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Stalag Luft I, Barth, Prussia
Location
On the Baltic, 23 kilometers northwest of
Stralsund, Rostock district; 54(22'N-12(42'E. Camp population. US and British
air force personnel, mostly officers. Population gains or losses. There was no
significant influx from other camps in 1945, but there had been a large
increase during 1944; at the time of liberation the POW population approached
9,000 (US, UK, and other nationalities).
Circumstances of
liberation
Because of its location further west and
north than most German POW camps, Stalag Luft I was not evacuated in the face
of the Soviet advance during March and April 1945. When on 30 April, the German
commandant did order the Senior Allied Officer (SAO) to prepare the prisoners
for evacuation, the SAO stated the Germans would have to use force in order to
get the prisoners to move. Faced with the advancing Soviets, recalcitrant
prisoners, and the prospect of bloodshed, the Germans abandoned the camp. On 1
May 1945 the SAO, who upon the German departure had assumed responsibility for
maintaining order in the camp, sent out contact parties to meet with advancing
Soviet troops. Soviet liberating forces were from the 65th Army (Colonel
General Pavel Batov) of the 2nd Belorussian Front. Initially the Soviets showed
little interest in the camp or the needs of the POWs for food and water, nor
did they cooperate with Allied authorities to effect relief efforts or a timely
evacuation of the prisoners from the camp. In fact, Soviet troops prevented
such actions until 12 May when SHAEF began an aerial evacuation of the POWs;
this operation was completed on 15 May. Accounting of US POWs & other
remaining questions. As late as 25 June 1945, one recovered POW, SSgt. Anthony
Sherg, reported: "Possibility of several hundred American prisoners of war
liberated from Stalag Luft One, Barth, are now confined by the Russian Army in
the Rostock area...." Sherg indicated that he also had been held for several
weeks at Rostock. Follow-up inquiries to the Soviets and further investigation,
however, produced no confirmation of Sherg's information. The postwar
debriefing of Colonel Hubert Zemke, Senior American Officer at Barth, includes
copies of important contemporary documents relating to conditions at the camp
just before and subsequent to the Soviet liberation. One of the documents,
dated on 14 May 1945, and signed by Soviet, British, and American officers, is
essentially a receipt for 8,498 POWs (1,415 British and 7,083 Americans) turned
over to the British and American authorities by the Soviets.
The Veterans Administration list prepared
from the Prisoner of War Information Bureau IBM cards contains 4,298 names of
US prisoners of war who were returned to military control from Stalag Luft I
(code 032). A Military Intelligence Service analysis, dated 1 November 1945,
indicates that 7,717 US and 1,427 British POWs returned to military control in
May 1945 from Stalag Luft I; the higher numbers probably reflect those POWs who
made their own way west from Luft I and were not part of the formal exchange
completed 14 May. |
