Stalag XVII-B Krems-Gneixendorf

Stalag XVII-B was established in October 1939 in Gneixendorf, a village roughly six kilometres northwest of Krems an der Donau in Lower Austria, and grew to become the largest prisoner-of-war camp in the German-controlled “Ostmark.” It was a Wehrmacht Stalag (Stammlager) under Wehrkreis XVII, though the American compound was placed under Luftwaffe administration, with Oberst Kuhn as commandant and Luftwaffe officers handling security. The camp held prisoners of many nationalities — Belgians, French, Serbs, Italians, Soviets, and from October 1943 a large and growing contingent of American enlisted aircrew NCOs who had been shot down over Europe; British and other Allied prisoners occupied flanking compounds. At its peak the camp held up to 66,000 men across all nationalities, with roughly 4,200 Americans present by 1945; Soviet prisoners suffered catastrophically from malnutrition and disease, accounting for more than 1,600 of the approximately 1,700 deaths recorded at the site. On 8 April 1945, some 4,000 prisoners fit enough to walk were marched westward on an eighteen-day, 281-mile forced march to Braunau am Inn, where the column was liberated by the US 13th Armored Division on 3 May 1945; the roughly 900 men left behind in the camp hospital were freed by the Red Army on 9 May. The experiences of the American aircrew NCOs at Stalag XVII-B formed the basis for the Broadway play and Billy Wilder’s celebrated 1953 film Stalag 17.