Museum Oflag IIC Woldenberg

Muzeum Woldenberczyków

During the Second World War, Woldenberg (Polish: Dobiegniew) in the former Neumark region (Polish: Dobiegniew) was the site of the Wehrmacht’s largest prisoner-of-war camp for Polish officers – OfLag II C. A museum has been located there since 1987 which was relaunched with a new exihibtion in 2022.

History

In Woldenberg (Polish: Dobiegniew), the Wehrmacht’s largest prisoner-of-war camp operated between May 21, 1940 and January 25, 1945, housing 6,000 Polish officers as well as up to 1,000 non-commissioned officers and soldiers – spread over some 25 hectares and comprising 25 barracks as well as other administrative and service buildings. In contrast to the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war, those in charge at OfLag II C adhered to the Geneva Convention: non-commissioned officers and enlisted men earned their food through work, whilst officers were paid the same pay as an officer of the same rank in the detaining nation; however, this was paid in »camp currency«, which could only be used within the camp. The International Red Cross and the Young Men’s Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.) also provided support. At OfLag II C, the prisoners had access to numerous clubs and social facilities for mental and physical exercise. Eighty officers, who were teachers in civilian life, gave lessons – including in philosophy and law, French and English. Around 1,500 prisoners took part in university-level courses, the certificates for which were later recognised by Polish universities. There were several libraries containing around 20,000 books, choirs, music ensembles, a theatre and a symphony orchestra, as well as numerous sporting competitions.
The resistance and the clandestine military activities within the camp were tightly organised. From 1942 onwards, prisoners maintained encrypted radio contact with their home country and attempted to obtain information on the current situation at the front via radio broadcasts – primarily from London and Moscow. Also in 1942, five officers managed to escape. They joined the underground resistance in Poland. A further attempt by around 150 officers to escape through a tunnel failed in 1943, as it was discovered shortly before it was completed.
On 21 January 1945, in view of the situation at the front, nearly 3,000 prisoners were forced to set out on a march westwards. The remaining 4,000 were liberated by the Red Army on 30 January 1945.

Dobiegniew, 2026, Central memorial stone with a flagpole and a cross, Stiftung Denkmal

Dobiegniew, 2026, Memorial plaque from 1966, Stiftung Denkmal

Victims

At OfLag II C, the Wehrmacht held Polish officers, non-commissioned officers and rank-and-file soldiers captured during the September 1939 campaign, as well as a number of officers who had been taken prisoner in 1940 during the conquest of France, and around 100 officers of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), who were taken prisoner following the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 — a total of around 6,000 officers, as well as 700 to 1,000 non-commissioned officers and rank-and-file soldiers. Between 1940 and 1945, around 60 prisoners died from illness and accidents. A further 15 were murdered: two following a death sentence handed down by the Gestapo, four as part of the so-called euthanasia programme, and the remainder were shot by the guards whilst attempting to escape; their names are known. There was a cemetery within the camp for the dead; their remains were reburied after the war in Gorzów Wielkopolski. In addition, prisoners died in late January 1945 during the evacuation march towards the west. The number of former prisoners of war who were persecuted and killed after 1945 by the communist secret service of the People’s Republic of Poland as alleged »collaborators« with the Germans remains unclear.

The Second World War began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and the occupation of the west of the country by German troops and the east of the country by the Red Army. Persecution and terror directly followed the invasion in both parts of the country. German units massacred members of the intelligentsia, Jewish and non-Jewish civilians as well as hospital patients. At the end of 1939 the German administration established ghettos where the Jewish population was forced to live in cramped and horrendous conditions. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, eastern Poland also fell under German control. SS Einsatzgruppen started to systematically murder Jewish men, later also women and children. In autumn 1941, local German authorities in the former west of the country began to prepare for the mass murder of Jewish ghetto prisoners using poison gas. By 1945, some three million Polish Jews had been murdered in the extermination camps at Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek or Auschwitz, starved to death in the ghettos or shot dead. In 1943 the Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto staged an uprising, which was brutally crushed by the SS. Polish soldiers fought with the Allies on all fronts during the Second World War. Polish partisan groups, including the patriotic »Armia Krajowa« (Home Army), formed the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe. August 1, 1944 saw the start of the Warsaw Uprising, the most extensive civilian campaign against the Germans in occupied Europe. It failed also because the Red Army, already standing on the opposite side of the Vistula River, chose not to intervene. It is estimated that up to 250,000 people lost their lives in the uprising. A total of around three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death during the German occupation. Once the Red Army had arrived on (East) Polish soil in January 1944, the troops of the Armia Krajowa were stripped of their weapons by the Soviet secret service and the officers were either shot or deported. The millions of deaths during the occupation, the permanent Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, the incorporation of former eastern German territories and the ensuing population transfers all left a traumatic political and social legacy in Poland. Remembrance of the murder of European Jews in German extermination camps was initially marginalised in the Polish culture of memory. Although Auschwitz soon became an international symbol of the Holocaust, in Poland it was viewed for decades above all as a »site of Polish martyrdom«. However, the start of the 21st century brought about changes in this respect, due in part to the fierce debates over the Jedwabne massacre in eastern Poland. The massacre of around 340 Jews on July 10, 1941 was originally attributed to the »Gestapo and Hitler police« but had in fact been carried out by Polish »neighbours« without orders from the Germans. Debates in Poland and abroad on Polish perpetration resulted in the Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski (*1954) issuing an apology to the victims in 2001. There were increasing calls from experts, such as those from Poland’s Institute for National Remembrance, for the country to confront the most difficult chapters in its history, which also include the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1946-47 and state anti-semitism in communist Poland during the post-war period. The Polish invests extensively in memorial culture, including grand projects with international ambition. The Warsaw Rising Museum was opened already in 2004. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was opened in 2013 on the territory of the former Warsaw Ghetto, a new museum dedicated specifically to the Warsaw Ghetto will follow suit in 2024. Since 2017, there is a major Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Since the turn of the millennium, the sites of the former German extermination camps have also been converted into modern memorial sites. An ever-growing preoccupation with Poland’s Jewish and multicultural heritage can be observed in the field of culture as well.

Remembrance

From around March 1945 until, apparently, the autumn of that same year, the Soviet occupying forces used the Woldenberg camp as a place of detention for German soldiers and members of the Volkssturm. At the same time, the area around Woldenberg became part of Poland and has since then been called Dobiegniew. The local German population either fled or was expelled.
Most of the camp’s historic buildings were demolished after the end of the war. A few barracks, fences and a watchtower have survived. At the instigation of former prisoners of OfLag II C, a museum was established in 1987, housed in a former Wehrmacht living barrack. Excavations were carried out on the site in 2011. From 2020 onwards, the entire site underwent extensive renovation and restoration using EU funding. The museum reopened on September 1, 2022. A modern exhibition houses historical artefacts, documents and personal mementoes belonging to the camp inmates. Despite the arduous conditions, most of the items had been taken by prisoners on their long march in January 1945 and later donated to the museum; they were handed over by relatives or discovered on the site.

Dobiegniew, 2026, View of the exhibition, Stiftung Denkmal

Possibilities

Ausstellung

Open

Monday to Friday 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Contact

http://www.muzeum.dobiegniew.pl

muzeum@dobiegniew.pl

+48 (0)95 761 109 5

ul. Gorzowska 11
66-520 Dobiegniew

Dobiegniew, 2026, Entrance area with the museum building and a watchtower, Stiftung Denkmal

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