examples – 19 – Soviet Prisoners of War in France

Soviet Prisoners of War in France

France, November 4, 2019: I drive to the town of Boulay-Moselle and wait at the old train station, which has long been closed, for local historian and human rights activist Becker. He tells me:

“After a week-long journey from the East, the Soviet prisoners of war arrived at the Boulay train station and had to set out on foot on the long march to the camp, which was located in the fields outside Boulay. A baker who secretly slipped bread to the starving prisoners vanished without a trace.”

We press ourselves against the wall of a house. It’s raining again this Monday afternoon, and the town of Boulay seems deserted. Becker is wearing rubber boots and a parka. I leave my car behind, get into his old Twingo, and drive with him across the fields until we arrive at the former Maginot base in Le Champ du Ban-Saint Jean, which the Nazis converted into a transit camp for Soviet prisoners of war in 1941. We are alone. Not a soul in sight.

As we look out at a meadow set back a bit from a small wood, Becker tells me that a group of Soviet prisoners of war had to run in circles naked in the snow there for two hours. The SS promised a hot shower afterward. But the shower turned out to be ice-cold. How many Soviet prisoners of war were murdered in France by the German occupiers?

In the photo: Excavations of mass graves in 1945 at the former Maginot base Le Champ du Ban-Saint Jean / Moselle / Eastern France