Obermassfeld

BLIND PRISONERS OF WAR

The large hospital at Obermassfeld (Reserve-Lazaret IXC) for limbless prisoners also set up a school for the blind. It was under the administration of Stalag IXC. Patients came from across Germany, but mainly from Military District IX.

It was in the town of Obermassfeld, south-west of Erfurt, in Thuringia, central Germany in a three-story stone building that was previously a Strength Through Joy hostel.

The hospital was operated by British, Canadian and New Zealand medical staff. They were considerably augmented in October 1944 with the arrival of an entire ambulance team of the British 1st Airborne Division, captured at Arnhem.

In 1942 both types of patient were removed to Kloster Haina, near Kassel, dependent on Stalag IXA, which became the orthopaedic as well as the eye centre for British prisoners of war.

A British eye specialist, Major D. Charters, RAMC, eye specialist of 26 General Hospital, took charge of the eye centre, and a braille school was established at the hospital. Men learned to read and to write braille shorthand, as well as to type and play musical instruments. In many respects the POWs received excellent rehabilitation.

Many of those in Kloster Haina were repatriated, and the eye centre and school moved to Bad Soden, located south-east of the town of Bad Orb in Hesse, Germany (Stalag IXB) in 1944.

[written by Philip Baker]