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Auction: 25112 - Orders, Decorations and Medals - e-Auction
Lot: 899

A poignant painting following the liberation - by the Highland Division - of Sandbostel Concentration Camp, which became known as a 'miniature Belsen'

Watercolour on card, with period hand-made frame, depicting a solider of the Highland Division gazing across the liberated camp, inscribed 'SANDBOSTEL 1945', 167mm x 137mm overall, very fine and a moving period object

The Foundation of Hamburg Memorials & Learning Centres gives some detail:

'In 1939, a large POW camp (Stalag X B Sandbostel) was established in Sandbostel near Bremervörde. This camp was a transit station for hundreds of thousands of prisoners from many different nations. In April 1945, the SS housed prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp in a separate part of this POW camp. Around 9,500 men, many of them from the satellite camps in Bremen, Wilhelmshaven and the Emsland region, spent the last weeks of their imprisonment in Sandbostel. There were insufficient provisions, and a typhus epidemic broke out as well, so many prisoners died in Sandbostel.

Until the British army arrived on 29 April, the remaining concentration camp prisoners were largely left to their own devices and were given emergency rations by the POWs in the neighbouring camp.

Over 3,000 concentration camp prisoners died in Sandbostel between 12-29 April 1945 and in the following weeks as a result of their imprisonment.'

The IWM photo archive (IWM B4884 refers) has a photograph of from the camp showing a '...14 year old Polish boy wearing the Cross of Valour, won for knocking out two German tanks during the Warsaw Uprising, 30 April 1945. He holds a rank of Lance Corporal and is known under the nom de guerre of 'Lisek', meaning 'Little Fox'.

After meeting heavy opposition, troops of the Guards Armoured Division captured Stalag XB at Sandbostel, near Zeven. This camp also contained a large number of political prisoners of all nationalities as well as British POWs and Allied soldiers. The conditions of the political prisoners were on a par with those at Belsen; inmates of the camp tell of prisoners dying at the rate of 150 a day.'

In the days following the liberation, locals were roped into assisting and further images were captured of German schoolgirls peeling potatoes to feed those previously held there.

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Estimate
£160 to £200

Starting price
£110