Home »Sightseeing Stutthof concentration camp (1939-1945) Stutthof camp that the status of state concentration camp received 7 January 1942 , was actually founded at the outbreak of World War II, on 2 September 1939, Located near the village of Stutthof , within the Free City of Danzig , in the first phase of its the existence of Stutthof camp was to play a special role in the implementation of the solution to the Polish in Gdansk Pomerania . Its been here since the first days of the war were deposited survivors of pogroms , which engaged in special operational groups of the security police and security forces ( Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und Sicherheitsdienst ) Poles and Jews , threatening elements mastered by the Third Reich Gdansk Pomerania , which also counted among the mentally ill . They also included the extermination campaign , conducted in the framework of the so-called . Clean-up ( Säuberungsaktion ) . Even before the war, acting in Pomerania German militia ( Selbstschutz ) drew up the list of persons, according to which from the very first days of the war began to mass arrests . These people first had to undergo a planned extermination . Operation Tannenberg , the aim of which was to be the elimination of Polish element in the Free City of Danzig called primarily target the leaders of socio - political Polish population of the area , which were included Polish clergy , teachers, members of the Western Union , Members of Maritime and Colonial League , representatives of the Polish factions and political parties operating in the Free City of Danzig and the whole Gdańsk Pomerania . By January 1942, the Stutthof camp did not report directly to the central authorities of the SS in Berlin. He wore the name Zivilgefangenenlager camp Stutthof , and as a local was above all a place of internment, the Polish population from the territory of Gdansk and Gdansk Pomerania . Only after two years of effort , punctuated by a visit of Reichsführer- SS Heinrich Himmler on 23 November 1941 , on January 7 , 1942, was Stutthof concentration camp . From September 2, 1939 , the commandant of Stutthof camp was SS - Obersturmbannführer Max Pauly , who held this position until 31 August 1942 After moving to the position of commander of KL Neuengamme , was replaced by SS- Hauptsturmführer Paul Werner Hoppe , acting commandant of Stutthof to the end of the camp , ie until May 1945 his deputy , the head of the camp title and Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer , Head of Division III in the years 1942 to 1945 was SS - Hauptscharführer Traugut Theodore Meyer . He was responsible for order and discipline in the camp , was responsible for the accommodation of prisoners , their employment, and oversaw the execution of penalties. Division III conducted the central register of detainees . The first transport of inmates , who came to camp designated for future space on 2 September , had about 150 people. They were arrested Elect from 1 September in Gdansk Poles and the local Jews to the camp and brought under several city buses . From 1942 to the Stutthof concentration camp transports of prisoners began to arrive from different regions of Polish and other occupied European countries and from other concentration camps . Within the 5 years of the Stutthof concentration camp were recorded in the total of about 110 000 prisoners . They were citizens of 28 countries , both European , being under German occupation , but neutral countries and the United States , which flow into the Stutthof occurred since 1942 prisoners were guided to the camp police establishments as well as they came in shipments from other concentration camps and ghettos . The incoming shipments of the concentration camps Buchenwald , Dachau , Neuengamme , Mauthausen , Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg were Poles, Germans , Czechs, Dutch, Belgians , French , Norwegians , as well as Jews . In the years 1942 - 1944 to Stutthof flowed transports of prisoners of Denmark, Norway and Finland, and Lithuania and Latvia. It is worth mentioning here the so-called group of prisoners . Ehrenhäftlinge ( prisoners honorary ), which were arrested and detained in KL Stutthof in April 1943, representatives of the Lithuanian intelligentsia - university professors , members of parliament , prosecutors , engineers , priests , doctors and representatives of the Latvian intelligentsia . Increasing number of members of the Latvian resistance movement occurred in the second half of 1944 , when the camp was recorded in the records of about 3,000 Latvians . The years 1942 - 1944 was a period of inflow to the Stutthof prisoners from other Polish regions. On 22 May 1942, for the first time appeared in Stutthof prisoners from Warsaw Pawiak prison . Another 859 prisoners from Pawiak recorded in the records of the camp on 25 May 1944, the majority were political prisoners , members of underground organizations operating in Warsaw. At the end of August and September 1944 to Stutthof largest group of prisoners arrived from Warsaw. In the transit camp in Pruszkow then sent a total of 4432 people - civilians deported from Warsaw in the liquidation of the Warsaw Uprising , and a group of messengers Army. As part of the liquidation of the Polish resistance