At the end of September 1939, the Wehrmacht brought the first 3,000 Polish prisoners of war to the Sandbostel prisoner-of-war team camp (Stalag) set up shortly beforehand near the village of Sandbostel in Lower Saxony.
Until the liberation on April 29, 1945, several hundred thousand prisoners from all over the world passed through the camp. Their treatment was regulated in international treaties, but violations were the order of the day among all groups of prisoners. For ideological reasons, the Wehrmacht refused to give the Soviet soldiers who came to Sandbostel from October 1941 any protection under international law. Thousands of them died of starvation and disease.
One of the central tasks of the prisoner of war camp was the provision of labor. So far, over 1,100 work details are known in the entire Elbe-Weser triangle.
In April 1945 the SS deported around 9,500 prisoners from the main camp and from satellite camps of the Neuengamme concentration camp to Sandbostel. Around 3,000 of them died of epidemics, exhaustion or violence by the guards. After the liberation by the British Army on April 29, 1945 and extensive rescue and supply measures, the camp was first used as a British internment camp, then as a prison, as a camp for GDR refugees, as a Bundeswehr depot and as an industrial area. Part of the site has been a memorial site since 2007