Prisoner-of-War Camp Wietzendorf

History and Remembrance

Rolf Keller, Silke Petry

• Publisher: Wallstein Verlag
• Year: 2026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9783835388789
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Over 50,000 Soviet soldiers were sent so the Prisoner-of-War Camp Wietzendorf, 16,000 of whom died. During the Second World War, the small village of Wietzendorf in the Lüneburg Heath became the scene of a harrowing chapter in history. It was a place of unimaginable suffering for over 50,000 Soviet soldiers. The catastrophic living conditions led to mass deaths from autumn 1941 onwards. With 16,000 victims, the Soviet POW cemetery is one of the largest war cemeteries in Germany. The authors Silke Petry and Rolf Keller provide detailed information about the fate of the prisoners in Wietzendorf, with exemplary biographies allowing personal insights. They also describe the construction and remodelling of the cemeteries for the victims and look at the changes in the culture of remembrance up to recent times. It is a lively appeal against forgetting and a tribute to local commitment. Der Titel erscheint komplett in englischer Sprache.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Imprint
• Table of contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Wietzendorf Stalag X D (310)
• Stalag X B – Wietzendorf Branch Camp
• The Camp Cemetery 1941–1943
• Reception Camp for Italian Military Internees
• Oflag 83 Wietzendorf
• End of the War and Homecoming
• Camps and Cemeteries after the War
• Culture of Remembrance
• Selected Bibliography
• The authors
• Backcover