movement were sent shipments of the Polish population from areas Bialystok region . For participation in the guerrilla or partisan support for granted , or any favoring them in the years 1943 - 1944 in KL Stutthof was deposited about 2,500 Polish and Belarusian peasants from eastern Polish territories . A separate group , because of the treatment provided by the camp authorities - the isolation , the use of the heaviest work , treatment and disposal methods selekcjom of mass destruction, were Jews whose total deposited in KL Stutthof about 50 500 people. They were citizens of almost all European countries - Polish , Hungary, Lithuania , Latvia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but also in Germany, Austria , France and even Turkey, Switzerland , Luxembourg , Liechtenstein , Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and others. During all the years of KL Stutthof on its premises held executions aimed at eliminating unwanted units primarily , be it racial or political . Executions were also a form of intimidation and terror used in the camp. The first executions were intended to eliminate the prisoner community of individuals most deserved for Polish culture of Gdańsk Pomerania . As a result of the judgment of the police summary court ( Standgericht ) for 11 January 1940 executed 22 activists and workers of Gdansk Polish Polish state offices from the area of the Free City of Danzig , and 22 March 1940, further 67 In the years 1942 - 1945 during the intensification of the transports of political prisoners has increased the number of death sentences carried out by the use of special treatment ( Sonderbehandlung - SB ) . Some of the prisoners came to the camp already with death sentences by Sondergericht or Standgericht . Among the prisoners were executed for their political activities were Poles , mainly belonging to the organization of the resistance movement and the Russians , first of all prisoners of war had been sent from POW camps for their communist activities in the POW camps . Since mid- 1944 in Stutthof to kill the prisoners began to use a gas chamber . The action consisted mainly of direct extermination embedded in the second half of 1944, the Jewish women , selected from arriving transports , which, due to ill health could not be used as free labor in the German armaments industry . Death in the gas chamber group also suffered a 77 Soviet prisoners of war , disabled imported from the eastern front . Other methods which have been applied in the context of the SB was shooting a shot in the neck in public crematorium or pinned , ie killing injection of phenol , which is a method used since 1940 in order to eliminate the mentally ill prisoners . Chief physician Stutthof from April 1942 to 4 April 1945 was SS - Hauptsturmührer Dr. Otto Heidl . It was he who took part in selections of sick prisoners in the camp hospital , he led the direct supervision in the course of extermination in the gas chamber , eliminating transport disabled - Soviet prisoners of war, and fill commands higher authorities in Berlin regarding the liquidation of Jewish women as individuals unproductive . In January 1945, Soviet troops were within 40 - 50 km from Stutthof . Approaching the eastern front had a decisive influence on the decision to evacuate the camp. January 25, 1945 , after ordered by the commander of the camp at 4 am call to the route of evacuation came seven columns , ranging in size from 1,100 to 1,600 prisoners. Further two columns left the camp on Jan. 26, 1945 The objective of the target became German prisoners camps labor service (RAD ) , arranged in several towns near Lęborka . Individual columns succeeded held from 2 to 4 February 1945 until March 1945, the prisoners were in evacuation camps , where disease and famine decimated still prisoners. Only on 9 - 12 March the prisoners were taken over by the army of the Soviet army . After the evacuation of land in KL Stutthof left more than 12 000 prisoners , of which up to 23 April 1945, survived only 4508 prisoners. Throughout the camp there was a typhus epidemic . At the same time prepared for the second evacuation by sea , which took place on 25 and 27 April 1945 Prisoners loaded into barges at the mouth of the Vistula Mikoszewo , via transhipment in Hel were towed towards the Bay of Lübeck . On 9 May 1945 between the hours of 7 and 8 in the morning the troops of the Soviet Army entered the camp of Stutthof . The camp was already only about 140 inmates who did not participate in the evacuation of the camp and a group of more than 20 000 civilians from East Prussia . Of the total number of about 110 000 prisoners around 24 600 were transferred to other concentration camps . As a result of the use of direct methods of killing prisoners, as well as a result produced extreme living conditions , diseases , lack of medical care and hard work , especially in sub-camps , and as a result the number of evacuation of the camp Stutthof concentration camp victims is estimated at about 63 000 to 65 000 , among them about 28 000 are Jewish prisoners . Approximately 23 000 of the dead prisoners , victims of both the evacuation of KL Stutthof .
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 10:22:47 +0000
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