Central Museum of Prisoners of War in Łambinowice (Lamsdorf)

On a former military training ground near Łambinowice – Lamsdorf in German – one camp followed another for more than seventy years: for French prisoners in 1870, for Entente soldiers in the First World War, and in the Second World War one of the largest prisoner-of-war complexes in Europe. Around 300,000 prisoners from almost 50 nations passed through it. Today it is a National Remembrance Site with cemeteries, memorials and remains of huts, cared for by the Central Museum of Prisoners of War.

History: a century of camps at Lamsdorf

Prussia set up the training ground in the early 1870s. The first camp was created during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) and held 3,500–4,000 Frenchmen. In the First World War the camp was the largest in area of all those ever built at Lamsdorf; about 90,000 prisoners passed through it and some 7,000 died.

In August 1939 a transit camp was set up here and in October became Stalag VIII B. It held about 43,000 soldiers of the Polish Army in total, and for a short time civilians as well, among them Father Maximilian Kolbe. Later the British prevailed (about 48,000), hence the nickname “Britenlager”. In 1941 a second camp – Stalag 318, later VIII F – was built for Soviet prisoners, the worst-treated group. Of the 180,000–200,000 who passed through it, around 40,000 died. In the first months they lived in the open and in dugouts they made themselves. In 1944 about 6,000 Warsaw Uprising fighters were brought here, including Captain Witold Pilecki and Aleksander Gieysztor. After the war, in 1945–1946, a labour camp set up by the Polish authorities also operated in Łambinowice.

What to see

• The Soviet POW Cemetery of 1942 with anonymous mass graves, and the Monument to the Martyrdom of Prisoners of War from 1964, dedicated to all prisoners who died in the Lamsdorf camps.
• The Old POW Cemetery, about 4.5 hectares, with graves from the Franco-Prussian War and the First World War and memorials to Serbian, Russian, British and Italian prisoners, among others.
• Remains of the “Russian camp”: hut remnants, a reconstructed guard tower and fence, and the open-air exhibition “A Place with a Scar”, about 2 km from the museum building.
• From the former “British camp” there remain fire-water tanks, fragments of huts and the Chestnut Avenue along which prisoners were marched.
• The museum building from the 1930s, once the headquarters of the German training-ground command. Nearby are the former guardhouse, officers’ mess and half-timbered houses.

Did you know?

• The British film “The Password Is Courage” (1962) is loosely based on an escape from the stalag at Lamsdorf.
• From 1921 to 1924 the training ground housed a camp for German emigrants from areas that passed to Poland after the Silesian plebiscite and uprisings.

Tripto tip

Admission is free. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday 09:00–16:00. A new permanent exhibition is being prepared, so the building in Łambinowice currently shows temporary exhibitions. The site is large: consider a guided tour (paid, booking required; on Sundays and holidays only for groups of 10 or more) or renting a bike, also bookable in advance. You can get here by train on the Opole–Nysa line, by bus from Nysa, Niemodlin or Korfantów, or by car about 15 km from the Nysa–Opole exit of the A4 motorway. Plan 2–3 hours. Niemodlin Castle and Kopice Palace are nearby.