Meißen

JAN WALCZAK Rifleman, 15th Infantry Regiment a.k.a. "Józek"

* 26.6.1930 Warsaw

from 18.10.1944 prisoner of war No. 103218 Stalag IV B Mühlberg

† 2.1945 Brockwitz (Saxony), buried by the cemetery wall (forced labourers' war plot) Neuer Johannesfriedhof Meissen

After the first weeks of captivity in Stalag VIII B Lamsdorf, the fourteen-year-old soldier Jan Walczak was taken to Stalag IV B Mühlberg. In a group of 250 insurgents, there were 244 juvenile boys aged from 12 to 16. Their captivity lasted for a short time - apart from a few wounded ones, who remained in the camp sick bay, the boys were gradually taken to subcamps and work units or to other prisoner-of-war camps in Saxony (IV F Hartmansdorf, IV G Oschatz). Despite the Geneva Convention signed by Germany, the prisoners were forced to work in the arms industry. One of the groups, which was mostly made up of the youngest, was deprived of the status of prisoners of war and treated as civilian forced labourers. From the end of November 1944, they worked in a branch of the Messerschmitt aircraft factory in Brockwitz near Meissen. It produced fuselage parts for the Messerschmitt Bf 109 F fighter, tracked tractors, self-propelled guns, anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. Hard work, over the capacity of the underaged boys, in a 12-hour two-shift system, without basic medical care and with insufficient food, led to the starvation of the young soldier from the Warsaw Uprising.