Stalag VIII-A was a German World War II prisoner-of-war camp, located just to the south of the town of Görlitz in Lower Silesia, east of the River Neisse.

It was originally set up as a Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) camp, converted in October 1939 to house Polish prisoners (both soldiers and civilians), and later held up to 30,000 Allied prisoners of war (POWs), including Belgians, the French, Soviets, Britons, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Italians, Yugoslavs, Slovaks and Americans, before its evacuation in February 1945.

Originally a Hitler Youth camp, in October 1939 it was modified to house about 15,000 Polish prisoners from the German September 1939 offensive.

[1] It was initially a transit camp or Dulag located on an 18-hectare field alongside Ulica Lubańska, renamed as Stalag VIII–A on 23 September 1939.

In 1948 the city council of Zgorzelec decided to have the barracks dismantled in order to use the materials to rebuild Warsaw and other Polish towns.

On the slab it says in Polish and French: “1939 Stalag VIIIA 1945: Through this camp walked, in it lived and suffered ten thousands of prisoners of war”.

With the help of a friendly German guard (Carl-Albert Brüll), he acquired manuscript paper and pencils, and was able to befriend three other POWs (violinist Jean le Boulaire, clarinettist Henri Akoka, and cellist Étienne Pasquier).

[16][17] In 2011 the German alternative rock band Topictoday dedicated their Song "Helden ohne Namen" ("Heroes without Names") to the POWs of the camp, especially to Olivier Messiaen.

[18][19][20][21] In 2014 a German-Polish joint project, the Meeting Point Music Messiaen e.V., built a European cultural centre near the site of the former POW camp Stalag VIII-A.

[5] In September 2017, the centre hosted a conference entitled Stalag VIIIA and European memory of The Second World War POWs.