Memorial Plate for Prisoners of War Turkish Barracks Spittal an der Drau (former Stalag)

During the Second World War, starting in 1941, the site of the present-day Turkish barracks housed, among other things, the main camp B of the Wehrkreis XVIII. In this camp, prisoners of war of the Wehrmacht, mainly members of the Soviet Red Army, were accommodated. While the treatment of soldiers of the Western Allies largely corresponded to international law, Soviet prisoners of war were systematically under-supplied, and many were murdered immediately. Therefore, the mortality rate of the Red Army soldiers in the camps was much higher: clearly more than half of the Soviet soldiers under the control of the Wehrmacht died in captivity; for soldiers from Western Europe, the mortality rate was about one percent. In the camp in Spittal an der Drau, at least 6,000 Soviet citizens, 24 Frenchmen, 20 Serbs, five Poles, one Italian, and a soldier from another country died. During a commemorative ceremony on December 10, 2013, a memorial plaque was unveiled at the back of the entrance building of the Turkish barracks in memory of these victims.