Stalag X-B

Sandbostel lies 9 km south of Bremervörde, 43 km northeast of Bremen. In what was then the Province of Hanover, the Lutheran Church of the State of Hanover opened a camp for out of work singles and employed them in public works (roadworks, amelioration) in 1932, during the Great Depression. In 1933, the Reichsarbeitsdienst took over the camp and used it later as a Nazi internment camp for undesirables. In August 1939, a commission of Heeresbauamt Bremen (military construction department) decided to create a Mannschafts-Stammlager (POW camp) for the local Wehrkreis X. In September, construction of the camp began between the village of Sandbostel and the Arbeitsdienstlager in the Teufelsmoor. The latter area was now used as barracks to house the Wehrmacht guards. In August 1944, all POW camps were removed from Wehrmacht control and were assigned to Heinrich Himmler's Schutzstaffel (SS). Although this was without immediate consequences at Sandbostel, in January 1945 POWs were evacuated here from other camps closer to the frontline. In the final phase of the war, concentration camp prisoners were relocated to Sandbostel. Around 9,000 former inmates of Neuengamme concentration camp and its subcamps were transferred to Stalag X-B in April 1945. They were housed in the former Marlag and guarded well but otherwise left to their own devices: they received no medical help despite rampant diseases, sanitary conditions were dire and the inmates went virtually without food. On 20 April, most of the SS members guarding that section of Stalag X-B marched out of the camp with several hundred prisoners. After that, the POWs were allowed to help the remaining former concentration camp inmates with some of their own food. ==Liberation==

The camp was liberated on 29 April 1945 by the British Armed Forces of XXX Corps following fighting with the German 15th Panzergrenadier-Division. The camp commandant, however, realizing that the end of the war was close, had already agreed to hand over control of the camp to the prisoners, led by the French Colonel Marcel Albert. On 21 April, the same day that the officer ordered to take control of the camp complained to his superiors about conditions there (see picture), two prisoners carried the call for assistance from the camp to the Guards Armoured Division at Zeven. Two armoured units were sent to Sandbostel but fighting delayed their arrival until 29 April. The British discovered around 15,000 surviving POWs in the camp, as well as around 8,000 former Konzentrationslager (KZ) Neuengamme inmates. According to members of the British forces present at the liberation, conditions were so bad, they referred to the Stalag as "Little Belsen" in a reference to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The commander of the British Forces in north-western Germany, General Brian Horrocks, was called in and ordered local German civilians and medical orderlies to help with the clean-up, and to bury the numerous dead bodies. Like at Bergen-Belsen, despite the best efforts of the British, hundreds of inmates died every day immediately following the liberation as a result of starvation, typhus and other diseases. Estimates of the total number of people who died here in 1939-45 range between 8,000 and 50,000. There is evidence of at least 5,162 dead. Claims of up to 46,000 killed Soviets alone were made by the Soviet Union but are considered to be exaggerated. Inmates were cleaned and transferred to an improvised hospital outside the camp and thence to convalescence camps. The former Marlag was burned between 16 and 25 May to prevent a typhus epidemic and the last 350 patients left the hospital on 3 June. Other, more serviceable, huts were used by the British to house imprisoned Nazis and SS members, who were awaiting trial. ==Cemeteries==

POW camps were required by Wehrmacht regulations to have a cemetery close by. Initially, the dead of Stalag X-B were buried in the war cemetery at Parnewinkel, where a World War I POW camp had been located previously. As the number of dead rose in 1940, a second cemetery was established near Sandbostel, about 1.2 kilometres from the camp. At Sandbostel, the cemetery has two sections. Gräberfeld 1 includes the mass graves. In 1954-56 Gräberfeld 2 received the roughly 2,400 dead among the former concentration camp inmates who could not be identified. ==Post-war use==

British internment camp As early as 8 July 1945, the British military authorities established one of nine civilian internment camps in a part of the former Stalag X-B. At "No. 2 Civil Internment Camp" or "No. 2 CIC" around 5,000 males, including SS members, were interned. Soon, inmates were subject to "re-education", intended to turn Nazi supporters into democrats. To further this goal, internees were allowed to publish their own newspaper Der Windstoss. In June 1947, the trials began at the Spruchkammergericht at Stade. Internees were not charged with individual crimes but with membership in a criminal organisation, as defined by the Nuremberg trials. The court handed down 3,500 verdicts, ranging from several months to six years' imprisonment. However, the time of internment was counted as time served, so many of the defendants were released immediately following the trial. The prison featured a small hospital, workshops and a Protestant church. Around 110 people worked there, mostly German refugees from the eastern territories lost after WW II. In 1952, the prison was dissolved due to falling numbers of the incarcerated. This use ended around 1960. Bundeswehr and business park In 1963, the German armed forces took over the remaining huts of the camp and used them to store medical supplies. Ten years later, in 1973, the Bundeswehr stopped using the facility. The Ministry of Defence for a while considered building a barracks at the site, but eventually chose Seedorf as the location. In 1974, the business park "Immenhain" was established in the area of the camp not given over to agricultural use. Businesses set up there included a horse-riding establishment, a reject shop, a militaria shop and a brothel. This use of the former camp area only ended with the establishment of the memorial in the 2000s. ==Memorial==

A Soviet memorial erected at the cemetery site in 1945 was dynamited in 1956 by orders of the Bremervörde district authorities and the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior, due to the memorial's excessive claims regarding the number of victims. Its inscription had read "Hier ruhen 46.000 russische Soldaten und Offiziere, zu Tode gequält in der Nazigefangenschaft" ("Here lie 46,000 Russian soldiers and officers, tortured to death in Nazi imprisonment"). The remains of most non-Soviet POWs were repatriated to their countries of origin. The Italians were reinterred at the Italian war cemetery at Hamburg-Öjendorf. Only around 170 individual graves of POWs from Poland, Yugoslavia or of unknown nationality remain in the graveyard at Sandbostel. In 2004, a foundation (Stiftung Lager Sandbostel) was established. Following three years of preparations, the Gedenkstätte Sandbostel was opened in 2007. In April 2013, the permanent exhibition was opened. Out of a total of around 150 huts, more than 20 remain (largely in the area that used to house the Soviet prisoners). Some appear mostly as they did in the 1940s, others have been altered to serve changing needs in the post-war period. ==See also==