Stadwaldlager Bocholt / Stalag VI-F

1935

camp for members of the Austrian "Sturmabteilung" (SA) who fled and left Austria because of the attempted coup of July 1934, where the Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß was killed. These thousands of SA members were called "Österreichische Legion" (Austrian Legion). That's why the street next to the former camp is named "Wiener Allee" (=Vienna avenue)

1938

After the Austrian Anschluss, which was the 1938 annexation of Austria into Greater Germany by the Nazi regime, it was possible for the Österreichische Legion to left Germany and to go back to Austria.

1939

The German Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD) used the camp with 2000-3000 people.

1939 - 1944

The camp was used for allied prisoners of war (POW's) and got the name Stalag VI F (camp number "F" in the Wehrkreis "VI", Münster).

1944

After the Allies landed in Holland (Arnhem) in September, the front got closer to Bocholt so that the camp was evacuated to Münster.

1945

Volkssturm members, who had to build up the Westfalenwall, evacuated persons from hospital and Soviet "Fremdarbeiter" lived in the camp.

1946

The camp was used for POW's from Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Yugoslavia, Poland and Ukraine who were all members of the former German Wehrmacht.

1947

Jews used it as a transit camp on there way from concentration camps to Israel.

1948

Homeless families from Poland, Ukraine, Yugoslavia and Baltic states lived here (Displaced Persons=DPs)