Stutthof concentration camp

thumb|upright=1.5|Map of the main camp after expansion. The German armaments factory [[Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke|DAW to the right (black, outlined in red) by the prisoner barracks. Death gate marked with an arrow, next to the red-brick SS administration building.]]

Stutthof was a Nazi concentration camp established by Nazi Germany in a secluded, marshy, and wooded area near the village of Stutthof (now Sztutowo, Pomeranian Voivodeship of northern Poland) 34 km (21 mi) east of the city of Danzig (Gdańsk) in the territory of the German-annexed Free City of Danzig. The camp was set up around existing structures after the invasion of Poland in World War II and initially used for the imprisonment of Polish leaders and intelligentsia. The actual barracks were built the following year by prisoners.

Stutthof was the first German concentration camp set up outside German borders in World War II, in operation from 2 September 1939. It was also the last camp liberated by the Allies, on 9 May 1945. It is estimated that between 63,000 and 65,000 prisoners of Stutthof concentration camp and its subcamps died as a result of murder, starvation, epidemics, extreme labour conditions, brutal and forced evacuations, and a lack of medical attention. Some 28,000 of those who died were Jews. In total, as many as 110,000 people were deported to the camp in the course of its existence. About 24,600 were transferred from Stutthof to other locations.

Camp

The camp was established in connection with the ethnic cleansing project that included the liquidation of Polish elites (members of the intelligentsia, religious and political leaders) in the Danzig area and Western Prussia.

Even before the war began, the German Selbstschutz in Pomerania created lists of people to be arrested, under the Danzig police chief, before its subsequent massive expansion. In November 1941, it became a "labor education" camp (like Dachau), administered by the German Security Police. Finally, in January 1942, Stutthof became a regular concentration camp. were added in 1943, just in time to start mass executions when Stutthof was included in the "Final Solution" in June 1944. Mobile gas wagons were also used to complement the maximum capacity of the gas chamber (150 people per execution) when needed.

Staff

thumb|left|Stutthof concentration camp administration

The camp staff consisted of German SS guards and, after 1943, the Ukrainian auxiliaries brought in by SS-Gruppenführer Fritz Katzmann, the Higher SS and Police Leader of the area.

In 1942, the first German female SS Aufseherinnen guards arrived at Stutthof along with female prisoners. A total of 295 women guards worked as staff in the Stutthof complex of camps.

Among the notable female guard personnel were: Elisabeth Becker, Erna Beilhardt, Ella Bergmann, Ella Blank, Gerda Bork, Herta Bothe, Erna Boettcher, Hermine Boettcher-Brueckner, Steffi Brillowski, Charlotte Graf, Charlotte Gregor, Charlotte Klein, Gerda Steinhoff, Ewa Paradies, and Jenny-Wanda Barkmann. Thirty-four female guards including Becker, Bothe, Steinhoff, Paradies, and Barkmann were identified later as having committed crimes against humanity. The SS in Stutthof began conscripting women from Danzig and the surrounding cities in June 1944, to train as camp guards because of their severe shortage after the women's subcamp of Stutthof called Bromberg-Ost (Konzentrationslager Bromberg-Ost) was set up in the city of Bydgoszcz.

Several Norwegian Waffen SS volunteers worked as guards or as instructors for prisoners from Nordic countries, according to senior researcher at the Norwegian Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities, Terje Emberland.

Prisoners

thumb|Stutthof prisoners eat during a break in the construction of the camp, October 1939.

The first 150 inmates, imprisoned on 2 September 1939, were selected among Poles and Jews arrested in Danzig immediately after the outbreak of war. Other sources say that the camp staff shot most remaining inmates in a mass murder.

Stutthof's registered inmates included citizens of 28 countries, and besides Jews and Poles – Germans, Czechs, Dutch, Belgians, French, Norwegians, Finns, Danes, Lithuanians, Latvians, Belarusians, Russians, and others. There were also those classed and condemned as "vagrants who travel around after the manner of the gypsies", a category that included Romani, Sinti and Yenish people.

Among 110,000 prisoners were Jews from all over Europe, members of the Polish underground, Polish civilians deported from Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising, Lithuanian and Latvian intelligentsia, Latvian resistance fighters, psychiatric patients, Soviet prisoners of war, Another prominent inmate was Lithuanian professor and writer Balys Sruoga who also survived since 1943 and detailed his time in camp including death march (ca 60 km 2-day trip during 1945 winter in the snow to Żukowo and then 50 km to Lębork) writing a book in 1945 Forest of the Gods. It is believed that inmates sent for immediate execution were not registered.

Conditions

thumb|upright=0.8|A Polish POW stands at attention in the Appellplatz at Stutthof, October 1939.

