Soviet Special Camps Nos. 8 and 10 in Torgau, 1945 - 1948
In August, 1945, the Soviet secret police agency NKVD established its Special Camp No. 8 in Fort Zinna. Order No. 00315 by NKVD chief Beria, dated 18 April 1945, defined those "hostile elements" that were to be kept "in custody ... in internment camps" as the German hinterland was cleared of combat troops. These included members of the German secret services, "spies" and "saboteurs" (those who undermined Soviet military strength in any way), members of underground groups, "active members of the National Socialist party", "leaders of Fascist youth organizations", "directors of administrative agencies", and "newspaper and magazine editors and authors of anti-Soviet publications".
Most of the prisoners in Special Camp No. 8 were members of the NSDAP or other nαzι organizations--interned without trial--alongside several hundred POWs. The arresting "operative troops" of the NKVD and other Soviet security forces considered mere membership in an organization or the word of an informer as sufficient grounds for incarceration.
Rarely was a prisoner charged with having committed a specific act. The primary purpose of the camp, according to the "Provisional Camp Regulations" of 27 July 1945, consisted in "completely isolating" the inmates. This meant that no information was passed along to relatives, even in case of death; strict security measures were enforced; and work gangs practically never went outside the camp. Furthermore, rations and medical care were utterly inadequate, so that almost all deaths were due to physical exhaustion or tuberculosis.
By the end of 1945, Fort Zinna, which was built to hold one thousand inmates, was filled with 7,500 prisoners. They were housed in the cell block, in hastily built barracks, and in the ramparts of the fort. In March, 1946, the camp was transferred to the nearby Seydlitz barracks. Special Camp No. 8 was dissolved in January, 1947, by transferring the inmates to Special Camps No. 2, Buchenwald, and No. 1, Mühlberg on the Elbe.
Fort Zinna remained in use from May, 1946, to October, 1948, however, as Special Camp No. 10. From Autumn of 1946 on, its special function in the system of "Special Camps" in the Soviet zone of occupation was the internment of Soviet citizens condemned by the Soviet Military Tribunals (SMT) awaiting transport to the forced labor camp complexes in the USSR.
Half of all those deported from the special camps and related prisons in the Soviet zone of occupation to the USSR passed through Torgau. In proceedings that were not compatible with the rule of law, the military courts sentenced Soviet citizens to 5 to 25 years in "corrective labor camps" for collaboration with the Germans ("treason"), "absence without leave", desertion and criminal offenses.
Among the German convicts imprisoned in Fort Zinna there were fewer war criminals or active supporters of National Socialism than persons who had opposed Soviet postwar policies, or who had simply aroused suspicion. According to Soviet information, 800 to 850 persons died in the Torgau camps between 1945 and 1948.