Stalag VIII-A

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. The location of the camp lies in today's Polish town of Zgorzelec, which lies over the river from Görlitz.

It was originally set up as a Hitler Jugend camp, converted in October 1939 to house Polish prisoners, and later held up to 30,000 Allied prisoners of war, including Belgians, the French, Soviets, Britons, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Italians, Yugoslavs, Slovaks and Americans, before its evacuation in February 1945. Its most famous inmate was French composer Olivier Messiaen.