Hitler's British Slaves (19 page)

5

A Place Not Called Home

‘We were always billeted and quartered in the worst possible places i.e. wet cellars, converted barns, vermin ridden sheds and barracks, hopelessly overcrowded and always badly fed … [the] Geneva Convention was always under violation.’

Driver Alan Edwards, Royal Engineers.

‘The rats are not quite as numerous as they were last time.’

Red Cross report on Stalag IVa, February 1945.

Having experienced defeat, degradation and discomfort between capture and their arrival at work camps the prisoners could at least hope for one thing – that their living conditions would be more comfortable than those within the Stalags. Like so many other parts of the POW experience, what they found on arrival at work camps was a lottery. Some looked up optimistically at the signs with the word ‘
Lager
’ on them and thought they had arrived at a brewery. For most their destination was nowhere near so promising.

For men increasingly exhausted by the burden of labour it was important they be allowed to live with some measure of comfort. They yearned for somewhere comfortable to lay their heads after 12-hour shifts of mining, quarrying or harvesting. Yet for most comfort was a distant notion, a far off dream that few dared imagine and fewer still ever knew. With time their minds became shaped by all they had experienced – there was no real comfort, just varying degrees of discomfort.

Although the employers had control over their labour, it was decreed that camp commandants had the right to withdraw
the prisoners if suitable housing conditions were not met. The importance of the role of the Stalag commandants cannot be overstated, the prisoners were their responsibility. It was their duty to ensure the men were treated in a manner befitting captured combatants. As the official German rules stated: ‘The prisoner of war can expect to be treated with respect regarding his personage and his honour. Bad and degrading treatment is not compatible with German dig-nity.’
¹
Time would prove few commandants remained true to this code. Although some were fastidious about following the rules, closing down work camps where prisoners faced arbitrary violence, others were less particular. The commandant of Stalag XIa at Altengrabow was one of those whose developed a reputation for caring little about the conditions of prisoners at Arbeitskommandos, making little effort to maintain contact with the work camps where his prisoners laboured. He was untroubled by the existence of camps where the employers showed no interest in the welfare of their working prisoners. It was little wonder his Stalag was latter described as: ‘nothing but one big complaint’.
²

Despite the differences between the behaviour of the various commandants certain trends emerged throughout the network of work camps. In general, conditions in the western regions of the Reich were better than in the east – with the occasional existence of flushing toilets – but that was by no means the rule, there were plenty of prisoners enduring unhygienic and unhealthy conditions throughout Germany. It became clear that few among the POWs were living a comfortable life. As the Foreign Office stressed to the Red Cross of the conditions endured by many labourers: ‘To describe them as thoroughly bad is quite inadequate. Disgraceful is a more suitable word.’
³
As they rightly pointed out, how could one commandant keep watch over the conditions endured by
23,000 men distributed through 400 work details?

Few experienced anything more than basic comforts. They were housed in whatever accommodation was available near their workplace. Old school houses, stables, tourist hotels in mountain villages, former seminaries, Hitler Youth summer camps, empty beer halls, dance halls, disused factory buildings complete with abandoned machinery, purpose-built wooden huts, farm buildings, factory canteens, disused train wagons where prisoners slept on a straw covered floor – all became home to this vast new army of labour. One working party was even housed in an eighteenth-century riding school, and Cypriot prisoners were housed in an army barracks of similar vintage. Some lived amidst scenes of desolation, with their huts surrounded by a rubbish strewn wasteland. Most depressingly one working party was housed in huts hidden beneath a railway bridge. In an extreme case of POWs being forced to witness the overbearing pride of the Nazis, they were housed in the local dance hall. Each Sunday, on their only day of rest, the prisoners were marched out so that the local Nazi Party officials could hold rallies and political meetings.

