This is an interesting P.O.W. camp cover sent on 14 March 1944 from the Stalag Luft 6 in Heydekrug (now Šilutė, Lithuania) to the British Red Cross in London. UK. "kriegsgefangenenpost" (written on the top of the cover) is franking-free P.O.W. (prisoner of war) post. It looks like the author is a British officer named Sergeant A.G. Fripp. According to Wikipedia, "Stalag" is an abbreviation for Stammlager which itself is also an abbreviation of "Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschafts-Stammlager" which is the term used for the prisoner of war camps. Considering the absence of reinforcements and supplies, the Germans defended Memelland effectively, it was only on January 1945 that Soviet forces fully gained the district of Memel/Klaipėda.
Hello, I found these two websides:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_Luft_VI
location and maps:
http://www.gps-practice-and-fun.com/stalag-luft-6.html
Thank you so much for those informative links! I surely didn't know that part of the former camp ground is now a museum.
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