Without a prior plan to accommodate this many captives the Germans began hastily building the facilities to house them, most of which were located in Gdańsk Pomerania, including Tuchola.

Polish authorities opened the camp again in May 1920, with the first prisoners consisting of members of the Ukrainian Galician Army, who had been captured during the Polish–Ukrainian War and in the Kiev offensive.

[10] Beginning in September 1920, and until October 1921,[11] the camp also housed Red Army POWs captured during the Polish-Soviet War, especially after the Polish victory in the Battle of Warsaw.

[4] Immediately after the arrival of the Russian prisoners, epidemics of cholera, dysentery, flu, tuberculosis and various forms of typhus broke out.

[12] Between September and November 1920, almost three thousand of the Russian POWs volunteered to switch sides and join Polish or Polish-allied units.

[13] During the period that the camp was controlled by the Second Polish Republic, up to two thousand Russian prisoners died due to hunger, bad living conditions, and infectious diseases.

[16] While in many respects, due to overcrowding, the conditions in the camp were substandard, the interned enjoyed a significant amount of autonomy.

The Polish Ministry of the Interior was put in charge in April 1922 and between then and November almost all the interned were released and transferred to regular civilian life in Poland.