Archaeological discoveries

Researchers want to find the identity of prisoners buried on the site of a stalag in Poland

Excavations at the site of an ancient stalag in Poland have unearthed dozens of mass graves. To identify the first 64 bodies found, a team of researchers will combine genetic analysis and the use of archives. Most of them are soldiers of the Red Army, who probably died of typhus as soon as they arrived at the camp, after a terrible journey that had no return.

Russian front, July 1941:a column of 50,000 Russian prisoners marching towards the concentration camps.

Several million soldiers were taken prisoner by German forces during World War II. Poles, from 1939, then French, Belgians and Dutch following the Battle of France. In June 1941, Operation Barbarossa, the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, gave a new dimension to the war, and the first battles won by the Wehrmacht led to the surrender of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers. While the majority of these prisoners died on the spot, executed or starved, a small minority were deported to the stalags (short for Kriegsgefangenen-Stammlager , literally "base camps for prisoners of war") of central Europe. It is a part of their story, still too little known, that researchers are trying to bring to light on the site of Stalag II-D, in Poland.

Red Army soldiers found at Stargard Stalag site

Excavations in the former Stargard POW camp (now Stargard Szczeciński, near Szczecin), known as stalag II-D, began in October 2021 and immediately found dozens of mass graves. Only one of them has so far been exhumed, resulting in the discovery of the remains of 64 men. In a statement from the Polish News Agency, the director of the forensic genetics department of the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, Andrzej Ossowski, says that the majority are soldiers of the Red Army. . This is what the objects found in this grave suggest, among which are also fragments of Polish and Belgian uniforms, without the researchers still being able to establish with certainty that soldiers of these two nationalities lie alongside the Russian prisoners. .

More than 4 million Russian soldiers still missing

All the work of the researchers will consist in finding the identity of these soldiers and determining the causes of their death. As far as their identification is concerned, they can rely, on the German side, on the archives of the Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt), the German Information Service for the Close Relatives of the Dead of the Former German Army, and on the Russian side, on a gigantic database:the OBD Memorial. This site, set up in 2007 by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, contains tens of millions of digitized official documents relating to Red Army soldiers who died or were reported missing during the Second World War and the period. post-war. It says that the project has already found the names of more than a million POWs, but Wehrmacht documents seized by the Red Army indicate that more than 5 million Soviets were captured, " meaning over 4 million names have been forgotten and erased from history ".

Combining genetic analysis and archival research

Several million soldiers were taken prisoner by German forces during World War II. Poles, from 1939, then French, Belgians and Dutch following the Battle of France. In June 1941, Operation Barbarossa, the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, gave a new dimension to the war, and the first battles won by the Wehrmacht led to the surrender of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers. While the majority of these prisoners died on the spot, executed or starved, a small minority were deported to the stalags (short for Kriegsgefangenen-Stammlager , literally "base camps for prisoners of war") of central Europe. It is a part of their story, still too little known, that researchers are trying to bring to light on the site of Stalag II-D, in Poland.

Red Army soldiers found at Stargard Stalag site

Excavations in the former Stargard POW camp (now Stargard Szczeciński, near Szczecin), known as stalag II-D, began in October 2021 and immediately found dozens of mass graves. Only one of them has so far been exhumed, resulting in the discovery of the remains of 64 men. In a statement from the Polish News Agency, the director of the forensic genetics department of the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, Andrzej Ossowski, says that the majority are soldiers of the Red Army. . This is what the objects found in this grave suggest, among which are also fragments of Polish and Belgian uniforms, without the researchers still being able to establish with certainty that soldiers of these two nationalities lie alongside the Russian prisoners. .

More than 4 million Russian soldiers still missing

All the work of the researchers will consist in finding the identity of these soldiers and determining the causes of their death. As far as their identification is concerned, they can rely, on the German side, on the archives of the Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt), the German Information Service for the Close Relatives of the Dead of the Former German Army, and on the Russian side, on a gigantic database:the OBD Memorial. This site, set up in 2007 by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, contains tens of millions of digitized official documents relating to Red Army soldiers who died or were reported missing during the Second World War and the period. post-war. It says that the project has already found the names of more than a million POWs, but Wehrmacht documents seized by the Red Army indicate that more than 5 million Soviets were captured, " meaning over 4 million names have been forgotten and erased from history ".

Combining genetic analysis and archival research

It is in this approach that the work of Polish researchers is part of, who in 2013 set up an identification procedure adapted to the bodies of soldiers found in anonymous graves, combining forensic anthropological examination, genetic analysis by DNA extraction and research in military archives.
To find the names of Soviet soldiers, the researchers proceed by cross-checking:if they find near a body its identity plate of prisoner, then they hold a serial number. It is then a question of finding this registration number in the OBD database, by restricting the search to the Stargard camp. They thus have access to the identity cards of the prisoners established by the German army on their arrival at the stalag, which were confiscated by the Red Army. Insofar as these cards list numerous data (age, height, hair color, fingerprints, photograph), the researchers consider that the identity of the person is attested by the correspondence of eight signs of recognition with the anthropological examination . They further note that the Soviets had all the information about the soldiers buried at Stargard, but they never informed the families of their deaths, because as prisoners of the enemy, they were considered " traitors ".

All died in December 1941

As indicated by their maps recorded on the OBD site, the Russian soldiers found at Stargard died within four days, in December 1941. They were not shot because anthropological examination revealed no mark of brutal death, the researchers rather detecting traces of exhaustion. Since the weakening made the prisoners more susceptible to infectious diseases, tests will be carried out to detect the presence of pathogens in the bone material – this will be a first in Poland. Knowing the living conditions to which the prisoners, Russians in particular, were exposed, the researchers expect to find traces of typhus.

The special fate reserved for Russian prisoners

Not all Wehrmacht POWs held in camps enjoyed the same living conditions. Nazi ideology, based on a hierarchy of nationalities, reserved a special fate for the Soviets under the policy of extermination. The other prisoners were direct witnesses, as described in his war memoirs by the Frenchman Rémy de Bettignies, quartermaster at 35 e artillery regiment, held at stalag II-B at Hammerstein (now Czarne, 160 km east of Stargard). After 15 days of traveling in cattle cars without any food, the Russian soldiers were "skeletons " he wrote, and once settled in their barracks, their sanitary conditions only worsened:"typhus was rampant endemic, mainly in the Russian sector, favored by weakness, malnutrition and a total lack of hygiene. The dead were deposited outside the barracks and each morning a cart took its load to a pit outside the camp. "The French non-commissioned officer indicates that these graves dug near Stalag II-B were found in 1968; the bodies of 40,000 prisoners were counted there.

The stalags, future sites of anthropological research

Historians know that there are still unexhumed mass graves at former World War II places of detention on Polish territory. This is why these excavations initiated in October 2021 constitute the first phase of an exhaustive search on the site of Stalag II-D. Polish researchers know that they will most likely find other bodies there, but it will be more difficult for them to identify prisoners of other nationalities, as they have very little information about them.
Stalag II-D was one of the largest prison camps of the Wehrmacht. It operated throughout the war and soldiers from all over Europe (Belgium, France, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Yugoslavia) were detained there. Not all remained in the main camp; most were then divided into teams (Kommandos ) to work on local farms or factories. Some of these work sites were particularly difficult, and many prisoners died while in custody; they were then generally buried near their place of work. This is the case of 10 Soviet detainees attached to stalags II-B and 315, in the Hammerstein region, that Andrzej Ossowski's team identified in 2013. They all died because of their poor living conditions in the farm where they had been assigned. They were all only in their twenties.