Stalag II-D

Stalag II-D Stargard was a World War II German Army Prisoner-of-war camp located near Stargard, today Stargard Szczecinski, in western Pomerania, 30 km east of Szczecin.

Timeline

* The camp was established on military training ground in September 1939 to detain Polish prisoners from the German September 1939 offensive. For the first several months they lived in the open or in tents during a very cold winter, while they built the wooden and brick huts for the permanent camp.
* in May and June 1940 French and Belgian soldiers taken prisoner during the Battle of France arrived.
* These were followed by Soviet prisoners from Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941.
* In September and October 1943 Italian prisoners arrived after the Italian capitulation
* Canadian prisoners from the unfortunate Dieppe Raid of August 1942 were transferred to Stargard from Stalag VIII-B in January 1944.
* The camp was liberated by the Red Army mid April 1945

Evacuation and Repatriation

On 25 February 1945 most of the prisoners were forced to march westward in advance of the Soviet offensive and endured great hardships before they were freed by Allied troops in April 1945 .

Living conditions

The lower ranks prisoners at this camp fared much better than those in many other camps further south. They worked predominately on farms and had the possibility to obtain better nourishment.

Escape

It was relatively easy to escape from a farm, but much more difficult to evade recapture. Prisoners working on farms did not have the essential assistance that was provided in Oflags by teams of dedicated specialists who forged documents and prepared maps. Without these it was extremely difficult to traverse hundreds of miles past frequent checks by the Nazi police.

Gabriel Regnier, a French prisoner, describes his failed attempt 23 March 1942 with a French companion. A Polish civilian worker at the farm had helped them by hiding civilian clothes for them. It was a dark night and they successfully reached a freight train that was switching cars at the station that was close to the farm. They successfully hid in one box-car full of boxes. But then the train stopped in Stettin for unloading, they switched to another car loaded with sacks of barley with destination Aachen in western Germany, which they reached four days later. There again they got out to search for a car going to the Netherlands. Unfortunately the driver of a vehicle noticed two persons moving hesitantly along the train and alerted the military police. Recaptured they were returned to Stargard and spent 24 days in solitary confinement. It could have ended much worse.

Sources

* [http://www.rhli.ca/veterans/larin.html account of Canadian soldier]
* [http://stalag.2d.free.fr/stalag_2_d_-_1942_b_-_reprise.htm very detailed memoir of French prisoner] - in French

ee also

* List of German WWII POW camps
* Stalag
* Gerald MacIntosh Johnston