Klooga concentration camp

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Overview map of the Klooga concentration camp with today's memorial

The concentration camp Klooga was during the German occupation of Estonia , a Nazi concentration camp near the village Klooga in Harju County in northern Estonia, about 30 km west of the capital Tallinn . As a camouflage, the camp was officially designated OT Betriebe Klooga and thus assigned to the unsuspecting Todt organization .

location

The camp site was in the woods west of the village of Kloogas, in the area between the Tallinn – Paldiski railway line and a no longer existing track branch to the south. Today's expressway E 265 runs around two kilometers to the north . Today the area is on a cordoned off military training area, only a few traces of the buildings have been preserved. The memorial was laid out on a forest path between the area of ​​today's Klooga-aedlinn train station and the expressway in a north-westerly direction.

History of the camp

The establishment

During the occupation of Estonia in 1940/41 as a result of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact , a Soviet military zone had already been established in the area around Klooga. The Klooga concentration camp was established in September 1943 as one of more than twenty satellite camps of the Vaivara concentration camp . This was preceded by the order of the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler of June 21, 1943 to dissolve all Jewish ghettos in the Reichskommissariat Ostland , which at that time included Estonia, Latvia , Lithuania and parts of Belarus , and to call the Jews to work. The camp was operated under the command of the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt .

The warehouse operation

The number of prisoners in the camp was between 1,800 and 2,100 men and women, about 3,000 in total. Other sources indicate the occupancy as follows:

Occupancy of the camp
Period Number of prisoners
October 1943 1,453
November 1943 1,854
April 1944 2,080
May 1944 2.122

The majority of the inmates were Jews . Most were from the August and September 1943 the ghetto of Kaunas and Vilnius abducted. A smaller number were Latvian Jews from the Salaspils camp , Russian or Romanian Jews . In addition, some political prisoners , criminals, homosexuals and Soviet prisoners of war were imprisoned in the Klooga concentration camp .

For all prisoners who were imprisoned up to the beginning of September 1944, 'inmate personal cards' were created, which contained personal information about the inmates: surname, first name, date and place of birth and a job title. In some cases there are also entries on the use of prisoners in the so-called 'commandos', on stays in the infirmary or transfers to other places. The original maps are now archived in the Estonian National Archives .

The camp was fenced with barbed wire . The men and women captured were separated from each other and housed in two-story dwellings, there was running water and the necessary sanitary facilities. The camp was guarded by German SS units and members of the Estonian protection team Wachbataillon 287 ( Estonian 287th Kaitse Vahipataljon ), which from December 1943 was run as Estonian Police Battalion 30 ( 30th Eesti Politseipataljon ).

The prisoners had to do forced labor in construction and transport work, in craftsmen's commands, in cleaning units, in tailoring, blacksmithing and locksmithing and in wood processing with carpentry and wooden shoe factories. In the concrete processing department ( concrete command ), concrete-coated sea ​​mines were produced under the supervision of the Navy . The working conditions are described as extremely harsh. At the same time, the Jews deported to Estonia regarded the camp as a “good” camp, which many wanted to go to after their arrival.

The resolution

With the advance of the Red Army to Estonia in July and August 1944, the SS began to clear satellite camps of the Vaivara main camp, which had already been evacuated . On September 17, 1944, the occupiers were about to withdraw from Estonia. Occupation administration personnel were given five days to leave the area via the ports of Tallinn or Paldiski. The armed units were to withdraw to Riga or the western Estonian islands. Many prisoners from other camps were taken across the Baltic Sea to the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig , others to Freiburg in Silesia . The prisoners of the remaining work detachments were brought to the Klooga camp, which was the last camp in Estonia to exist and where the rest of the Vaivara camp guards also gathered.

On September 19, 1944, the prisoners in Klooga camp were assembled outside the women's barracks as usual at 5 a.m. The camp commandant responsible for Klooga was Wilhelm Werle at this time. He informed the approximately 2,000 prisoners that they would be evacuated to Germany. In fact, the ships in question were already overcrowded at this point and the plan to kill the prisoners had already been decided. It is unclear who ultimately issued the execution order.

In order to keep the situation calm, the daily routine on September 19th was followed as usual. A few hours after the prisoners roll call in the morning, three hundred of the physically strongest male inmates were forced to bring logs out of the camp and erect four pyres of around 6 mx 6.50 m with a fireplace in the middle in clearings about one kilometer from the camp . Meanwhile, the guarding of the camp was tightened with the help of the 20th Waffen SS Division under the command of the head of the training and replacement units Georg Ahlemann and the camp exit was also blocked with trucks. After the soup, which was distributed as usual in the afternoon, six male prisoners had to load two gas tanks onto the trucks.

