Hunger

We know nothing about the owner of this mess tin, neither where he came from nor whether he survived. But we do know his name, which he carved into the tin: "Ponomarev. Captured on 16 July 1941 / Arrived in Belostok 8 August 1941". The mess tin was found in 2005 during excavations on the site of the former Sandbostel prisoner-of-war camp north-east of Bremen.

For Soviet prisoners of war, owning a mess tin was not just a practical necessity, but a vital means of survival. In most cases, they only received meagre food rations, which were barely enough to withstand the extreme physical strain of captivity and forced labour. Between autumn 1941 and spring 1942 alone, around two million Red Army soldiers in German captivity died of hunger and cold. The civilian population in the occupied countries also suffered from inadequate supplies, which were not only a consequence of war but also a weapon of war used deliberately by the Germans.