Day 30 - Sept 26, 2017: Lambinowice to Kraków.

Day 30 - Sept 26, 2017:  Lambinowice to Kraków

Editors note: I am still here! Thank you for your patience! I am disappointed with always having to ask that of you because of the poor wifi I have encountered. And maybe it is just my rotten luck but the last hotel we were in for three nights had four wifi servers yet every one would kick out before a picture could be uploaded. Bill said he experinenced similar wifi challenges last year in Africa, I expected better in Europe I guess. Anyway, I will be updating the posts from Day 26 on before adding more.

Site of National Remembrance Lambinowice

A 40 minute drive from Opole is the Site of National Remembrance in Labinowice located in the Silesia region of Poland. Several locations within the site boundaries make up the Lamsdorf Stalag VIII Prisoner of War camp.

We met our tour guide Sebastian at the Poland Central Prisoner of War Museum. He was a wealth of knowledge, spoke perfect English and made the trip a great experience. I know that my new Polish buddy Sebastian will be contacting me to make adjustments if my facts are slightly off (and I hope he does!)



The Lamsdorf POW camp has a long history dating back to the 1870's when it was used to house POW's from the Franco-Prussian war. During the Great War, French and British prisoners were held here. Between the wars it was used as an artillery training area for the Germans and Prussians, then once again commissioned to house POW's in 1939.
  
During the Second World War the camp was known as Stalag VIIIB until 1943 when a second camp was added and its name was changed to Stalag 344. It consisted of the British camp and the Russian camp. The British camp held POW's from the commonwealth countries as well as others that were governedby the Geneva Convention. This ensured protection of certain prisoners rights and dictated the conditions of the camps themselves. The Red Cross or similar institutions would provide the prisoners with Care packages that would supplement the daily rations.

The Russians dealt a horrible fate. Joseph Stalin did not subscribe to the Geneva Convention therefore the Germans did not abide by any conventions in their treatment of the Russian prisoners. Many died from the brutal working conditions and/or lack of proper nutrition however the majority died from disease.

During the war the Germans held a total of 10 million prisoners of war. By the war's end, the Lamsdorf POW Camp had held over 300,000 prisoners of war making it the largest German POW camp of the Second World War. The youngest prisoner held at the camp was a 10 year old Polish boy who was active in the Warsaw uprising.

Our soldiers that were captured in Dieppe and taken prisoner were held here as were some of our airmen that were shot down and captured.

The old POW cemetery from WWI contains the graves of 2000 Russian soldiers. 



Approximately 200 Serbians are buried here as well. The Serbian Government paid to have a monument called the grief stricken "Niobe" placed in honour of the soldiers buried there.



The Commonwealth prisoners that died while in captivity in WWII were buried in this cemetery and later exhumed and laid to rest in the Krakow Rakowicki Cemetery in Kraków.

The original Commonwealth POW barracks were made of wood frame construction. As a result, they have since collapsed and no longer exist.  We checked out the former prisoner compounds of the Russian POW's. These were built by the Russian prisoners and were made of concrete. The ruins from one of the camps still exist and one barrack within that camp was preserved by the museum.



Cemetery of Soviet Prisoners-of-War

Nearby is the mass grave containing an estimated 40,000 unnamed Russian soldiers. Entering the gates, I felt an overwhelming ominous presence. It was very solemn and yet disturbing at the same time. To know that around me lie the corpses of 40,000 men...


The German Army felt the need to leave the area in response to the advancing Russian Army yet still held firm the belief that they would ultimately win the war. Prior to leaving, the Germans had erected  warning signs around the mass grave prohibiting access to the area due to landmines.



After the war had ended severe rains had exposed body parts of the Russian corpses buried there. The German prisoners held at the camp immediately after the war were then forced to recover the bodies. Many of these prisoners fell sick and died due to Typhus contracted from the opened graves. The winds carried the disease to the local townships and civilians were also falling sick and dying as a result. At that point the graves were covered to prevent any further spread of Typhus. The total number of bodies estimated to be in the mass grave was calculated based on the number of bodies recovered in the small area that had been opened up. The number could be more than 40,000.

In 1964 the Monument of Martyrdom of Prisoners-of-War was erected on the site to pay tribute to all the POW's of the Lamsdorf camp. 



For more information please check out the following website: http://www.lamsdorf.com/

EatAway

We made the two hour drive to Kraków and checked into our hotel. That evening were able to enjoy a traditional Polish meal with a local couple that lived in a centuries-old flat next the the Main Square in downtown Kraków. We had a fabulous five course meal, good wine and great company! I had booked this using EatAway service. Here is the link: https://www.eataway.com/  Thank you Piotr and Malgorzata for opening your home to Bill and me for an evening of great food and, above all, great company!



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