Ehrehain Memorial Gate

Liberation

Stalag IVb, Saxony, Germany April 22-23, 1945 At 10:15 PM on April 22, Lagerführer , Captain Köenig summoned Lieutenant Harry Jessop, as Senior Allied Ranking Officer and announced he was turning over the entire camp to his control. At 12:10 AM on the morning of April 23, the voice of Unteroffizier Pinthauser was heard on the camp microphone for the last time. He issued the order for all German soldiers to leave the camp immediately! The spearhead of the Soviet Red Army the 58th Guards of the 1st Ukrainian Front had reached the vicinity of Muehlberg. The night reverberated with commotion. Throughout the camp there were the scurrying jackboots, frantic yelling, barking dogs, frenetic orders being shouted and the arrival and departure of trucks, streaming back and forth along the narrow road from the camp entrance to the Vorlager. The Germans were pulling out. The sounds of battle had become audible; rifle, machine gun and cannon fire were heard, as the battle lines approached closer and closer,” Andrew told me. “The shooting deceased soon after dawn on April 23, 1945. Among the last of which were to be from a group of retreating German SS troops who fired machine-guns bursts into the camp, wounding five prisoners in the French compound. Copper Wire, by Robert Harding

At first only a small Russian patrol appeared. Its leader, a sturdy major with pasteboard epaulets on his shoulders, shouted “Amerikanaski free”. He then took a quick look around met with Jessop and Meyers than departed. Around 9:00 AM, a tank emblazoned with the Soviet red star, crashed through the main gate and spun to a stop. The prisoners surged around it waving and cheering. A youthful petite blond short hair girl soldier was sitting on the tank turret with an elderly German guard she had taken prisoner. She was holding a bayonet to the man’s throat and asking several whether she should slit it now or later. The former POWs shouted NO DON’T HURT HIM! HE WAS A GOOD JERRY! She nodded and smiled, and then removed the blade from the Baron’s throat, though no one knew if she carried out her threat later. Before roaring off and after smashing the electric feeds, (there had been no electric for more than a week or more) the Red Army tank mowed down an entire length of the remaining barbed-wire. Copper Wire, by Robert Harding

As the armored column barreled down the road, in hot pursuit of their enemy a group of wild looking horseman, brandishing modern weapons rode into the camp. It was not long after the Cossack Calvary detachment left that hundreds of Russian soldiers past the camp. They were dressed in quasi-military collection of odds and ends, not uniforms but suggesting them. Their arsenal was as dissimilar as their clothing. Some had M1 rifles slung over shoulders others carried assortment of weapons of every kind, from modern machine-guns to fowling shotguns. Some had nothing more than knives, swords and clubs. There were also women some in uniform among them, carrying rifles and short-barreled machine guns. Within an hour or so they were followed by a caravan of trucks, horse-drawn wagons and American jeeps rolling up to the entrance. In the lead jeep was a (Kombrig) Brigade Commander. He told the prisoners not to leave. There was fighting still going on and that Soviet soldiers simply did not take the time to find out if you were friend or foe. Even so, many prisoners walked out into the field and even into the town of Muehlberg to forage for food. Copper Wire, by Robert Harding

About four hours after liberation, a small USSR armored force pulled up to the gate of the prison camp. On the first tank, a husky soldier was playing an accordion and singing boisterously, and in a halftrack was a balalaika player strummed away as if it were natural to go into battle with music. Russians leaped down, shook hands and passed out wine, vodka and beer, and drank endless toasts. Former prisoners and liberators embraced, exchanged buttons and uniform insignias, they pounded each other on the back and shout to each other, understanding not one word. Soon after this an enormous truck squeezed through the rear entrance, lumbered onto the appellplatz and stopped. It was loaded with what looked like rows of oil drums and several As the former P.O.W.s crowded around, the oil drums were swung down. They contained big hunks of steaming boiled pork. Copper Wire, by Robert Harding

After the war a memorial gate was erected by the Soviet (Russian) Government honoring the more than seven thousand POW's from Slavic countries who died during their captivity at Stalag IVb. The French Government also places a cenotaph at the Prisoner of War Cemetery in Neuburxdorf to honor those that died at Stalag IVb. The Dutch Government also placed a dedicatory stone at the site of the Muehlberg Camp

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