The glaring shortage of skilled workers and other workers forced the Volkswagen plant to find new ways of recruiting workers early on, which is why those responsible increasingly resorted to using prisoners of war after the successful campaigns in Poland and France from 1940 onwards. These were mainly housed in the western area of the communal camp between today's Lessingstraße and Schachtweg. The area was separated from the rest of the camp grounds by a double barbed wire fence and a 50-metre-wide strip and was strictly guarded.-__-0000-__-

The capacity of the prisoner-of-war or penal camp was around 600 people, but the complex was usually significantly overcrowded with 1,450 people. The inmates slept on three-storey beds, so that instead of the usual 16 people, 24 prisoners were accommodated in one room.-__-0000-__- From 1940 to 1942, around 1,000 Wehrmacht prisoners of war, i.e. convicted German soldiers, were held here. In addition, the French prisoner of war detachment was quartered in this camp from the end of 1940 until October 1942. Soviet prisoners of war followed at the end of 1941. After the fall of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Italian prisoners of war, so-called military internees, who had been captured during the occupation of Italy by the German Wehrmacht, followed-__-0001-__-

The presence of the Wehrmacht prisoners of war was not hidden from the inhabitants of the town: "The people were led into the factory to work in companies, and the severity of their misconduct, for which they were punished, was recognizable by their outward appearance. Some went with a belt but without a headgear, others without a belt and without a headgear," recalled Meinecke, who worked at the municipal main office, about the Wehrmacht prisoners of war.-__-0002-__-

Due to racist prejudices, the Soviet prisoners of war were treated particularly badly and discriminatorily; mistreatment was the order of the day. Their provisions were completely inadequate, and they were also threatened with the harshest punitive measures if they violated the company and camp regulations. Contact with the outside world was forbidden, and violators were threatened with being sent to the dreaded penal camp 21 near Salzgitter.-__-0003-__- It was only when the Italian military internees arrived, who were vilified as Badoglio traitors, that the treatment of the Soviet prisoners changed: "Since the Italian prisoners of war have been here, Russians have been treated much better. Now the Italians are treated like animals," reported the Dutch student Rinus Kop in 1944 in a letter to his home country that was intercepted by the Foreign Letter Inspection Office.-__-0004-__-

For the local population, the different groups of prisoners of war were easy to distinguish by their markings. Soviet prisoners, for example, were marked with an "SU" on their outer clothing. The prisoners were not only deployed in the factory, but also in factories within the city, in the surrounding area and on farms. Despite the racist propaganda of the Nazi state, there were occasional undesirable contacts between the Soviet prisoners of war and the local population, which is why the local officials often felt compelled to intervene: "Even though the violations in this regard decreased primarily thanks to the educational efforts of the party, there were still occasions for energetic intervention, especially when women who had forgotten all national pride trampled on German honour," explained the senior government councillor Dr. Krause in June 1942. Krause.__-0005-__-

-__-0006-__- StadtA WOB, EB 2, Interview with Stadtoberamtmann Meinecke from May 14, 1970, p. 12.
-__-0007-__- Hans Mommsen/Manfred Grieger, Das Volkswagenwerk und seine Arbeiter im Dritten Reich. Düsseldorf 1996, p. 564.
-__-0008-__- Ibid., p. 743.
-__-0009-__- StadtA WOB, EB 2, Interview with City Chief Official Meinecke, May 14, 1970, p. 12.
-__-0010-__- Mommsen/Grieger, Das Volkswagenwerk und seine Arbeiter im Dritten Reich (see note 2), pp. 551-565.
-__-0011-__- BArch R58/9794, letter from the foreign letter inspection office in Cologne-Riehl dated February 11, 1944.
-__-0012-__- "The new municipal protection police. Farewell to the gendarmerie replaced by the Schutzpolizei", in: Die Neue Zeit of June 19, 1942.