1975 Bartniczak Manuscript Map of Grady Prisoner of War Camp (Stalag 324), Poland

This is Mieczysław Bartniczak's c. 1975 diazo and manuscript map of Stalag 324, a WWII prisoner of war camp near Grądy, Poland. A chilling example of the horrors of the Second World War, especially on the Eastern Front, the camp was a site of work, starvation, and death for the vast majority of those who entered it.

A Closer Look

The map covers a portion of the Polish countryside outside of Ostrów Mazowiecka between the villages of Grądy and Antoniewo, about 50 miles northeast of Warsaw and not far from the notorious extermination camp at Treblinka. Unlike Treblinka, which was designed purely for rapid mass-scale killing, the prisoner of war camp at Grądy and another nearby at Komorów (Stalag 333), like other camps for Soviet prisoners of war, was intended for a slow death through work and starvation.

The map traces the main facilities of the camp, including subcamps (obóz), the inspection and selection point (miejsce selekcje i rewizji), the camp cemetery (cmentarz obozowe), and administrative areas (część administracyjna, abbreviated as 'cz. adm.'). A legend at bottom-right explains symbols and features on the map, including barbed wire, guard towers, barracks for guards, and the paths used for carrying bodies to the cemetery.

Stalag 324

Ostrów Mazowiecka had been occupied by Germany since 1939, falling within the German zone determined by the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Therefore, Stalag 324 could be quickly established in the opening phase of Operation Barbarossa and began receiving prisoners almost immediately. Initially just a field surrounded by barbed wire, subdivisions, and buildings were gradually added. One of the largest camps for Soviet prisoners of war, Stalag 324 received some 100,000 prisoners, about 80,000 of whom perished in a matter of weeks. By October 1941, surviving prisoners began to be transferred to Stalag 333 in nearby Komorów and Stalag 324 was gradually closed down in early 1942.

Historical Context

When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, their plans for the occupation of Eastern Europe were both brutal and vague. The broad guideline, Generalplan Ost, included a 'hunger plan' to deliberately starve millions of civilians by redirecting food supplies to Germany for the duration of the war, allowing for the 'Aryan' colonization of the depopulated lands at the conclusion of the conflict. These deliberate starvations would begin with Soviet prisoners of war, which numbered in the millions given the Germans' rapid advance in the opening weeks of the conflict (as much the result of Stalin's miscalculations as German military prowess). Soviet officials, NKVD officers, and political commissars (along with Jews and other targeted groups) were summarily executed by Einsatzgruppen death squads, while rank-and-file Red Army soldiers - those not killed while surrendering - were corralled into massive camps, often just a large field surrounded by barbed wire, and left to starve or die from exposure to the elements. The majority of Soviet prisoners of war captured in the opening months of the conflict died in this manner, including at Stalag 324.

But as the war, which the Nazis expected to be over in a matter of weeks, dragged on into months and it was clear that the Soviet Union would not rapidly collapse, Hitler and other Nazi leaders determined that some Soviet prisoners of war could be used for forced labor or as auxiliaries for the German military. Hundreds of thousands were sent to Germany, Poland, or in some cases other countries (Austria, Finland, Norway) for forced labor, while others remained in the German-occupied parts of the Soviet Union to undertake tasks such as road building. Often these prisoners arrived at camps already half-starved and died soon after arrival. In total, some two-thirds of the roughly three million Soviet prisoners of war captured during Operation Barbarossa had died by early 1942, the deadliest atrocity of the war to that point, only surpassed by the 'Final Solution' in the following months.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared by Polish historian Mieczysław Bartniczak, almost certainly in preparation for his 1978 book Grądy i Komorowo 1941-1944 : z dziejów Stalagów 324 i 333 - Ostrów Mazowiecka (Grądy and Komorowo 1941-1944: the history of Stalags 324 and 333 - Ostrów Mazowiecka). Although there is an 'outline' portion of the map that is the result of a diazo print, much of the text and several other features are in manuscript, making this an entirely unique work.