Stalag XIII-D Nürnberg-Langwasser

Stalag XIII-D stood on the Langwasser district of Nuremberg, occupying the barracks and ancillary structures that had been built to house SA delegates attending the Nazi Party rallies on the adjacent Reichsparteitagsgelände. Run by the Wehrmacht, the camp began receiving prisoners in 1940 and held men of many nationalities over its life — including Belgians, French, Norwegians, Poles, Yugoslavs, and, from June 1941, enormous numbers of Soviet prisoners swept in by Operation Barbarossa, pushing the total population toward 150,000 at its peak. In August 1943 an Allied air raid destroyed twenty-three wooden huts; by some fortune only two Soviet prisoners in the camp were killed, though many men on outside work details perished. In late 1944 and early 1945, as the Red Army drove westward, thousands of Allied aircrew evacuated from the eastern Stalag Luft camps arrived: the first contingent of nearly 1,500 men, transferred from Stalag Luft IV on 9 February 1945, included American airmen and around 79 British prisoners, and they found the old rally-ground barracks bitterly cold, louse-ridden, and chronically short of food until Red Cross parcels arrived several weeks later. Between 4 and 15 April 1945 the remaining prisoners were force-marched westward to Stalag VII-A at Moosburg; U.S. Army advance elements liberated the emptied camp on 16 April 1945.