Stalag VIII-B
Stalag VIII-B was a German Army prisoner-of-war camp during World War II, later renumbered Stalag-344, located near the village of Lamsdorf (now Łambinowice) in Silesia. The camp initially occupied barracks built to house British and French prisoners in World War I. At this same location there had been a prisoner camp during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Timeline In the 1860s, the Prussian Army established a training area for artillery at a wooded area near Lamsdorf, a small village connected by rail to Opole and Nysa. During the Franco-Prussian War, a camp for French prisoners of war was established here, which housed some 3000 French POW's. During the First World War, a much larger POW camp was established here with some 90,000 soldiers of various nationalities interned here. After the treaty of Versailles, the camp was closed down. It was reopened in 1939 to house Polish prisoners from the German invasion of Poland, which started World War II in September 1939. Later during the war, approximately 100,000 prisoners from Australia, Belgium, British India, British Palestine, Canada, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, the United States and Yugoslavia passed through this camp. In 1941 a separate camp, Stalag VIII-F was set up close by to house the Soviet prisoners. In 1943, the Lamsdorf camp was split up, and many of the prisoners (and Arbeitskommando) were transferred to two new base camps Stalag VIII-C Sagan (modern Żagań) and Stalag VIII-D Teschen (modern Český Těšín). The base camp at Lamsdorf was renumbered Stalag 344. The Soviet Army reached the camp on 17 March 1945. In 1945-1946, the camp was used by the Soviet-installed Polish Ministry of Public Security to house some 8000-9000 Germans, both prisoners of war and civilians. Polish army personnel being repatriated from POW camps were also processed through Łambinowice and sometimes held there as prisoners for several months. Some were later released, others sent to Gulags in Siberia. About 1000-1500 German prisoners died in the camp due to malnutrition, lack of medicine and acts of violence and terror by the guards. Camp commander Czesław Gęborski was later put on trial for his role in running the camp. Stalag Luft VIII-B By 1943, the famous camp for Allied flight personnel in Sagan - Stalag Luft III - had become so overcrowded that about 1,000, mostly non-commissioned flight personnel, were transferred to Lamsdorf. A part of Stalag VIII-B was separated by building new barbed-wire fences, designated Stalag Luft VIII-B. Thus a camp within a camp was created. However all food was provided from kitchens operated by army personnel in the camp proper. Medical facilities The hospital facilities at Stalag VIII-B were among the best in all Stalags. The so-called Lazarett was set up on a separate site with eleven concrete buildings. Six of them were self-contained wards, each with space for about 100 patients. The others served as treatment blocks with operating theaters, X-ray and laboratory facilities, as