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„Bolshevism is nationalsocialist
Germany’s lethal enemy......So the bolshevist soldier has lost every right
for being treated as honourable soldier according to the Geneva accord.“
(Order of the German Army’s Supreme Command, 080941)
This Supreme Command Order should cause the death of millions of Soviet
POWs during the war. Also in Sandbostel camp, thousands of them did dy
from hunger, ilnesses, mistreatment and arbitrary executions.
After marching hundreds of kilometers from the front westwards and then
travelling in open freight and/or cattle railway cars, these soldiers
were distributed among different camps. During the whoöe transport,
they did receive insuffucient food, somtimes nothing at all. The tens
of thousands with destination Sandbostel had to walk from the railwaystations
in Bremervoerde or Brillit. A man from Engeo remembers: „The prisoners
were completely exhausted, some of them half death. One couldn’t walk
and was driven on by strikes with rifle butts; at last, after a bayonet
thrust into the back, he was thrown into a lorry. In the dike behind a
farm, a Russian was moaning. Young soldiers did kick him and killed him
then with bayonets.“
The French prisoner Paul Roser gave witness of the Russians‘ arrival in
the camp at the Nuremberg Trials: „The Russians did arrive in columns
of five, thereby supporting each others, because none of them was able
to walk alone. The only fitting description is „Walking Skeletons“...
Nearly alll did squint, they didn‘t even have the force, to adjust their
eyes. Whole lines fell, all five together; the Germans came over those
and did beat them with rifle butts and whips.“
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