During the Second World War, a network of prisoner camps was established by Nazi Germany. Stalag III C Alt Drewitz was one of such camps, Stalag standing short for German ‘Stammlage’. The camp was for privates and non-commissioned officers.

The Third Reich was divided into 13 ‘Wehrkreise’, with Küstrin being located in Wehrkreis III until 1945. The Stalag III A and B, Luckenwalde and Fürstenberg, respectively, were the first camps to be put into operation.

For Alt Drewitz, which was a former sport camp of the Hitler youth, it would be repurposed. The first prisoners to be put into the camp were several thousand Polish soldiers, transferred from Stalag III A in 1939.

On 11 June 1940, the camp was officially put into operation. This followed the French campaign, with the influx of prisoners of war into the camp increasing almost exponentially. The prisoners were of French, Belgian, Dutch and possibly British descent, as well as Yugoslav from 1941.

The first Soviet prisoners arrived the same year, 1941. After the capitulation of Italy in 1943, Italian captive soldiers were also added. In 1944, a larger scope of British, American, Canadian, and as Indian units of the British Commonwealth were captured and imprisoned in the camp.

Detainees of the Warsaw uprising were also temporarily held captive in the camp in September 1944, before being transferred to the West. Although the purpose of such camps was to keep soldiers of hostile armies in detention, in many cases they became sites of extermination and cruel forced labour.

The Soviet prisoners, arriving in 1941, were treated as slaves rather than prisoners. This included them being beaten and starved.

A total of 70,000 of war prisoners were held here, of which 12,000 died or were murdered. About 20,000 of the prisoners were Soviet soldiers of the Red Army. The camp was closed down on 1 February 1945.