Camp History
Oflag VIII-F was first established at Wahlstatt in July 1940 and housed French and Belgian officers taken prisoner during the Battle of France. It was located in a former Benedictine Abbey dedicated to Saint Hedwig of Silesia, that had been a military school between 1840 and 1920, and used by the Nazis as a "National Political Educational Institution" from 1934.
In July 1942 a new camp at Mährisch-Trübau, about 200 km (120 mi) to the south, was designated Oflag VIII-F, while the original camp was redesignated Oflag VIII F/Z, a sub-camp of Mährisch-Trübau. The prisoners were transferred to other camps, though a small number stayed behind to carry out construction work as the site was adapted for the use of GEMA (Gesellschaft für und mechanische elektroakustische apparate) in developing radar systems. The sub-camp was closed in June 1943.
The camp at Mahrisch-Trubau contained around 2,000 officers, mostly British captured in North Africa and the Greek Islands, but there were also numbers of Greek, French and American POW. In April 1944, most of the prisoners were transferred to Oflag 79 near Braunschweig and the camp was closed.
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