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Stalag 11A (341) Prisoner of War Camp
Stalag XIA, later renamed Camp 341, was situated at Altengrabow.
22nd Jul 1941 Parcels
If you can provide any additional information, please add it here.
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Want to know more about Stalag 11A (341) Prisoner of War Camp? There are:406 items tagged Stalag 11A (341) Prisoner of War Camp available in our Library
These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Second World War. |
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RH Newman 46th Regiment Reconnaissance Corps RH Newman served with the 46th Regiment Reconnaissance Corps British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch. Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.
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R Knowles 41st Btn Royal Tank Regiment R Knowles served with the 41st Btn Royal Tank Regiment British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch. Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.
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E. D. Davis Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry E. Davis served with the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch. Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.
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Johannes Antonius "Joop" van Lunenburg (d.24th Jan 1944) Around 1999 I learned from an aunt that I was named after my uncle Joop, Johannes Antonius van Lunenburg
as I have same initials. Until then uncle Joop has never been mentioned by neither his four brothers nor his
two sisters. Before my mother died at the age of 92 she gave me a picture and an "in memoriam" of Uncle Joop.
but no further story and from my side I asked no further questions. Surfing around the internet for my last name I
came at the Institute of Genealogie in Holland and to my surprise I found a death certificate of my uncle made
in Chech and German language more or less confirming what was on the "in memoriam" and the cause of death,
blood poissoned because of etc. It also states that he was a Dutch soldier and in a firm handwriting there
is STALAG XIA. In my opinion Stalag means POW camp but how does a dutch soldier get there and why
has nobody ever talked about him. I have my thoughts but is it possible to get a story straight?
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Laurance John Burtenshaw 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers My dear late father, Laurance John Burtenshaw, of the 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers was a POW at Stalag 11a.
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Pte. Charlie Maplesden Royal West Kent Regiment I am trying to find out some information about my Grandad, Charlie Maplesden, as he was a POW. He went missing on 28 Jan 44 and by the 19 Feb was POW at Stalag XIA. His POW number was 141227. I would love to find more information.
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Sgt. William McLaughlin 2nd Btn. Royal Irish Fusiliers My Grandfather was held in 3 POW camps. I have obtained this information and associated dates from the MOD records, so they are as accurate as they can be. His details are as follows:
6976070 Sergeant William McLaughlin, Army Catering Corps.
He was posted to 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers on 19th August 1943 and was reported missing, prisoner of war, Leros, Aegean on 16th November 1943.
Records show that on 6th January 1944 he was in STALAG 11A Aletbgrabow.
By 19th April 1944 he was in STALAG 357 Orbke and by 2nd June 1944 he was in STALAG 3A, Luckenwalde, Germany.
He was repatriated to the UK on 26th May 1945.
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Leopold Bandurka 5th Rifles Regiment My father, Leopold Bandurka, was born in 1922 in Sanok, south-eastern Poland.
He was 17 when the Nazis invaded in September 1939, and he escaped over the
border to Slovakia and travelled to France to join up the Polish Army which
was assembling there. After fighting with the 5th Rifles Regiment of the 2nd
Infantry Rifles Division of the Polish Army in France, in June 1940 he was
captured and imprisoned in Stalag XIIA near Limburg, then Stalag XIIF near
Forbach in France, where he was given prisoner number 32325 and 1052B (his
name was wrongly spelt Bandarka). Some time later he was transferred to
Stalag VIIB near Gneixendorf and Krems in Austria. After the war he came to
Scotland (Fraserburgh) then Mansfield, England where he eventually located to
Shirebrook in Nottinghamshire,married and had one child. He passed away in
1984.
He had several stories to tell about these experiences - some repeatable,
others rather less so.
I am anxious to contact anyone who may have known him during his period in
the Polish Army and as a POW.
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Sgt. Albert Wilkinson Royal East Kent Regiment Albert Wilkinson was captured and held at Stalag XI-A, Prisoner Number 141542
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Fus. Maurice McMulkin 2nd Btn. Royal Irish Fusiliers Maurice McMulkin served on Malta, during the siege 1940 to 1943. After Malta, the battalion was redeployed to Leros, in the Dodecanese Islands. On 12th of November 1943, the island was invaded by German forces. Five days of heavy fighting was followed by the island defenders succumbing to superior enemy forces.
