Memories of French PoWs of the camp Elsterhorst

"The receipt, which the population prepares us, is not unpleasant however. The railway brings us from Mainz and as we steps out from it, we see at the course women with heavy blond pigtails, with white bodices and long red or skirts and countless barelegged children, whose flax-blond hair is so bright that they gleam white.

Our ethnologists (there are all occupations in the column) say that this is not amazing, because these humans are not Teutons but Slawen, which in 18. century by "Friedrich dem Großen" were added to Germany. Which they are also, woodheads or not, them show us neither hate nor disdain, very much to the difference to the masses in the west, where we had to by-tighten under suggestivenesses, offenses, high laughters of a gladly excited quantity, which swivelled hysteric thousands of small swastika flags. Here is the deep province , the flat country. One experienced the current events without passion far from the front and the policy.

The Oflag was originally a Polish base camp (Stalag), which was opened in November 1939, in order to include our predecessors in the misfortune. With our arrival the Poland were still there, approximate thousands. They were accommodated in the blocks of the northern half of the camp under enormous grey tents, which the misery out-sweated. Early in the morning they applied to the work and sang in several voices a finely co-ordinated march song or rather a slow speech singing, chant and penetrating in an incomprehensible language, which we with less correct voices and a little pathetic paraphrased: "ils -e-taiend - a rri- ves - un - deux -trois - a - Ho yers - wer - da."

After few weeks the polishes had been evacuated, the tents were folded up and by dark wood shanties replaced as in the south. The final diagram of the camp is now clear: a long tarring avenue forms the axle from west to east over 600 meters. Describe in black gothic letters on white ground wise it proudly out as nothing less than the Adolf­ Hitler road.

The arriving people themselves refuse from the first view at this raised protection. They will never speak differently than simply of the road, which is by the way forbidden to them. They use it only briefly to cross around it from north to south or in reverse and follow thereby three close transitions, one in the center and two others at both ends.

To both sides on the triumph route for the leader, which is reserved the Teutons,  are symmetrically settled ten blocks, five in the north, five in the south. Everyone forms a rectangle of altogether 250 meters in north south direction and 100 meters toward east west. Altogether is it a square of 500 x 500 meters, i.e. 25 hectares. On him one lives to 5000.

Each block consists of four solid barracks of 70 m length and 15 meters width. They are aligned after north-south, urge one against the other one and are dark nut-brown colouring, announcing of mischief. An end of the barrack is near the road, the other end looks for circumscription. Between this and the outside barbed wire a bald area of approximately a hectare inserts itself, which the Greens pompoes call the Mars field, that is the noble place for the two- or threefold daily appeal and the walking place of the in the cage held squirrels.

Altogether the Oflag counts 40 barracks, by which some partially are dedicated common activities: "chapel", "university", "workroom", "theatres", "administration". In the west of the ten blocks the camp is extended for administration, which our guards and accountant inhabit ... . The terrain of the prisoners decorates itself at four corners with high guard towers from wood in the style of the Frankish time: the observation towers have powerful mobile projectors and watchful machine guns. The intermediate circumscriptions are interrupted all 200 meters through on stilts standing little guard towers, in which sentinel with simple rifle do their duty. On the inside at the barbed wire follow  the dead man's zone, which consists of a sand strip of five meters width and is limited with the Mars field by a smooth metal wire in 1 meter height over the ground,: that is the warning wire, the wire, which may not be overcome, beyond which the sentinels shoots sharp. On the bright ground of this edge runway the candidate of one appears during the day or nocturnal implemented escape like a Chinese shade, so that such an attempt has something from a suicide. On the other side of the three meters high doubled barbed wire walk guards, which carry the weapon on their schoulder, go back and forth, often accompanied from unpleasant and openly frenchman-hostile shepherd dogs. Finally, the substantial of this landscape is the black wire netting. Endlessly it shows its close rectangles, which are nailed on large dark stakes. One sees only it, where one also turns, because each block is separated from the neighbour blocks and from the road likewise by a simple number of the same discouraging kind. One really sits in the trap."