In 1939, after the aggression of Nazi Germany on Poland, thousands of Polish soldiers were taken prisoner. Prisoners were first sent to the so-called transit camps. dulags (German: Durchgangslager). After initial registration, they were sent to permanent camps (so-called stalags, short for German: Stammlager), which in many cases were established next to the temporary ones. The camp in Konin Żagański (German: Kunau) existed already at the end of September 1939 and operated until the spring of 1940. From Dulag Kunau, soldiers were gradually transferred to the Stalag VIIIC camp in Żagań (German: Sagan).
Individual stalags were marked with a Roman number corresponding to the military district in which the camp was located (in the case of Żagań, it was the 8th Military District of the Wehrmacht) and the next letter of the Arabic alphabet (for example: Stalag VIII A Görlitz, Stalag VIII B Lamsdorf/Łambinowice, Stalag VIII C Sagan etc.). About 8,000 prisoners were transferred from Dulag Kunau to Żagań and immediately set to work building barracks. Work at the Sagan camp began in October 1939.
The conditions created by the Wehrmacht in Konin were bad and differed significantly from the recommendations of international war law (Convention Relating to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, signed in Geneva on July 27, 1929). The first visit to the new camp was recalled by prisoner Janusz Ostrowski: Double barbed wire fences, guard towers armed with machine guns and powerful searchlights, and large tents arranged in a row, able to accommodate about 160 people. Immediately after arriving at the camp, we received our first meal. It was a bowl of carrot soup, that is, carrots overcooked in salted water, and 1/5 of a loaf of army bread. It satisfied our hunger, which was terribly tiring, but we were too exhausted to feel full for long.
POW Ostrowski was a non-commissioned officer, but in the camp he found himself in a tent for privates. When he realized that there was a special tent for cadets in the camp, he was directed there after identifying himself. The tents were crowded and the prisoners slept in four rows on the bare ground with a little hay. There were two blankets for three people. Ostrowski: We had our heads cut short, we had a bath and our clothes were deloused. The bath looked like this: in the open air, under a shelter, there were jars half-filled with warm water, into which, after undressing, you had to go in and try to wash yourself, of course if you had soap. At the same time, during this bath, the "hairdresser" was cutting heads with a razor. The removed clothing was put into a device similar to a locomotive, which produced superheated steam at a temperature of approximately 110°C and roasted the poor clothing under pressure for an hour. Theoretically, this action should be enough to destroy any life that might be there. However, the result was that whoever did not have lice yet acquired them after the bath and delousing. After the bath, with chattering teeth, one had to wait naked in the open air until the clothes were taken out of the cauldron and, having found one's belongings in the pile, put on one's clothes. Everything was terribly wrinkled, so for some time, until it ironed itself out, we looked gruesome.
Prisoners from the liquidated camp in Kunau were sent to Zgorzelec (Görlitz) and Żagań. Soldiers transferred from Kunau to Sagan had identical living conditions: they slept in tents, and only then were they gradually moved to unfinished brick barracks. The camp in Żagań was completed in January 1940 and operated until the evacuation on February 8, 1945.
In May 2018, the Museum of Prisoner of War Camps in Żagań organized search works on the site of the former Dulag Kunau. As a result of research supervised by the Lubuskie Provincial Conservator of Monuments, a number of items related to the stay of Polish soldiers in Konin were found. After conservation, the finds will be placed on the museum's permanent exhibition. The Lubusz Exploration Group NADODRZE and the owner of the area, the Żagań Forest District, participated in the research work at the camp. On the initiative of the entities involved in the search, on September 29, 2018, a commemorative stone will be unveiled at the camp in Konin Żagański.
Translated by Google •
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