Maurice was captured and after an arduous train journey across four countries lasting some two weeks, he ended up in Stalag XIA at Altengrabow. Being only a fusilier, he was put to work and spent most of his time at a work camp near to Halberstadt. He was liberated in April 1945 and according to his army records was repatriated to England on 23rd of April 1945. Including his pre-war service time from January 1938, he had been overseas continuously for over seven years.
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A/L.Bdr. Douglas Oliver Elphee 97th Field Regiment Royal Artillery  Douglas Elphee was my father. He said very little about his war service except that he was evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940, then billeted in South Wales. He then was shipped to the Middle East by way of South Africa and crossed from Iraq to North Africa by way of Palestine, Egypt, and Libya, where he was captured by Rommel’s forces and handed over to the Italians. When Italy capitulated, he lived in the hills picking olives until he was re-captured by the Germans. He was then taken by train to Magdeburg and put to work in the salt mines until being liberated by the Americans.
The only time I heard my father swear was one Sunday lunchtime back in the eighties he was re-united with his sergeant. They were going over their experiences in South Wales and were relating to the time when the invasion codeword "Cromwell" was inadvertently passed in the Southwest by mistake. The sergeant received a phone call from the officer relaying the codeword, whereupon the sergeant replied: "Who the f*** is Cromwell?" The reply was "Invasion". "Oh, that Cromwell, right sir". Then he said "Put the kettle on lads”.
Toward the end of his life, I took him to Dover Castle where our local Radio Kent was trying to piece together people’s experiences of the war. So I suggested he go tell them about his evacuation from Dunkirk. Over he went and came back in 5 minutes. “How come you were so quick?” I asked. He replied “I told them it was just like a day at the beach, I walked down to the sea and got on a boat”. I am not sure I could be so laid back as that, but there were so many like that who saw such awful things during the war, and that was their way of coming to terms with it.
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Pvt. Frank Hernandez Co. K 329th Infantry Regiment In 1943, at age 18, Frank Hernandez joined the Army 83rd Infantry Division, 329th Infantry Regiment, Company K. He began his military service on the beaches of Normandy, France.
He was injured by shrapnel two months later in the hedgerows of France and was sent to a hospital in England to recuperate. He was awarded the Purple Heart.
Some months later, he rejoined his company in time for the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium.
In April 1945, he was captured in Germany and was nearly executed by a German SS soldier, but when Frank knelt down to say the “Our Father” the soldier could not pull the trigger.
Instead he was marched to a prison camp and lived out the remaining weeks of the war at Stalag 11-A.
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Pte. Leslie Reginald Clifford 2nd Btn. Royal West Kent Regiment My father, Leslie Clifford served in Palestine 1938-1939, then was posted to Malta 1939-1942. His battalion transferred to the Dodecanese Islands, moving to Samos in 1943 and later to Leros, where the battalion surrendered. He was taken prisoner and held in Stalag XI-A in Altengrabow.
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Pte. Donald Semmens 2nd Btn. Wiltshire Regiment Donald Semmens served with the 2nd Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment in WW2. He was one of a small party who were all wounded and overrun by the Germans in action in the mountains in Italy in January 1944.
They were fairly well treated and moved from hospital to hospital until they reached Northern Italy where they were packed into cattle trucks and taken to Germany.
His first camp was Stalag 7a at Mooseburg. Later he was transferred to Stalag 11a and finally went to an outside working party No 356-9 and was employed on a drainage scheme.
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L/Bmdr. Arthur Sydney Paxton 282 Bty. 88th HAA Regiment Royal Artillery      My late father, Arthur Paxton, signed up in the Territorial Army in March 1939. He was called up for service in August 1939 with the Royal Artillery, 88th HAA Regiment, 282nd Battery. He was initially stationed at White City. From the regiment’s diaries I know he was stationed around London including Enfield, Epping Forest, and Mill Hill.
