History of Stalag XIII B



Stalag 13B opened in 1940 near the town of Weiden in Germany, and housed prisoners of war from many nations: Russia, Great Britain, the U.S., France, Belgium, Poland, Serbia, Spain, and Yugoslavia. At its peak, in April of 1944, the camp held around 35,000 men.



Roughly 90% of the men were assigned to work details in the Weiden area. Some worked on farms, others in factories, and some unlucky prisoners were sent to work in nearby coal mines under brutal conditions.



The Western POW's were kept separate from the large number of Russian prisoners. Stalin hadn't signed the Geneva Convention and the treatment of the Soviet prisoners was appalling. The mortality rate was extremely high from malnutrition and disease. A gruesome consequence: the mayor of Weiden in 1941 asked the commandant of the nearby Flossburg concentration camp for permission to send the dead Russian prisoners to their crematorium, because the town cemetery was getting too full.



In 1945, after the Flossburg camp was shut down, 26 Russians were buried in the Weiden cemetery and are still there. All the other POW's buried in the town cemetery have been returned to their own countries.



On April 16, 1945, Allied fighter planes attacked a train passing through Weiden; the explosions caused extensive damage to some houses and three of the barracks, and several prisoners were killed. According to one of the Belgian prisoners, the Allies knew the camp was there; one of the pilots flew past and waggled his wings at them, as a friendly gesture to the prisoners.



Stalag XIII B was liberated by the American forces on April 22, 1945.