During the course of the Second World War some 3.5 million Soviet POWs died at the hands of the Nazis. A significant proportion of these were killed during the early stages of the war, following a sequence of mass surrenders as the Wehrmacht surged forwards during Operation Barbarossa; huge numbers of men were placed in temporary open-air camps where they died of starvation, disease, and exposure.
Despite the staggering numbers involved, the names and locations of these camps are almost entirely unfamiliar to laypersons in the West. Having been seized by curiosity I have done some basic research but have got nowhere, and I am struck by this considering the sheer scale of these events.
Can anyone shed some light upon this in terms of explaining exactly where these men died - and perhaps offer some insight as to why there isn't the same familiarity with such locations as with the extermination camps which were developed later?
I wrote a quick reply to your /r/history post, but I think it got taken down before you could see it. So here is my answer:
Because they were often makeshift camps with little to no defining features. A German POW camp in the opening stages of Barbarossa would often be nothing more than a large square with some barbed wire fencing to keep everyone in. Furthermore they were often temporary measures designed only to hold the prisoners for a few weeks before the Germans forced marched them back to a regular concentration camp/POW camp.
I also think there is something to be said for Germany's treatment of POWs just not being a well known topic among the general public, the Holocaust kinda overshadows the other crimes in the public discourse.