Stalag II-B was a German World War II prisoner-of-war camp situated 2.4 kilometres (1.5 mi) west of the town of Hammerstein, Pomerania (now Czarne, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland) on the north side of the railway line.

It housed Polish, French, Belgian, Serbian, Dutch, Soviet, Italian and American prisoners of war.

In 1933 it was established as one of the first Nazi concentration camps, to house German communists, however, it was dissolved after several months, and the prisoners were deported elsewhere.

[3] Cold combined with poor sanitary conditions and food rations, resulted in widespread diseases and many deaths.

[2] To make room for them, many of the Poles were forced to relinquish their POW status to become civilian slave laborers, in a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and some were offered to sign on the Volksliste.

[4] Faced with poor results, the Germans subjected the Poles to starvation and terror, as well as deportations to heavy labor subcamps.

Lack of warm clothing and malnutrition resulted in high mortality among POWs from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal, French Sudan, Madagascar and Indochina.

[2] Since October 1939, Polish POWs were sent to newly formed forced labour subcamps in the area, to work in forestry and agriculture.

[5] Eventually POWs of various nationalities were sent to numerous forced labour subcamps (Arbeitskommando) located in various cities, towns and villages in Pomerania and northern Greater Poland.

[9] The construction of the second camp, Lager-Ost ("East Compound") began in June 1941 to accommodate the large numbers of Soviet prisoners taken in Operation Barbarossa, including ethnic Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns, as well as Polish civilians from Soviet prisons, often accidentally classified as POWs.

German guards shot at those escaping without warning, and POWs captured after a chase were either murdered or sent to penal subcamps and later to concentration camps, mainly Gross-Rosen and Stutthof.

The Hammerstein installation acted as a headquarters for work detachments in the region and seldom housed more than one fifth of the POWs credited to it.

The fuel ration was always insufficient, and in December 1944 was cut to its all-time low of 26 pounds (12 kg) of coal per stove per day.

[12] Each day the men rose at 06:00 and breakfasted on Red Cross food and potato soup, bread and hot water (for coffee) which they drew from the farm kitchen.

At 07:00 they rode out to potato fields in horse-drawn wagons driven by "coldly hostile German farmhands" who would welcome the opportunity to shoot a "kriege."

The evening meal at 17:00 consisted of Red Cross food and the farmers' issue of soup, potatoes and gravy.

[12] On Sundays, the guard permitted POWs to lounge or to walk back and forth in the "yard" all day, but they spent a good deal of their time scrubbing their barracks and washing their clothing.

Through the activity of some of the key NCOs, Red Cross food was obtained from POW camps passed by the column on the march.

Except for one period when Red Cross food was exhausted and guards became surly, morale of the men remained at a high level.

The rest of the column proceeded to Marlag X-C, Westertimke, where they met the men they had left behind at Stalag II-B who had left on 18 February, reached Stalag X-B after an easy three-day trip, and then moved on to adjacent Marlag X-C on 16 April.