Poles and other prisoners

After the Warsaw Uprising was finally suppressed on 2 October 1944, two rail transports with about 1,400 soldiers of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) arrived at Zeithain. They had surrendered having been assured that they would be treated as prisoners of war according to the provisions of international law. The prisoners were wounded and sick persons, medical personnel and other personnel from various Warsaw hospitals.

Twenty-five huts were made available in a part of the camp that had been cleared especially to accommodate these prisoners. The prisoners set up the 'Zeithain Polish Army Hospital' in these buildings. Within a short time, the 54 doctors and over 400 nurses succeeded in achieving a standard of hygiene that had never before been present in Zeithain. The large number of female prisoners of war also included pregnant women. Eleven Polish children were born in the camp. The deaths among the Polish prisoners of war in Zeithain occurred as a result of their wounds or other diseases they had contracted during the Warsaw Uprising.

The Polish prisoners were treated according to the provisions of international law until the camp was liberated. In contrast to the Italian and Soviet prisoners, they regularly received ration packages from the International Red Cross, which also conducted several inspections of the Polish hospital. Prisoners were allowed to send and receive mail, and officers and non-commissioned officers were exempted from labour.

The same can be said for over one thousand British prisoners of war who were held at Zeithain for three months each in 1943-44 and 1944-45. They were transferred to the camp not for health reasons but because quarters were not available at Stalag IV B in Mühlberg.

Little is known about the number of Yugoslavian prisoners of war or their living conditions in Zeithain. However, the deaths among them were also attributable to tuberculosis.

The bodies of the Polish and Serbian victims were exhumed and reburied after they had been located in 2004. The Neuburxdorf/Bad Liebenwerda military cemetery is now the final resting place of these two groups of victims. The memorial commemorates the victims with nameplates at the former grave sites.