Stalag VIII-B (344) Lamsdorf

Lamsdorf (Łambinowice), Germany (now Poland)

Stalag VIII-B at Lamsdorf in Upper Silesia (now Łambinowice, Poland) was one of the largest German prisoner-of-war camps, on a site used for military prisoners since the Franco-Prussian War. Opened in 1940 for British troops taken in France, it eventually processed around 100,000 Commonwealth and Allied prisoners. From 1943, as Stalag Luft III grew overcrowded, about a thousand RAF aircrew — mostly non-commissioned men — were held in a wired-off compound here known as Stalag Luft VIII-B. After a reorganisation late in 1943 the camp was redesignated Stalag 344. It was reached by the Soviet army in March 1945; the site today holds Poland’s Central Museum of Prisoners of War.

Airmen held here