By the end of the war, more than 300,000 POWs, civilian prisoners and military internees from over 55 countries had passed through Stalag X B. Most were assigned to one of the camp's more than 1,100 work details in north-west Germany, where they worked primarily in agriculture but also in industry and armaments production.
Soviet POWs in particular were denied the protection of the law of war by the Wehrmacht, so thousands of them died of exhaustion, starvation and disease in Stalag XB and its work details.
In April 1945 around 9,500 prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp and its satellite camps arrived at Sandbostel. More than 3,000 of them died during the transport, in the camp and in the first weeks after the liberation.

The Sandbostel Camp Memorial
In 2005 and 2008 the Sandbostel Camp Foundation acquired part of the former camp and established the Sandbostel Camp Memorial. The memorial incorporates eleven historical huts and other buildings from the former POW camp and a few buildings from the post-war period. Five wooden dormitory huts, one latrine and one kitchen building have been restored following accepted conservation practices.

The Sandbostel War Graves Cemetery
In early 1941 the Wehrmacht established a camp cemetery near Sandbostel. The Soviet POWs who died in Stalag X B are buried anonymously there in mass graves.
The concentration camp prisoners who died in April and May 1945 were initially buried in mass graves near the camp. Between 1954 and 1956 their bodies were exhumed and reinterred at the camp cemetery, which was turned into the Sandbostel War Graves Cemetery. When the cemetery was redesigned, a Soviet monument and a Polish monument were demolished and replaced by a group of steles and a high cross. The current design of the cemetery stems from the 1980s. The total number of POWs and concentration camp prisoners buried in the Sandbostel War Graves Cemetery is not known.