Ausgabe von Brot an gefangene Russen im Lager Winnica. 28.7.1941
Today, German Embassies in the former Soviet countries started to accept the application forms from former WW2 prisoners of war from the former Soviet republics.
Under the plan approved on 21 May 2015 the German parliament would pay €10m to around 4,000 surviving soldiers held prisoner by the Nazis, or €2,500 each. The decision follows the establishment of funds compensating other groups, including one for eastern European slave labourers, from which Soviet prisoners were excluded.
Historians have estimated that 57 per cent of Soviet prisoners died in German captivity. Even Germans imprisoned in the war-ravaged Soviet Union fared better, with only 36 per cent dying. The Red Army captives’ miseries were compounded by the fact that after their repatriation many were treated with suspicion and sent straight to Soviet labour camps.
The scale of this mistreatment went unacknowledged because for decades after the war, many Germans perpetuated a myth that the German army, which was responsible for most prisoners, was largely innocent of the crimes committed by the SS and other specifically-Nazi organisations. It is only in the past 20 years that new exhibitions and books have successfully challenged the popular view.