Many of the POWs faced lodgings unsuited for use as housing. At AK35, a detachment from Stalag XXa, the prisoners lived in derelict buildings within the factory complex where they worked. In these depressing surroundings they slept 80 men to a room. At other Arbeitskommandos POWs lived in barrack huts sleeping up to 140 men. Not all rooms slept so many men, however one hut for just 36 men measured just 30 by 32 feet, hardly leaving the men any space to relax. The E3 workcamp, whose intake of POWs came from Stalag VIIIb, had over 700 men sleeping in just six huts. In these they spent their nights on palliases stuffed with straw that was changed just once in 18 months.

Certain basic conditions were common to most work details. Prisoners slept in wooden bunks, two or three tiers high, beneath rough woollen blankets that lay over straw filled palliases. They kept their possessions in small wooden cupboards and hung their clothing on wooden pegs fixed to the walls. Long tables ran along the middle of rooms, lined with stools upon which they sat to eat their meals, write letters home and play innumerable games of cards. Yet though such conditions could be expected at work camps, in reality the living conditions for prisoners were as varied as the jobs they did. Some POWs lived in clean comfortable conditions yet had no running water, whilst others lived in billets unfit for animals but had access to a tap. The whole system was a lottery. Whilst some men were given comfortable beds with three or four blankets to cover them, others didn’t even have straw to sleep on. Even those fortunate enough to get bunks did not necessarily live in comfort. Some slept on palliases stuffed with wool that was left unchanged for month upon month, others had to use paper sacks. At a camp in a forested area the prisoners slept on palliases stuffed with pine branches and one particularly unfortunate work detachment of 250 men were all forced to sleep on bare boards since the previous inhabitants of the camp had burned the palliases to kill the bugs living in them. When members of one working party complained they were without bedding the Germans simply suggested they put cardboard on their bunks.

In some detachments there were too few beds leaving men sleeping on cold hard stone or wooden floors. Others found themselves sleeping not in bunks but on wooden shelves than ran around the walls. The winter of 1940 saw prisoners at a labour camp in Bromberg sleeping on the floor of an unheated stone house. At a work camp dependent on Stalag XIa 79 South African prisoners found themselves sharing just
54 blankets. Others found their blankets too small to sleep comfortably beneath and men on mining detachments found their blankets soiled with coal dust, meaning that after a hard day’s work they returned still to be surrounded by the sooty reminders of their labours.

This was not the only darkness that impinged on the lives of the prisoners. In the dingy barrack rooms light was at a premium. With small windows, often shuttered even during daylight, the light failed to penetrate the gloom. At E734 a barrack room for 24 men was illuminated by just three 25-watt bulbs. Even in huts with lighting it was often found insufficient to allow reading at night. In one camp the prisoners reported being without light bulbs for two full years, leaving their activities confined to the hours of daylight – hours when they were usually at work. At another camp the punishment for escape attempts was the confiscation of all light bulbs, something that contravened the Geneva Convention in making collective reprisals for the actions of an individual. The shortage of light was not the only problem, the insistence of the guards about turning out lights at night also affected the prisoners. Some found themselves returning from work at 9.30 p.m. only to be told that lights out was at 10.30 p.m. With just an hour to eat and wash there was little time to spare before being plunged into darkness. There was no time for writing letters and repairing clothes, instead all they could do was lie in the darkness, smoke and make idle chatter until they fell asleep.

Other factors also came into play to spoil their enjoyment of the evenings. In many work detachments the prisoners were locked in their huts and had their trousers and boots taken away each night to prevent escape attempts. This left them confined to their dull, damp rooms for even longer hours each day, and without their trousers the men were forced
into their bug-infested beds in an attempt to keep warm. Yet even if allowed to keep their trousers few would have anywhere to hang them at night. Wardrobes were unknown and many were even without cupboards, instead hanging the few clothes they had from nails hammered into the bare walls of their hut.