Conditions in the camp were extremely harsh; tens of thousands of prisoners succumbed to starvation and disease. Many died in typhus epidemics that swept the camp in the winter of 1942 and again in 1944; those whom the SS guards judged too weak or sick to work were gassed in the camp's small gas chamber.

Solidarity and religious observance: memoirs of Helen Lewis

In the recollection of Helena Katz (Helen Lewis), who in August 1944 had arrived with a group of three hundred women from the family camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, there was a sharp division among Jewish women in her Kochstädt sub camp outside Praust. Her group, whose ordeal had begun in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, were from German-speaking, broadly assimilationist, backgrounds in the Reich and occupied Czechoslovakia (Katz was a professional dancer from Prague). The group of five hundred women who had preceded them from Poland, the Baltic states, Hungary and Romania, spoke Yiddish, and "bitterly resented" both the newcomers' "lack of religious ardour" and the privilege they had enjoyed in retaining their unshaven hair.

In a devotional act that may have taken different forms elsewhere in the Stutthof camp system, the gulf between the two groups was bridged when together they committed to fast in honour of Yom Kippur (26 September 1944). Notwithstanding the administration's retaliatory threat of no food or drink for 36 hours, the women did not break ranks: food was refused. It was a victory in a "battle of wills" that, perversely, was rewarded by their SS commandant (Oberaufseherin) (a woman who had made known her personal involvement in the extermination of children from the Riga Ghetto) with a post-fast meal complete with sweet pudding.

Unexpected rations were again available, two months later, when the Oberaufseherin encouraged Katz and her fellow inmates to stage Christmas and New Year reviews featuring dramatic sketches, music, singing, and (with Katz performing) dancing. The "quirky" indulgences came to an end on 27 January 1945 when, in advance of approaching Soviet forces, all those in a condition to walk out were marched out of the camp. Those left behind in Kochstädt, the sick and the dying, where cared for by a new SS commandant, a former teacher who, from his arrival in camp, had been secretly feeding and protecting prisoners. Once the camp was liberated, his former charges saved him from Soviet retribution.

Death march

thumb|Two crematoria of Stutthof, photographed after liberation

thumb|Camp memorial

The general evacuation Stutthof camp system had begun on 25 January 1945. Swept during the winter by typhus, there were some 50,000 surviving prisoners. Cut off by advancing Soviet forces, the Germans forced them back to Stutthof, with thousands dying or being shot on route.

In late April 1945, the remaining prisoners were removed from Stutthof by sea, since the camp was completely encircled by Soviet forces. Again, hundreds of prisoners were forced into the sea and shot. Over 4,000 were sent by small boat to Germany, some to the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, and some to other camps along the Baltic coast. There was no evidence to link him to specific killings, and though he admitted to serving at the camp, he said that he was unaware that people were being murdered there. He was charged as a juvenile, as he was under 21 at the time of the offense. Images in the news broadcasts concealed his face for legal reasons.

Another Nazi camp guard, Bruno Dey from Hamburg, was charged in October 2019 with contributing to the killings of 5,230 prisoners at Stutthof camp between 1944 and 1945. He was tried in a juvenile court due to having been about 17 at that time. On 23 July 2020, he was given a two-year suspended sentence by the court in Hamburg.

In July 2021, a 96-year-old German secretary, Irmgard Furchner, who had been part of KZ Stutthof was arrested to be tried for war crimes. On 28 September 2021, Frau Furchner left her home in Hamburg and failed to appear for her hearing. She was arrested on 30 September 2021 and the hearing was rescheduled for 19 October 2021. On 20 December 2022, Furchner, then 97, was convicted of being an accessory to murder of more than 10,000 people at Stutthof concentration camp during World War II. A two-year suspended sentence in line with that requested by prosecutors was handed down by the Itzehoe state court in northern Germany. On 20 August 2024, the German Federal Court of Justice upheld Furchner's conviction.

Josef Salomonovic, who arrived at Stutthof in June 1944 from Auschwitz just before his sixth birthday, was the only survivor to give evidence in person at the Furchner trial. He described Stutthof, where his father was murdered by phenol injection, as the worst of the several camps through which he and his family had passed. Asia Shindelman, who arrived in Stutthof in July 1944 aged 16, testified from the United States via video link to prisoners being thrown by guards into electrified fences.

Alleged human soap production

thumb|Stutthof crematoria after liberation, 9 May 1945

thumb|Clothes of victims of Stutthof concentration camp, 9 May 1945

thumb|Electrified barbed wire fences at Stutthof, 9 May 1945

There was a controversy regarding whether corpses from Stutthof were used in the production of soap made from human corpses at the lab of Professor Rudolf Spanner.

