The Norwegian POW Museum

Norwegian POW Museum (Krigsfangemuseet i Schildberg) is a Norwegian museum devoted to the history of Norwegian World War II Prisoners of War once interned in the German prisoner of war camp in Schildberg during the Nazi occupation of Norway. The museum is located in Ostrzeszów, Poland.

A prisoner-of-war camp, Stalag XXI-A, was established in some of the town buildings in Schildberg, in Nazi occupied Poland during 1940. In 1943, the camp was renamed Oflag XXI-C for the imprisonment of 1,150 military officers transferred from Norway. On August 16, 1943 the German Wehrmacht arrested all Norwegian officers who were still in Norway. Of the approximately 1,500 officers who were detained, probably one third were sent home the following week because of age, illness, etc. The remainder were to become prisoners of the Nazis in Poland.

In 1982, Eyvind Grundt from Moss, Norway, was sent to Poland on a mission for the Norwegian Red Cross. After completing his work, he began a search for the town where his father had spent two years as a Prisoner of War (POW) during World War II. It was a difficult task, since he only knew the German name of the town, Schildberg.

After many inquiries, Grundt found that Schildberg was a small Polish city of Ostrzeszów. In Ostrzeszów, by chance, he made contact with Lechoslaw Nowakowski, a language professor at the local college. Nowakowski had a good knowledge of the history of the town and shared Grundt's interest in the fate of the 1,150 Norwegian POWs once interned there at Stalag XXI-A.

They discovered that Grundt’s father had been interned in the building that now houses the town’s largest technical school. In the cellar of the school, several Norwegian artifacts were discovered, including a dented tin plate engraved “Kaptein Vagn Enger”. Grundt contacted the manager of the local museum, Josef Janas and they agreed to create a small Norwegian collection in the museum. Initially, it was in the right drawer of the manager’s desk.

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