What were life in a Russian POW like during WW2?

Question

thanks Answerki for your generous answers :=) appreciate that.

oops Erik, thank you too. didn't saw yours till now :=)

Answer 1

not a lot of info out there for this answer. I know, because I have been researching for quite a while (2-3 years) trying to find out. I assume it was similar to life on a gulag which varied depending on where your were sentenced to (arctic, siberia, desert regions, etc).

But, if I had to guess, I would say it would consist of work camps (manual labor like road building, forestry, mining). The Soviets were known to make great use of prison/gulag labor for economic exploitation. Food rations were meager and were set by inmate work output.

Suprisingly, according to the records on Gulags (which have been made public since the fall of communism), most ex-prisoners don't mention things we in the west have been taught to believe, like re-education classes, brainwashing, etc.

What is interesting, is that something like less than 40% of german soldiers who had been reported as being taken prisoner actually returned to Germany between 1945-65. Some say even less. this would stand to reason becasue during Stalin's purges, a large number of foreign nationals were arrested and sentenced for no reason and would languish for years, even decades before being released from the Gulag system.

Answer 2

Not that much different from life of Russian prisoners in German POW camps :

"Germany and Italy generally treated prisoners from the British Commonwealth, France, the U.S. and other western allies, in accordance with the Third Geneva Convention (1929) which had been signed by these countries [2]. Nazi Germany did not extend this level of treatment to non-Western prisoners, who suffered harsh captivities and died in large numbers while in captivity. The Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan also did not treat prisoners of war in accordance with the Geneva Convention."

"In contrast Germany treated the Soviet Red Army troops that had been taken prisoner with neglect and deliberate, organized brutality. Soviet POWs were held under conditions that resulted in deaths of hundreds of thousands from starvation and disease. Most prisoners were also subjected to forced labour under conditions that resulted in further deaths. An official justification used by the Germans for this policy was that the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention; this was not legally justifiable however as under article 82 of the Third Geneva Convention of 1929; signatory countries had to give POWs of all signatory and non-signatory countries the rights assigned by the convention."

"German POWs [in Russian camps] were used for forced labour under conditions that resulted in deaths of hundreds of thousands. One specific example of the Soviets cruelty towards the German POWs was after the Battle of Stalingrad during which the Soviets had captured 91,000 German troops. The prisoners, already starved and ill, were marched to war camps in Siberia to face the freezing bitter cold. Of the troops captured in Stalingrad, only 5,000 survived. The last German POWs were released only in 1955, after Stalin had died."

"In quantifiable terms, between 1941 and 1945 the Axis powers took around 5.7 million Russian prisoners. Approximately 1 million were released during the war, in that their status changed but they remained under German authority. A little over 500,000 either escaped or were liberated by the Red Army, 930,000 more were found alive in camps after the war. The remaining 3.3 million prisoners (57.5% of the total captured) died during their captivity. The Soviets captured 3.155 million German soldiers, of which 1.185 million (37.5%) died. In comparison, 8,348 British or American prisoners died in German camps in 1939-45 (3.5% of the 232,000 total)."

"Prisoner of war, World War II" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POW#World_War_II