps. Stalag is a contraction of "Stammlager", itself short for ''Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschaftsstammlager'', literally "main camp for enlisted prisoners of war" (officers were kept i ...

and

Stalag XIII-C Stalag XIII-C was a German Army World War II prisoner-of-war camp ('' Stammlager'') built on what had been the training camp at Hammelburg, Lower Franconia, Bavaria, Germany. Camp history Hammelburg was a large German Army training camp, set up ...

. Only those remained who were already employed in local industry and were housed in individual

Arbeitskommando Forced labor was an important and ubiquitous aspect of the Nazi concentration camps which operated in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe between 1933 and 1945. It was the harshest and most inhumane part of a larger system of forced labor ...

s. In June 1941 the massive influx of

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

prisoners from

Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along ...

began. In August 1943 the camp was severely damaged during an

Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not an explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are calle ...

air-raid. 23 wooden huts were burnt down. Miraculously only two

prisoners were killed in the camp. However, in this and subsequent bombing attacks, many prisoners were killed in individual Arbeitskommandos. In late 1944/early 1945 the camp population grew enormously with the arrival of prisoners evacuated from camps in the east in front of the advance of the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

. These included many Americans and British airmen from

Stalag Luft III Stalag Luft III (; literally "Main Camp, Air, III"; SL III) was a ''Luftwaffe''-run prisoner-of-war (POW) camp during the Second World War, which held captured Western Allied air force personnel. The camp was established in March 1942 near th ...

. On 12 April 1945 large numbers were marched to

Stalag VII-A Stalag VII-A (in full: ''Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschafts-Stammlager VII-A'') was the largest prisoner-of-war camp in Nazi Germany during World War II, located just north of the town of Moosburg in southern Bavaria. The camp covered an area of . It se ...

, and on 16 April the camp was liberated by advance elements of the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

Post-War

After the war, former SS military personnel were held in Stalag XIII-D. It imprisoned 15,000 SS members. In 1946 there was an attempt to kill the SS prisoners, apparently by

Abba Kovner Abba Kovner (; 14 March 1918 – 25 September 1987) was a Jewish partisan leader, and later Israeli poet and writer. In the Vilna Ghetto, his 1942 manifesto was the first time that a target of the Holocaust identified the German plan to murde ...

's Jewish revenge organisation

Nakam Nakam (, 'revenge') was a paramilitary organisation of about fifty Holocaust survivors who, after 1945, sought revenge for the murder of six million Jews during the The Holocaust, Holocaust. Led by Abba Kovner, the group sought to kill six mil ...

. A member of the group got a job as a baker and poisoned the bread to be fed to the prisoners. Large numbers were taken ill, but the actual death toll is not known.

References

* * {{Authority control

Stalag XIII-D Stalag XIII-D Nürnberg Langwasser was a German Army World War II prisoner-of-war camp built on what had been the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg, northern Bavaria. Camp history In September 1939 an internment camp for enemy civilians was ...

Nakam Nuremberg in World War II