In July 1941, Batteries 281, 282, and 283 were deployed to the Middle East. They arrived at Port Tewfik in Egypt on 23rd of July 1941. The 282nd Battery consisted of 11 officers and 346 ordinary ranks. Batteries 281 and 283 were a similar size. They were deployed in the Suez area, tasked with defending the Port of Alexandria and the Suez Canal. In October 1941 they were moved to defend the desert landing grounds in preparation for Operation Crusader in the Western Desert. This operation lasted until January 1942, when Rommel counter-attacked. In May 1942, my dad’s regiment was moved to Tobruk, where the 282nd Battery suffered major losses in June.
My father was listed as missing at Tobruk on 20th of June 1942 and is then listed as a POW captured in Cyrenaica. From Tobruk he was taken to Italy, and there is a WO telegram dated September 1942 confirming he was a POW in Italian hands. He is listed as a POW but with no camp allocated, which leads me to believe that he was in a work camp.
We have a family story that when Italy surrendered, my dad was being taken from Italy to Germany and the train he was being transported on was bombed by allied aircraft and he and many others escaped. This could be the Bridge at Allerona, but I can find no corroborating evidence for this. He then hid in the mountains, begging and stealing food from the local farmers. He was recaptured as he was trying to make his way back to Allied lines.
I know that he next turned up at the main prisoner transit camp at Mantova, before being transported by train through the Brenner Pass to Germany. He was initially held during August 1944 at POW camp VII-A before being transferred to Stalag XI-A at Altengrabow in Saxony. Stalag XI-A was liberated by the Americans, and my father was repatriated in May 1945. His POW number was 135310.
I have my father's military service record and the ICRC POW record, but neither gives me any detail as to where my father was held during the 2 years he was a prisoner in Italy. I would love to find out more about my father's time in Italy if anyone can help me.
|
RH Newman 46th Regiment Reconnaissance Corps RH Newman served with the 46th Regiment Reconnaissance Corps British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch. Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.
|
R Knowles 41st Btn Royal Tank Regiment R Knowles served with the 41st Btn Royal Tank Regiment British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch. Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.
|
E. D. Davis Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry E. Davis served with the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch. Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.
|
Johannes Antonius "Joop" van Lunenburg (d.24th Jan 1944) Around 1999 I learned from an aunt that I was named after my uncle Joop, Johannes Antonius van Lunenburg
as I have same initials. Until then uncle Joop has never been mentioned by neither his four brothers nor his
two sisters. Before my mother died at the age of 92 she gave me a picture and an "in memoriam" of Uncle Joop.
but no further story and from my side I asked no further questions. Surfing around the internet for my last name I
came at the Institute of Genealogie in Holland and to my surprise I found a death certificate of my uncle made
in Chech and German language more or less confirming what was on the "in memoriam" and the cause of death,
blood poissoned because of etc. It also states that he was a Dutch soldier and in a firm handwriting there
is STALAG XIA. In my opinion Stalag means POW camp but how does a dutch soldier get there and why
has nobody ever talked about him. I have my thoughts but is it possible to get a story straight?
|
Laurance John Burtenshaw 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers My dear late father, Laurance John Burtenshaw, of the 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers was a POW at Stalag 11a.
|
Pte. Charlie Maplesden Royal West Kent Regiment I am trying to find out some information about my Grandad, Charlie Maplesden, as he was a POW. He went missing on 28 Jan 44 and by the 19 Feb was POW at Stalag XIA. His POW number was 141227. I would love to find more information.
|
Sgt. William McLaughlin 2nd Btn. Royal Irish Fusiliers My Grandfather was held in 3 POW camps. I have obtained this information and associated dates from the MOD records, so they are as accurate as they can be. His details are as follows:
6976070 Sergeant William McLaughlin, Army Catering Corps.
He was posted to 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers on 19th August 1943 and was reported missing, prisoner of war, Leros, Aegean on 16th November 1943.
Records show that on 6th January 1944 he was in STALAG 11A Aletbgrabow.
By 19th April 1944 he was in STALAG 357 Orbke and by 2nd June 1944 he was in STALAG 3A, Luckenwalde, Germany.
