Stalag X-B

 Second World War 1939-1945, ruins, prisoner-of-war camp, concentration camp

Stalag X-B was a World War II German Prisoner-of-war camp located near Sandbostel in north-western Germany. Sandbostel lies 9 km south of Bremervörde, 43 km northeast of Bremen. Placed on swampy ground,with a damp, cold climate, it is one of the most notorious prisoner-of-war camps. Between 1939 and 1945 1 million POWs of 46 nations passed through. Nearly 50,000 died there of hunger, disease, or were just simply murdered.

The camp was divided into three sections when liberated. The first contained allied prisoners in unsatisfactory conditions, but generally in compliance with the International Red Cross Convention. Soviet prisoners, without the Convention's protection, were in substantially worse conditions. In the third section were 8,000 civilian prisoners in appalling conditions, described in the Army medical history as "utterly horrifying"; "everywhere the dead and dying sprawled amid the slime of human excrement."

The British forces advancing through this area had been aware of the POW camp but, until two escaped British Secret Service men reached them they were unaware of several thousand political prisoners in a separate compound. These were in desperate conditions and it was decided to liberate the camp immediately. The local German forces refused free access to the camp, so an assault into the area was made by the Guards Armoured Division and the camp was liberated on April 29, 1945. Army medical units were detached to deliver medical attention.

The military authorities decided to conscript local German civilian women to assist with the rescue and clean up work. Inmates were cleaned and transferred to an improvised hospital outside the camp and thence to convalescence camps. The camp was burned between May 16 and May 25 and the last 350 patients left the hospital on June 3.