Stalag II-B
| Stalag II-B | |
|---|---|
| Hammerstein, Pomerania | |
 Stalag II-B
|
|
| Coordinates | 53°41′07″N 16°54′35″E / 53.6853°N 16.9096°E |
| Type | Prisoner-of-war camp |
| Site information | |
| Controlled by |
 Nazi Germany
|
| Site history | |
| In use | 1939-1945 |
Stalag II-B was a German World War II prisoner-of-war camp situated 2.4 kilometres (1.5 mi) west of the village of Hammerstein, Pomerania (now the town of Czarne, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland) on the north side of the railway line.
The camp was situated on a former army training ground (Übungsplatz), and had been used during World War I as a camp for Russian prisoners. In 1933 it was established as one of the first Nazi concentration camps, to house German communists. In late September 1939 the camp was changed to a prisoner-of-war camp to house Polish soldiers from the September Campaign, particularly those from the Pomorze Army. In December 1940, 1,691 Polish prisoners were recorded as being there. At first they lived in tents, throughout the severe winter of 1939-1940, and construction of all the huts was not completed until 1941. In June 1940 French and Belgian prisoners from the Battle of France began to arrive. To make room for them many of the Poles were forced to give up their status as POWs and become civilian slave laborers.
The construction of the second camp, Lager-Ost ("East Compound") began in June 1941 to accommodate the large numbers of Soviet prisoners taken in Operation Barbarossa. It was located south of the railway tracks. In November 1941 a typhoid fever epidemic broke out in Lager-Ost. A total of 38,383 Soviet POWs were held Stalag II B.
In August 1943 the first American prisoners arrived having been taken prisoner in Tunisia. In April 1945 the camp was liberated by the Soviet Red Army.
In August 1943 the Stalag was reported as newly opened to privates of the US ground forces with a strength of 451. The Hammerstein installation acted as a headquarters for work detachments in the region and seldom housed more than one fifth of the POWs credited to it. Thus at the end of May 1944, although the strength was listed as 4,807, only 1,000 of these were in the enclosure. At its peak in January 1945, the camp strength was put at 7,200 Americans, with some 5,315 of these out on 9 major Arbeitskommando ("Work Companies").
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