He was repatriated to the UK on 26th May 1945.
|
Leopold Bandurka 5th Rifles Regiment My father, Leopold Bandurka, was born in 1922 in Sanok, south-eastern Poland.
He was 17 when the Nazis invaded in September 1939, and he escaped over the
border to Slovakia and travelled to France to join up the Polish Army which
was assembling there. After fighting with the 5th Rifles Regiment of the 2nd
Infantry Rifles Division of the Polish Army in France, in June 1940 he was
captured and imprisoned in Stalag XIIA near Limburg, then Stalag XIIF near
Forbach in France, where he was given prisoner number 32325 and 1052B (his
name was wrongly spelt Bandarka). Some time later he was transferred to
Stalag VIIB near Gneixendorf and Krems in Austria. After the war he came to
Scotland (Fraserburgh) then Mansfield, England where he eventually located to
Shirebrook in Nottinghamshire,married and had one child. He passed away in
1984.
He had several stories to tell about these experiences - some repeatable,
others rather less so.
I am anxious to contact anyone who may have known him during his period in
the Polish Army and as a POW.
|
Sgt. Albert Wilkinson Royal East Kent Regiment Albert Wilkinson was captured and held at Stalag XI-A, Prisoner Number 141542
|
Fus. Maurice McMulkin 2nd Btn. Royal Irish Fusiliers Maurice McMulkin served on Malta, during the siege 1940 to 1943. After Malta, the battalion was redeployed to Leros, in the Dodecanese Islands. On 12th of November 1943, the island was invaded by German forces. Five days of heavy fighting was followed by the island defenders succumbing to superior enemy forces.
Maurice was captured and after an arduous train journey across four countries lasting some two weeks, he ended up in Stalag XIA at Altengrabow. Being only a fusilier, he was put to work and spent most of his time at a work camp near to Halberstadt. He was liberated in April 1945 and according to his army records was repatriated to England on 23rd of April 1945. Including his pre-war service time from January 1938, he had been overseas continuously for over seven years.
|
A/L.Bdr. Douglas Oliver Elphee 97th Field Regiment Royal Artillery Douglas Elphee was my father. He said very little about his war service except that he was evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940, then billeted in South Wales. He then was shipped to the Middle East by way of South Africa and crossed from Iraq to North Africa by way of Palestine, Egypt, and Libya, where he was captured by Rommel’s forces and handed over to the Italians. When Italy capitulated, he lived in the hills picking olives until he was re-captured by the Germans. He was then taken by train to Magdeburg and put to work in the salt mines until being liberated by the Americans.
The only time I heard my father swear was one Sunday lunchtime back in the eighties he was re-united with his sergeant. They were going over their experiences in South Wales and were relating to the time when the invasion codeword "Cromwell" was inadvertently passed in the Southwest by mistake. The sergeant received a phone call from the officer relaying the codeword, whereupon the sergeant replied: "Who the f*** is Cromwell?" The reply was "Invasion". "Oh, that Cromwell, right sir". Then he said "Put the kettle on lads”.
Toward the end of his life, I took him to Dover Castle where our local Radio Kent was trying to piece together people’s experiences of the war. So I suggested he go tell them about his evacuation from Dunkirk. Over he went and came back in 5 minutes. “How come you were so quick?” I asked. He replied “I told them it was just like a day at the beach, I walked down to the sea and got on a boat”. I am not sure I could be so laid back as that, but there were so many like that who saw such awful things during the war, and that was their way of coming to terms with it.
|
Pvt. Frank Hernandez Co. K 329th Infantry Regiment In 1943, at age 18, Frank Hernandez joined the Army 83rd Infantry Division, 329th Infantry Regiment, Company K. He began his military service on the beaches of Normandy, France.
He was injured by shrapnel two months later in the hedgerows of France and was sent to a hospital in England to recuperate. He was awarded the Purple Heart.
Some months later, he rejoined his company in time for the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium.
In April 1945, he was captured in Germany and was nearly executed by a German SS soldier, but when Frank knelt down to say the “Our Father” the soldier could not pull the trigger.
