I toured a lesser known World War 2 German prisoner of war camp in Landsberg, Germany, March 6th, 2026. If you watched the HBO mini-series “Band of Brothers,” then you have seen this camp portrayed before. This is my story. The tour was given by my friend Christopher Vila, who is president of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. I also brought along my new friend for life, 82-year-old Erdmann von Harsdorf, who is the father of Dietrich von Harsdorf, the landlord of the AirBnB where I stayed 2 nights in their magnificent mansion in Landsberg, built in 1910.

Landsberg – Germany

In June 1944, right around the time that the United States Army stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, the German Army began building prisoner of war camps deep in the heart of Bavaria. One such place was Kaufering, Germany – about 70 miles west of Munich, and adjacent to Landsberg.

The German Army shipped Jewish prisoners from the Auschwitz PoW camp to the first of eleven Kaufering camps in Landsberg to begin building barracks and huts for female and male PoWs in which to live — it didn’t matter the age because their children were shipped there as well. These PoWs would be sent there to work for the German Army. The Germans still thought they had a chance of beating the Americans and its allies in the war.

Three underground bunkers for the production of the menacing Messerschmitt airplane were to be constructed in the Frauenwald forest in Landsberg under the construction team Ringeltaube. Each bunker was to be 240 meters long, 83 meters wide, and 25 meters high, with a ceiling thickness of three meters. Beginning on June 18, 1944, Jews were shipped to Landsberg to begin building the Kaufering camps – and then, the underground bunkers.

Jewish PoWs from Auschwitz arrived by the hundreds to work for the Germans. They arrived in train cars used for cattle at the small Kaufering train station.

Kaufering was the largest of the 169 subcamps of Dachau and it was strategically placed about 70 miles west of Munich from June 18, 1944 until the United States Army liberated it at the end of April 1945. Kaufering comprised of 11 sub-camps.

My wife Sue’s dad Haig Derderian was one of those who liberated the camps between April 27th and 29th 1945. He was in the 714th Tank Battalion, 12th Armored Division. You may have watched the HBO series Band of Brothers where the US Army liberates a Kaufering Camp. The 12th Armored Division was also heavily involved.

By the end of April 1945, approximately 30,000 prisoners had been deployed in the camps, including 4,200 women and 850 children. The women slept in disgusting, mold-ridden barracks while the men slept in cramped, primitive, earthen huts covered by soil and grass.

In ten months, at least 14,500 prisoners died from hunger, disease, exhaustion, executions, and death marches from one camp to another.

I sat outside in a cafe in Landsberg on the afternoon of March 6th, 2026. People rode by on bicycles on brick laid streets. Children walked and ran excitedly with their parents. People drank their beer and wine in the outdoor cafes, laughing, talking. The buildings in the city remained much like they did in 1944 and 1945 because Landsberg was not a village to be bombed by the allied forces. It was insignificant because the U.S. did not know about the Kaufering camps in the area yet.

My day at the cafe wasn’t much different than that of a day in March 1945. People who lived in the town knew what was happening in the Kaufering camps. It was a silent secret that the world had yet to learn.

The world knows about Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz. There isn’t very much written about Kaufering — probably the worst of the concentration camps from World War 2.

The average life expectancy at a Kaufering camp in June 1944 was 4-6 weeks. As the war continued and PoWs became older and weaker, that life expectancy became significantly less.

Imagine living on rations of moldy bread dipped in heated water in a canteen and then working for 12 hours the next day. That was their life, aside from living in mold-ridden barracks for the women and lice-ridden earthern huts for the men.

When the men were awakened in their huts daily at 4 am, their first job was to remove the dead bodies of PoWs and place them in front of the earthern huts. After that, they had to endure role call by the German guards for hours until they were satisified that every PoW was accounted for. That process could take hours.

Meanwhile, the women in the camp lived in larger barracks. During initial construction, ceramic bottles were used to line the ceiling to redirect humidity out of the barracks. Unfortunately, there was a flaw in the design as the bottles didn’t match up correctly. As a result, the half earthen barracks were filled with more than 90% humidity year-round due to the women breathing, sweating, and the elements. It resulted in mold growing everywhere. Mold grew on the beds, clothing, bread, and it became a deathly hazard for the female PoWs.

The men had it just as bad in their earthen huts. There was a lice infestation that became uncontrollable. A de-licing station was actually built at the camp, but it was never used as far modern day researchers know.

There was blood in layers in the entire Landsberg area due to the PoWs dying daily in the Kaufering camps, plus death marches that prisoners were forced to make walking from camp to camp. So much blood is in the soil that wildlife today avoids the area, except birds and gophers. Oddly, gophers dig through the Kaufering #7 camp earth and routinely bring up ceramic fragments of dishware and canteens that the PoWs used over 80 years ago. It turns out the gophers are the archeologists of this horrific, blood soaked land. The ceramic pieces are everywhere and a constant reminder of what happened at this camp years ago.

There is no happy ending to this story, except that the war ended and the camps were closed.

Christopher described a strange story about one of the Kaufering camps that was liberated. The highly decorated U.S. 522nd Field Artillery Battalion, an all-Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) unit within the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, liberated one of the camps. The night before the unit arrived, it snowed at the camp. The prisoners covered themselves in their small blankets and went to sleep as German soldiers stood guard holding their guns. At some point during the night, the German guards fled the camp. The next morning the 522nd Japanese American soldiers arrived. To the surprise of the PoWs, when they awoke, the Germans were gone, but now there were completely different looking men in green uniforms holding guns. They learned quickly that these odd-looking soldiers were there to save them.

The fact that the remains of the camp still exist is short of a miracle, thanks to German historian Anton Posset. Posset worked tirelessly to preserve Dachau’s largest camp network, the Kaufering subcamp complex. The preservation and development of Kaufering VII – Erpfting subcamp — now the European Holocaust Memorial Site — is attributed to him.

In the early 1990s, according to Christopher, the German government had plans drawn up to build an interstate highway almost directly through Kaufering #7. If that had happened, construction vehicles certainly would have destroyed the remains of the camp.

That’s where Anton Posset stepped in. He devised a plan where he would write to government officials in countries that had PoWs in camps during the war and ask that they dedicate a commemorative stone monument that would be placed on the grounds of Kaufering #7. Ten countries agreed and so an international coalition of Hungary, France, Russia, Czechoslovakia, The Netherlands, Belgium, Slovenia, Austria, Poland, and Lithuania all erected stone monuments within the next year as a dedication to Kaufering #7.

When Anton told the German government that an international coalition had erected stone monuments at the Kaufering #7 camp site, plans for the interstate highway were immediately diverted to a different area, thus saving the camp remains.

It turns out that Kaufering #7 is the only remaining camp in Germany that has original PoW barracks from the war. All of the other PoW sites, including Dachau and Auschwitz, have reconstructed barracks.

Anton Posset died in 2015, but he dedicated most of his life to preserving the memory and site of Kaufering #7 and other camps.

In 2000, Posset collaborated with directors/producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks on the HBO TV series Band of Brothers for episode 9 entitled “Why We Fight.” The episode focused on the liberation of the Kaufering concentration camps by Allied troops.

As for now, survivors of the camps are dwindling in numbers, but they and their families still contact Christopher and he volunteers to take them on tours of Kaufering #7.

The preservation association that Christopher is a part of gets no government funding and all expenses are out-of-pocket by the group.

For more information and details on how to donate to the organization that preserves the Kaufering #7 site, check it out here: https://www.landsberger-zeitgeschichte.de/alt/English/mainpage.htm