Stalag XIII-C Hammelburg

Stalag XIII-C was a Wehrmacht-administered prisoner-of-war camp established in May 1940 on the long-established German Army training ground at Lager Hammelburg, roughly three kilometres south of the town of Hammelburg in Lower Franconia, Bavaria. It was an Army stalag holding primarily enlisted men and non-commissioned officers — unlike the Luftwaffe-run Stalag Luft camps, it was not specifically designated for aircrew, though British Commonwealth soldiers captured in the Battle of Crete arrived in June and July 1941 and by April 1944 the camp held an estimated 30,000 prisoners of varied Allied nationalities, with Russian soldiers forming the large majority alongside Australians, British, New Zealanders, Serbs, Poles, and French. Officers held at Hammelburg were transferred to the adjacent Oflag XIII-B in April 1943, leaving XIII-C as the base camp for NCOs and other ranks, which also served as a distribution point for International Red Cross parcels and mail. By early 1945 conditions had deteriorated sharply: American prisoners who arrived after a brutal 500-mile winter march from Stalag VIII-D suffered severe frostbite, and daily rations had fallen to around 1,050 calories. In March 1945 a US armoured task force — Task Force Baum, dispatched under orders linked to General Patton — raided the camp in an attempt to liberate American prisoners, but the relief column was overwhelmed before it could withdraw with the freed men. Combat Command B of the US 14th Armored Division finally liberated Hammelburg on 6 April 1945; post-war excavations in 1947 uncovered 63 mass graves in the surrounding woods containing approximately 13,000 mostly Soviet prisoners. The site remains a German military installation today, home to the Bundeswehr Infantry School.