Stalag
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 ...
IV-D was a German
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 ...
located in the town of
Torgau
Torgau () is a town on the banks of the Elbe in northwestern Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district Nordsachsen.
Outside Germany, the town is best known as where on 25 April 1945, the United States and Soviet Armies first met near ...
,
Saxony
Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and ...
, about north-east of
Leipzig
Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...
.
Camp history
The camp comprised two buildings located in the town. The main camp was located on Naundorfer Strasse, about south-west of the railway station. Originally a small print factory it was requisitioned for use as a POW camp in May 1941. For most of the war the camp held only around 800 POWs,
as most were assigned to ''
Arbeitslager
''Arbeitslager'' () is a German language word which means labor camp. Under Nazism, the German government (and its private-sector, Axis, and collaborator partners) used forced labor extensively, starting in the 1930s but most especially durin ...
'' ("Work Camps") in factories, mines, railway yards, and farms, up to away. There was also an administration building on the corner of Wolfersdorff and Puschkin Strassen, formerly a school for Army NCOs, with a small compound of wooden huts that housed around 20 POWs assigned to clerical duties.
A sub-camp, Stalag IV-D/Z, was opened in May 1942, located in
Annaburg
Annaburg () is a town in Wittenberg district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It was the seat of the former ''Verwaltungsgemeinschaft'' Annaburg-Prettin.
Constituent communities
The town Annaburg consists of the following ''Ortschaften'' or municipa ...
about north of
Torgau
Torgau () is a town on the banks of the Elbe in northwestern Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district Nordsachsen.
Outside Germany, the town is best known as where on 25 April 1945, the United States and Soviet Armies first met near ...
. From March 1944 it was designated as a ''Heilag'' (short for ''Heimkehrerlager''), a repatriation camp for POWs waiting to be either
exchanged or returned home on medical grounds.
The camps were liberated in late April 1945 when
US and Soviet forces met on the
Elbe
The Elbe ( ; ; or ''Elv''; Upper Sorbian, Upper and , ) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Republic), then Ge ...
at Torgau.
Post–World War II
After the war, the Soviet secret police agency NKVD established its Special Camps Nos. 8 and 10 in Fort Zinna and in the nearby Seydlitz barracks. Germans and some Soviet citizens were interned here or served sentences passed by the Soviet military tribunals. The East German People's Police used the Fort Zinna prison from 1950 to 1990 as a penitentiary. In the 1950s it primarily housed political prisoners.
The Torgau Documentation and Information Center (DIZ), founded in 1991 and now under the administration of the Saxon Memorial Foundation for the commemoration of the victims of political despotism, researches and presents the history of the Torgau prisons in the permanent exhibition "Traces of Injustice".
Notable prisoners
*
Albert Mullard
See also
*
List of prisoner-of-war camps in Germany For lists of German prisoner-of-war camps, see:
* German prisoner-of-war camps in World War I
* German prisoner-of-war camps in World War II
Nazi Germany operated around 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps () during World War II (1939-1945).
The most c ...
References
{{Authority control
World War II prisoner-of-war camps in Germany