page_title: Wauwilermoos internment camp
section_title: Conditions, human rights violations, and inspections
hierarchical_section_title: Wauwilermoos internment camp / Conditions, human rights violations, and inspections
caption_attribution_description: Wauwilermoos internment camp, interior of one of the internees' barracks, Egolzwil-Wauwil, Canton of Luzern.
context_page_description: Wauwilermoos was an internment camp and prisoner-of-war penal camp in Switzerland during World War II. It was situated in the municipalities of Wauwil and Egolzwil in the Canton of Lucerne. Established in 1940, Wauwilermoos was a penal camp for internees, including Allied soldiers, among them members of the United States Army Air Forces, who were sentenced for attempting to escape from other Swiss camps for interned soldiers, or other offences. Together with Hünenberg and Les Diablerets, Wauwilermoos was one of three Swiss penal camps for internees that were established in Switzerland during World War II. The intolerable conditions were later described by numerous former inmates and by various contemporary reports and studies.
context_section_description: Under the title "Das ist ein Skandal, Mit Hunden gehetzt" ("This is a scandal, rushed with dogs") the Swiss newspaper Berner Tagwacht reported on 7 January 1944 the fate of the Soviet Russian internee Dobrolyubov in late November 1943. After a failed escape from Wauwilermoos, Dobrolyubov was condemned to the punishment cell. Because he was sick, Dobrolyubov asked to be sent to the camp's sickroom, but this was denied by Béguin. When Dobrolyubov argued, a dog was sent in, pulling him to the ground and tearing his clothes. A guard kicked the internee lying on the ground before Dobroliubov was sent to the punishment cell.
  Symforian Dziedic, a Polish lieutenant, was voluntarily returned to Switzerland after fleeing to France. After a second attempt to escape at the end of 1943, he was imprisoned in Wauwilermoos again. Béguin locked Dziedic, as described by the lieutenant, in an "arrest local beside the pigsty". Dziedic had to take off his uniform and put on rags, and was paraded through the camp.
  In the second half of December 1943, the then 26 Soviet Russian internees were sent, along with other detainees, to fetch wood from the forest. They were accompanied by several guards with dogs who ordered the soldiers to collect significantly more wood than normal and take it to the prison camp, 1.5 kilometres (0.9 mi) from the forest. The Russian internees refused to comply with this, and a guard fired his gun into the air and set the dogs on his prisoners. For this alleged resistance, soldier Malfejw was detained for ten days in the punishment cell.
  In a fight among inmates of barrack 29 on 28 September 1944, a 27-year-old Russian internee was shot by the guards and another wounded by two bullets.
  Robert Gamperl, probably a German refugee, reached Switzerland in November 1943. He and other internees in camp Lindenhof-Witzwil had refused to work. He was "punished with twenty days sharp arrest and transfer to the prison camp Wauwilermoos for three months” on the grounds that the detainees had wanted to force an investigation of the camp's "undemocratic and inhumane conditions". On 30 April 1944 Gamperl asked the Swiss Commissariat for Internment by letter to "review the real reasons, a hearing by the legal officer and reprieve to the clarification of the matter". His letter was never forwarded from Wauwilermoos; neither were letters from Alfred Friedrich and Josef Haslinger.
  Jules Keller, a medical student, had deserted from the German Army. From Wauwilermoos he sent at least five requests between 23 August and 2 November 1944 to the Federal Commissioner for Internment. Keller asked for health reasons to spend internment near his aunts in Zürich. He argued that because of a chronic gastrointestinal disease he was "cramped and incapacitated". He asked, supported by further justifications and medical certificates, to be transferred to a nursing home. His letters were never answered; similarly unanswered were three letters sent in August and September 1944 by Josef Dudkowiak, an officer of the German Air Force. Dudkowiak had deserted after four and a half years, after he had denounced his superior officer for corruption. Dudkowiak also said that he had been sent to the Wauwilermoos penal camp without any explanations.
  On the occasion of a lecture in front of Swiss officers Béguin explained his "art of bulk handling" (German: Kunst der Massenbehandlung) on 26 June 1944:
  115 internees refused to work. Three times we gave the command to work. It was refused. We examined all 115 men's pockets, left nothing therein as the handkerchiefs, and we locked all in a barrack. We told them at the same time, that they only would get food when they were working. During 14 days we left these 115 men without any food. On the 14th day, they told us to die. Our answer was: Since man can live 24 days without food and drink, we'll order the doctor to day 23. Some hours later, they demanded to eat. We said: There are 57 shovels and 58 pickaxes. If you'll have worked for an hour, you'll get food. An hour later, after 60 minutes of work, 114 men were eating. 
caption: Interior of the barracks: beds of straw to the right and latrines to the left
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