For some work parties the situation was even worse, all their work clothes and boots had to be handed in overnight. At some work detachments the guards allowed clothing to be dried overnight in their kitchens. Not all were so lucky. Instead their work clothes were bundled together into large sacks that were carried out and handed over to the guards. The unfortunate men detailed for this task had to make the journey in their underwear with bare feet. The next morning the process was reversed and the clothes were collected ready for them to start work again. In winter they found their work clothes wet or frozen. Pulling them on over their exhausted limbs they started the day feeling as cold and damp as they had finished the previous day and knowing that the next morning the process would begin all over again. For one group of Australians, used to the clement weather of their homeland, the winter weather endured at the Polish fax factory they worked in was more than they could bear. Via the Red Cross they requested that they be moved to camps further south in order to benefit from the warmer weather. Unsurprisingly their request was refused.

It was not only in winter that the living conditions troubled the prisoners. They spent many long summer’s evenings locked within their accommodation. To miss out on fresh air and sunlight was frustrating for them. Often poorly ventilated with open drains nearby, foul smells filled the huts. Damp laundry, stinking socks and boots, the nightly stench of men breaking wind, all made the air heavy and difficult to
breathe. Sometimes they were forced to keep their windows bolted shut and forbidden to open shutters. At one work camp the stated reason for sealing the windows was to prevent trading with locals and to stop contact between POWs and the ‘village belles’ with whom the prisoners had become friendly. In one work camp the situation was aggravated by a blocked chimney that poured smoke into their barrack room, in winter this offered a stark choice – keep warm and suffocate or freeze. Prisoners at a cigarette paper mill found themselves working in rooms filled by pulp steam all day. At night they retired to rooms on the floor above their workplace. As a result the air was heavy and damp. In an attempt to get fresh air the prisoners were forced to request regular walks outside the compound for fear they would all develop respiratory infections. At one farm the prisoners considered their situation a fire risk. Ten men were locked into a 5 by 6 metre room with just a single window and insufficient ventilation. With no escape route they feared the effects of fire, this was remedied by constructing a fire alarm made from a ploughshare and a heavy nail to act as a gong. When one commandant was challenged with regard to the poor ventilation endured by prisoners he offered the simple explanation that the problem of air quality was entirely the fault of the POWs who smoked all night long.

The unfortunate prisoners at Arbeitskommando E414 experienced conditions few would have wished on their worst enemies. Billeted on the ground floor of the leather factory in which they were employed, the prisoners found no escape from their day job, and the fact they had no drinking water on the premises was the least of their worries: ‘New skins with meat still on them are placed outside the kitchen window, frightful smell and a breeding place for flies etc. Factory dump within 50 metres of billet.’
⁴
With their washroom still
incomplete the POWs, often bloodstained from their work, were forced to wash in the same kitchens where they prepared their meals.

Whilst some prisoners were complaining about stuffy conditions within their barracks others had the opposite problem. Some huts had been erected quickly, were shoddily constructed and even in summer a cold wind whistled through them. Prisoners found water ran straight off the hillsides and through the walls of their barracks, leaving their possessions soaked and their beds permanently damp. The unfortunate prisoners soon reported suffering from chilblains courtesy of their permanently damp boots. In winter many huts were so cold prisoners awoke to find frost on their beds, others found ice had formed on the interior walls. In extreme cases prisoners awoke to find vegetables had frozen solid during the night, whilst the rains of both winter and summer poured through poorly covered roofs to soak the bunks of the men beneath. Prisoners at one farm were even billeted in a hut that didn’t have a door.

Although wooden huts tended to let in more wind than the more solidly constructed stone buildings, conditions in the latter were seldom more comfortable. The more established buildings were often extremely damp. Even in summer the heat failed to penetrate the heavy walls. One ‘thoroughly bad camp’ housed work detachment AK175, from Stalag XXb. Based at a Danzig factory where the manager liked to threaten POWs with his revolver, the prisoners slept in three or four level bunks with little space between them. They had no tables or benches and were forced to buy their own buckets for washing. Added to these deprivations the building was infested with rats. The vermin were constantly seen scuttling from an open drain, covered only by wooden planks, which came from the kitchen and ran through their sleeping quarters.
To add insult to injury the enterprise was laughingly named
‘Neue Heimat’
– new homeland.