Gross-Rosen was a network of Nazi concentration camps built and operated by Nazi Germany during World War II. The main camp was located in the German village of Gross-Rosen, now the modern-day Rogoźnica in Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Poland, Its prisoners were mostly Jews, Poles and Soviet citizens. Prisoners were put to work in the construction of a system of subcamps for expellees from the annexed territories. Gross Rosen became an independent camp on 1 May 1941. As the complex grew, the majority of inmates were put to work in the new Nazi enterprises attached to these subcamps. Some prisoners who were not able to work but not yet dying were sent to the Dachau concentration camp in so-called invalid transports.

The largest population of inmates, however, were Jews, initially from the Dachau and Sachsenhausen camps, and later from Buchenwald. During the camp's existence, the Jewish inmate population came mainly from Poland and Hungary; others were from Belgium, France, Netherlands, Greece, Yugoslavia, Slovakia, and Italy.

Following the unsuccessful Polish Warsaw Uprising of 1944, the Germans deported 3,000 Poles from the Dulag 121 camp in Pruszków, where they were initially imprisoned, to Gross-Rosen. Those Poles were mainly people of 20 to 40 years of age. located in eastern Germany and German-occupied Czechoslovakia and Poland. In its final stage, the population of the Gross-Rosen camps accounted for 11% of the total inmates in Nazi concentration camps at that time. A total of 125,000 inmates of various nationalities passed through the complex during its existence, of whom an estimated 40,000 died on site, on death marches and in evacuation transports. The camp was liberated on 14 February 1945 by the Red Army. A total of over 500 female camp guards were trained and served in the Gross-Rosen complex. Female SS staffed the women's subcamps of Brünnlitz, Graeben, Gruenberg, Gruschwitz Neusalz, Hundsfeld, Kratzau II, Oberaltstadt, Reichenbach, and Schlesiersee Schanzenbau.

The Gabersdorf labour camp had been part of a network of forced labour camps for Jewish prisoners that had operated under Organization Schmelt since 1941. The spinning mill where the female Jewish prisoners worked had been "Aryanized" in 1939 by a Vienna-based company called Vereinigte Textilwerke K. H. Barthel & Co. The prisoners also worked in factories operated by the companies Aloys Haase and J. A. Kluge und Etrich. By 18 March 1944 Gabersdorf had become a subcamp of Gross-Rosen.

One subcamp of Gross-Rosen was the Brünnlitz labor camp, situated in the Czechoslovak village of Brněnec, where Jews rescued by Oskar Schindler were interned.

The Brieg subcamp, located near the village of Pampitz, had originally been the location of a Jewish forced labour camp until August 1944, when the Jewish prisoners were replaced by the first transport of prisoners from the Gross-Rosen main camp. The camp was mostly staffed by soldiers from the Luftwaffe and a few SS members. Most of the prisoners were Polish, with smaller numbers of Russian and Czech prisoners. Most of the Poles had been evacuated from the Pawiak prison in Warsaw; others had been arrested within the territory controlled by the Reich or had been transported from Kraków and Radom. 150 grams of bread, 1 quart of soup made with rutabaga, beets, cabbage, kale or sometimes nettles, 1 pint of black "coffee" and a spoonful of molasses. Sometimes "hard workers" called zulaga would be rewarded with a piece of blood sausage or raw horsemeat sausage, jam and margarine. Prisoners also received of Knorr soup per week.

Post-war history

After the war, the former camp was under control of the occupying Soviet forces until April 1947, when it was taken over by Polish administration. In 1953, a memorial to the victims designed by Adam Procki was unveiled.

War crimes trial

On 12 August 1948, the trial of three Gross Rosen camp officials, Johannes Hassebroek, Helmut Eschner and Eduard Drazdauskas, began before a Soviet Military Court. On 7 October 1948, all were found guilty of war crimes. Eschner and Drazdauskas were sentenced to life imprisonment and Hassebroek was sentenced to death, but this was later commuted also to life imprisonment.

Museum

From the 1950s to 1970s, the former camp was under the care of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the Historic Museum of Wrocław. In 1958, the first museum exhibition was created. In 1963, the site of the former camp was added to the Registry of Cultural Property of Poland. In 1976, it became a branch of the District Museum in Wałbrzych. The Gross-Rosen State Museum was opened in 1983, after efforts by survivors from Warsaw and Wrocław.

On 10 May 2002, a ceremony to commemorate 19 officers of the Special Operations Executive murdered by Nazi Germany at Gross-Rosen in 1944, was held at the museum, with the participation of the families of the victims, various Polish officials and war veterans, and ambassadors of the United Kingdom, Canada and France.

Since its creation, the museum has been most visited by Poles, followed by Germans, according to data up to 2013.

Notable inmates

  • Boris Braun, Croatian university professor
  • Simon Wiesenthal, Nazi hunter. He provides the following information about the camp in his 1967 book The Murderers Among Us:

:: "... healthy looking prisoners were selected to break in new shoes for soldiers on daily twenty mile marches. Few prisoners survived this ordeal for more than two weeks."

  • Władysław Ślebodziński, mathematician who taught prisoners
  • Shlomo Zev Zweigenhaft, Rosh Hashochtim of Poland and Chief Rabbi of Hannover and Lower Saxony