Cemetery of prisoners of war in Sosnowice

CEMETERY OF PRISONERS OF WAR IN SOSNOWICE

The construction of a camp for forced laborers in Sosnowice began in the fall of 1941, when the first Soviet prisoners of war
were brought to the forest next to the ammunition production plant. During the construction of the camp, a typhus epidemic
occurred, causing the death of approximately 300 prisoners. In the years 1942-1944, in addition to Soviet prisoners
of war, prisoners were brought from occupied Poland, Yugoslavia, France and other countries. POWs and prisoners worked
on loading and unloading ammunition produced in local factories from railway wagons. Next to the camp consisting
of barracks for prisoners, there were residential buildings for supervising officers and German SS soldiers, and
deep in the forest there were numerous buildings and factory warehouses.

In February 1945, the Nazis drove the prisoners deep into Germany and partially destroyed the lager and the factory by blowing up the buildings. For a year until the
summer of 1946 Soviet troops were stationed in this area. After the army left, most of the area was handed over to the
local Golczewo forest district. Numerous unexploded German shells remained in the surrounding forests in an area of
over 260 ha, posing a threat to forest workers, residents and mushroom pickers. These forests were cleared of unexploded ordnance
in 1949, in 1986 and comprehensively by Polish Army sappers from the Engineering Regiment in Szczecin - Podjuchy
and the Motorized Brigade in Trzebiatów in 2004-2005. Together, Polish Army sappers neutralized over 28,000 unexploded
shells.

For a long period, until 2014-2015, there was no personal data about the prisoners and prisoners staying in the
camp. The only information came from a few surviving prisoners of this camp and from pioneers, the first inhabitants of
Golczewo, who arrived in this area in the spring of 1945. They provided data that southwest of the camp, in a forest clearing,
the Nazis buried numerous deceased prisoners and prisoners. In the 1960s and 1970s, the inhabitants of Sosnowice and
scouts from the primary school in Golczewo built symbolic graves and erected nameless birch crosses and took care of the
area. In 1989, at the initiative of the Golczewo commune authorities, a concrete monument was erected. Today, in
addition to the monument, there is a war cemetery established in 1997, which was renovated in 2015. For a long period until
2014, there was no personal data about the prisoners and prisoners staying there and the exact number of people. In 2013-2014,
research work was carried out which confirmed that the then German authorities supervising this camp and factory
established a cemetery for deceased Soviet prisoners of war in this place in 1941. During research work, the remains of
180 people were unearthed. The identity of 167 deceased people was established based on preserved identity signs from the
camps and comparison of anthropological data with archival documents. All identified prisoners of war were citizens of
the USSR, soldiers of the Red Army taken prisoner in 1941. According to archival documents, they were sent to work at
the factory camp on December 7, 1941. The first deaths were recorded on December 15, and the last one buried died on
June 27, 1942 . The Germans most often gave the cause of death as "exhaustion", but traces found during research clearly
indicate that at least several of them had been shot. It was established that they were prisoners of Russian, Tatar and
Georgian nationality. Further research is necessary to determine the burial places of the prisoners. and prisoners from other
countries and Soviet prisoners of war from later periods.