Historian Joachim Neander argued that, contrary to some claims made in previous years, what the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) calls the "chemical substance which was essentially soap" was the byproduct of Spanner's bone maceration processes done to create anatomical models at the Danzig Anatomical Institute, where he worked and which was not part of the Stutthof camp. The corpses used for this were not "harvested" bodies, and the byproduct of Spanner's work at the Danzig institute was collected. This was conflated with the separate debunked rumours of industrial production of human soap in concentration camps, which circulated during the war, and thereafter used as proof of this during the Nuremberg trials. and 2006, respectively, but his and Tomkiewicz research concluded that this was a byproduct stemming from Spanner's work in bone maceration at the institute unrelated to the Stutthof camp. It was also added that Spanner was arrested twice after the war but released after each time after explaining how he had conducted the maceration and injection process of his models and was declared "clean" by the denazification program in 1948, officially exonerated, and resumed his academic career.

Sub-camps

The main German concentration camp in Stutthof had as many as 40 sub-camps during World War II. In total, the sub-camps held 110,000 prisoners from 25 countries. The sub-camps of Stutthof included:

Bottschin in Bocień
Bromberg-Ost in Bydgoszcz
DAG Factory in Bydgoszcz
Bruss (Brusy)
Chorabie (Chorab)
Cieszyny
Danzig–Burggraben in Kokoszki
Danzig–Holm (Gdańsk–Ostrów Island)
Danzig–Neufahrwasser (Gdańsk–Nowy Port)
Danziger Werft in Gdańsk
Dzimianen (Dziemiany)
Außenstelle Elbing in Elbląg
Elbing / Org. Todt (Elbląg)
Elbing / Schichau-Werke (Elbląg)
Pölitz (Police near Szczecin)
Gotenhafen in Gdynia
Gdynia-Orłowo
Außenarbeitslager Gerdauen (Zheleznodorozhny)
Graudenz in Grudziądz
Grenzdorf in Graniczna Wieś
Grodno
Gutowo
Gwisdyn in Gwiździny
KL Heiligenbeil (Mamonovo)
Hopehill in Nadbrzeże
Jesau/Juschny, Russia
Kolkau
Königsberg in Kaliningrad
Krummensee
Lauenburg (Lębork)
Matzkau in Maćkowy (now within city limits of Gdańsk)
Malken Mierzynek
Mikoszewo
Camp Nawitz in Nawitz/Nawcz
Niskie
Obrzycko
Pelplin
Potulitz in Potulice
Praust/Pruszcz Gdański
Przebrno
Russoschin in Rusocin
Brodnica
Schichau-Werft in Gdańsk
Schirkenpass (Scherokopas)
Schippenbeil/Sępopol, Poland
Seerappen/Lyublino, Russia
Sophienwalde
Stolp/Słupsk
Preußisch Stargard (Starogard Gdański)
Susz
Thorn (AEG, Org. Todt) in Toruń
Westerplatte in Gdańsk
Wiślinka
Zeyersniederkampen in Kępiny Wielkie

Commandants

The camp had two commanders:

SS-Sturmbannführer Max Pauly, September 1939 – August 1942
SS-Sturmbannführer Paul-Werner Hoppe, August 1942 – January 1945

Filming location

In 1999, Artur Żmijewski filmed a group of nude people playing tag in one of the Stutthof gas chambers, sparking outrage.

Notable inmates

Survivors

Reidar Kvammen, Norwegian international football player
Helen Lewis (née Katz), Czech dancer, choreographer (memoir: A Time to Speak).
Martin Nielsen (politician), Danish politician and member of parliament
Ingrid Pitt, Polish-British actress, author, and writer

Murdered or died as a result

Eva Mamlok, German anti-fascist and Jewish resistance fighter
Julia Rodzińska, Dominican Sister, blessed of the Catholic Church
Balys Sruoga, Lithuanian poet playwright, critic, and literary theorist. The memoir of his experiences in the camp Forest of the Gods was published posthumously
Thøger Thøgersen, Danish politician

References

Citations

Sources

Stutthof National Museum. Selection of monographs in PDF from Zeszyty Muzeum Stutthof No. 1–8. Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich.
Memorial to the Victims of the Stutthof Concentration Camp
Several authors, Monografia KL Stutthof (KL Stutthof monograph) Organization, prisoners, subcamps, extermination, responsibility.
SS personnel serving at Ravensbrück, Axis History.com
SS personnel serving at Stutthof, Axis History.com
Brief facts and photos of the camp
Joachim Neander *"The Danzig Soap Case: Facts and Legends around "Professor Spanner" and the Danzig Anatomic Institute 1944-1945", German Studies Review

External links

Marek Orski: Zbrodnie hitlerowskie w obozie koncentracyjnym Stutthof : liczba ofiar w świetle źródeł i badań : próba bilansu. "Acta Cassubiana" 2000. Vol. 2.