Original Item: Only One Available. This is a scarce original WWII German prisoner of war identification tag issued to a Soviet Red Army serviceman held under prisoner number 3341 at Stalag 348.

Stamped from zinc and retaining a deeply aged, oxidized surface, the tag is a deeply personal surviving artifact from the brutal system of German camps established for captured Soviet military personnel following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

The tag is clearly stamped:

STALAG 348
Nr. 3341

The abbreviation “Nr.” indicates the prisoner’s registration number within the camp system.

Unlike a standard military identification tag bearing a soldier’s name and personal information, a prisoner of war tag reduced the captive’s identity to a camp designation and assigned number. Number 3341 may potentially be connected to an individual Soviet serviceman through surviving German prisoner records, registration cards, or modern databases, although no confirmed identification currently accompanies this example.

Stalag was an abbreviation for Stammlager, the German term for a permanent prisoner of war camp for enlisted personnel.

Stalag 348 was established by the Wehrmacht on April 8, 1941, initially in Wehrkreis VIII at Katscher, now Kietrz in Poland. The camp organization was subsequently transferred eastward as German forces advanced into Soviet territory.

It was moved first to Reichshof, now Rzeszów in Poland, and then to Dnepropetrovsk, today Dnipro, Ukraine. The camp staff arrived there during October 1941 and took over the site of the former Dulag 180 transit camp in the city jail complex.

Branch camps were later established at Pavlograd and Zaporozhye. Available camp listings record Stalag 348 at Dnepropetrovsk from approximately late 1941 until February 1943, followed by a later location at Gaisin, now Haisyn, from March through August 1943.

The prisoners held by Stalag 348 were overwhelmingly captured Soviet servicemen.

The camp population reportedly reached approximately 36,581 prisoners in October 1942. When the Red Army began advancing westward in early 1943, the branch camps were closed and prisoners were transferred through the main camp before being forced farther west.

Conditions faced by Soviet prisoners in German custody were catastrophically worse than those experienced by most Western Allied prisoners. More than five million members of the Soviet armed forces were captured during WWII, and more than three million died through starvation, disease, exposure, execution, forced labor, and systematic neglect. The Flossenbürg Memorial describes the mass death of Soviet prisoners as one of the largest war crimes of WWII.

Stalag 348 at Dnepropetrovsk became part of that wider catastrophe. Estimates indicate that more than 30,000 Soviet prisoners may have died within the camp system operating in and around the city.

This tag therefore represents far more than a piece of camp administration. It was the official identity carried by one unknown Soviet prisoner within a system marked by forced labor, extreme deprivation, mass illness, and an extraordinarily high death rate.

The tag measures approximately:

1 5/8" × 2 3/8"

It is manufactured from zinc and has developed a dark gray oxidized patina with scattered areas of surface corrosion.

Despite the oxidation, both the camp designation and prisoner number remain fully legible.

The central perforated or hatched breaking line remains intact, with no separation or significant loss.

German prisoner tags were normally designed so that they could be broken into two matching halves. In the event of a prisoner’s death, one portion could remain with the body while the other was retained for administrative recording. The fact that this example remains complete may indicate that it was retained by the prisoner, recovered from camp property, or otherwise removed from the system without being divided.

No suspension cord or wire is present.

The identity and ultimate fate of prisoner number 3341 are currently unknown. Modern research projects continue attempting to reconstruct the lives of Soviet prisoners through surviving German registration cards, transport lists, hospital records, and burial documentation. More than 80 years after the war, many individual fates remain unresolved.

The clear camp number gives this tag meaningful research potential. A successful archival match could transform it from an anonymous camp artifact into the personal identification of a specific captured Soviet soldier.

Original Soviet prisoner of war tags are difficult to encounter, particularly examples associated with camps located in the occupied Soviet territories, where records were destroyed, facilities were evacuated, and vast numbers of prisoners did not survive.

With its complete form, fully legible Stalag 348 designation, low prisoner number, and untouched zinc patina, this is a powerful and sobering artifact of Soviet military captivity during WWII.

A historically important personal relic preserving the assigned identity of one unknown Red Army prisoner within the deadly Stalag 348 camp system.