Instead he was marched to a prison camp and lived out the remaining weeks of the war at Stalag 11-A.
|
Pte. Leslie Reginald Clifford 2nd Btn. Royal West Kent Regiment My father, Leslie Clifford served in Palestine 1938-1939, then was posted to Malta 1939-1942. His battalion transferred to the Dodecanese Islands, moving to Samos in 1943 and later to Leros, where the battalion surrendered. He was taken prisoner and held in Stalag XI-A in Altengrabow.
|
Pte. Donald Semmens 2nd Btn. Wiltshire Regiment Donald Semmens served with the 2nd Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment in WW2. He was one of a small party who were all wounded and overrun by the Germans in action in the mountains in Italy in January 1944.
They were fairly well treated and moved from hospital to hospital until they reached Northern Italy where they were packed into cattle trucks and taken to Germany.
His first camp was Stalag 7a at Mooseburg. Later he was transferred to Stalag 11a and finally went to an outside working party No 356-9 and was employed on a drainage scheme.
|
L/Bmdr. Arthur Sydney Paxton 282 Bty. 88th HAA Regiment Royal Artillery My late father, Arthur Paxton, signed up in the Territorial Army in March 1939. He was called up for service in August 1939 with the Royal Artillery, 88th HAA Regiment, 282nd Battery. He was initially stationed at White City. From the regiment’s diaries I know he was stationed around London including Enfield, Epping Forest, and Mill Hill.
In July 1941, Batteries 281, 282, and 283 were deployed to the Middle East. They arrived at Port Tewfik in Egypt on 23rd of July 1941. The 282nd Battery consisted of 11 officers and 346 ordinary ranks. Batteries 281 and 283 were a similar size. They were deployed in the Suez area, tasked with defending the Port of Alexandria and the Suez Canal. In October 1941 they were moved to defend the desert landing grounds in preparation for Operation Crusader in the Western Desert. This operation lasted until January 1942, when Rommel counter-attacked. In May 1942, my dad’s regiment was moved to Tobruk, where the 282nd Battery suffered major losses in June.
My father was listed as missing at Tobruk on 20th of June 1942 and is then listed as a POW captured in Cyrenaica. From Tobruk he was taken to Italy, and there is a WO telegram dated September 1942 confirming he was a POW in Italian hands. He is listed as a POW but with no camp allocated, which leads me to believe that he was in a work camp.
We have a family story that when Italy surrendered, my dad was being taken from Italy to Germany and the train he was being transported on was bombed by allied aircraft and he and many others escaped. This could be the Bridge at Allerona, but I can find no corroborating evidence for this. He then hid in the mountains, begging and stealing food from the local farmers. He was recaptured as he was trying to make his way back to Allied lines.
I know that he next turned up at the main prisoner transit camp at Mantova, before being transported by train through the Brenner Pass to Germany. He was initially held during August 1944 at POW camp VII-A before being transferred to Stalag XI-A at Altengrabow in Saxony. Stalag XI-A was liberated by the Americans, and my father was repatriated in May 1945. His POW number was 135310.
I have my father's military service record and the ICRC POW record, but neither gives me any detail as to where my father was held during the 2 years he was a prisoner in Italy. I would love to find out more about my father's time in Italy if anyone can help me.
|
Recomended Reading.Available at discounted prices.
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The Last Escape. The Untold Story of Allied Prisoners of War in Germany 1944-45John Nichol & Tony Rennell
As WW2 drew to a close, hundreds of thousands of British and American prisoners of war, held in camps in Nazi-occupied Europe, faced the prospect that they would never get home alive. In the depths of winter, their guards harried them on marches outof their camps and away from the armies advancing into the heart of Hitler's defeated Germany. Hundreds died from exhaustion, disease and starvation. The Last Escape is told through the testimony of those heroic men, now in their seventies and eighties and telling their stories publicly for the first time.
A very good account of a forgotten part of the Second World War; Allied POW's caught in the final months of the Third Reich. The author's of this book have provide the reader with a detailed and moving account of what happened to the many thousands of Allied POW's caught in the final struggle for Nazi Germany towards the end of WW2.
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