At 5 o'clock in the afternoon began mass murder . Starting with the men, groups of 50 to 100 prisoners were guarded and brought to the pyre. The prisoners had to lie on their logs and were killed with a shot in the neck. Escaping prisoners were shot in the surrounding forest. The first layer of those murdered was covered with a layer of logs, then the next prisoners were killed. Overall, there were between three and four layers of murdered people. One of the pyre was not used and the others lit after dark. Between 30 and 50 prisoners were dragged individually only a few hundred meters into a corridor of an unfinished wooden barrack and murdered by being shot in the neck. The barrack was set on fire and burned down completely. Most recently, 79 prison functionaries such as hairdressers, cooks, shoemakers and the like were shot in a corridor in the women's barracks. A few dozen prisoners were able to hide in the attic of the men's barracks. According to Soviet sources, 108 prisoners survived.

Late on the night of September 19, 1944, the guards left the camp in the direction of the Paldiski port to be evacuated to Germany.

The discovery of the camp

A few days later, the partially charred, half-burned and apparently intact corpses were discovered by members of the Red Army . They called on British and American journalists who made the atrocities in Klooga world famous with their reports. So on October 30, 1944, an issue of Life magazine appeared with the article by John Kersey Prisoner 339, Klooga . The Soviet media also reported repeatedly and in the following years about the crimes committed. However, it was not mentioned from the start that the majority of the inmates were Jews. Instead, they were referred to as anonymous 'Soviet citizens' or deliberately as Russians or Estonians, although there were many victims of Lithuanian, Polish or Latvian nationality.

The offender

The murder was organized and supervised by the leading German SS personnel. The shootings were carried out by a squad of German-speaking members of the security police, whose origin is contradictingly stated, but for whom Tallinn appears the most credible. The 3rd Company of the 287th Police Battalion, which was formed from Estonia, was involved in the mass murder as a camp guard. The camp guard was reinforced by the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS , which was stationed nearby. The camp commandant of the Vaivara main camp, SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Aumeier , who had already served in the Auschwitz , Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps , was later arrested. He was executed in Krakow after the Second World War for crimes against humanity .

Commemoration

After the discovery in the Soviet era

The first memorial stone on the mass graves. Inscription in Estonian and Yiddish

In Estonia's Soviet times, the victims of the Holocaust were not commemorated in public. Instead, the memory of those who fell in the ' Great Patriotic War ' was cultivated and the 'victory over fascism' was glorified. The sites of the mass murder of the Jews were instrumentalized for this purpose without mentioning that the victims were Jewish. In Klooga, too, they were referred to anonymously and regardless of their nationality as “Soviet citizens” and this was indicated on the memorial stones. Official initiatives that sought to pay tribute to the Jewish victims in particular were rejected. The first memorial event in Klooga, the burial of the remains of the murdered, took place on October 7, 1944: German prisoners of war were forced to bury them in two elongated mass graves . The graves were surrounded by a stone wall and in 1951 a monument was erected with the inscription “In memory of the victims of fascism”. Boards later attached in Estonian and Russian condemned the perpetrators as 'fascist murderers' and 'enemies of the Soviet people' and described the situation of the camp and the events of September 19, 1944.

In the 1960s and 1970s, orienteering races were organized as memorial events on September 19 . The former prisoners, mostly living abroad, and their relatives were neither invited to memorial events nor were their participation desired, and foreigners were not allowed to visit the Soviet exclusion zone.

At the end of the 1980s the situation changed: A group of former prisoners from Israel visited the site in May 1989 and the discussion about the replacement of the memorial stone began. After 1989, the restrictions on commemorative events gradually disappeared throughout Estonia.

After regaining independence

After Estonia regained independence in 1994, at the instigation of the Estonian Jewish community, the plaques on the memorial stones from the Soviet era were replaced or the correct information on the nationality of the victims was added. The monument at the mass grave still exists today, the red star was also replaced by the Star of David in 1994 . Since the year 2002 January 27th has also been a day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust in Estonia , and on September 19th, commemorative events are organized annually by government agencies and the Estonian Jewish community.

Memorial in memory of the murdered Jews in Estonia. Inaugurated on September 1, 1994.

In his speech on the grounds of the former concentration camp in May 2005, Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip asked for forgiveness for Estonians' participation in the Holocaust on behalf of the Estonian government . He promised that Estonia would continue to do everything possible to solve these crimes.

On July 24, 2005, the Estonian President Arnold Rüütel and the Israeli ambassador to Estonia, Shemi Zur, unveiled a marble memorial stone on the site of the former Klooga concentration camp.

On the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp on September 19, 2014, an Estonian delegation from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the Estonian Jewish Community organized a memorial event at the memorial. Around one hundred people attended , including the Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Rõivas , the Italian Ambassador Marco Clemente as representative of the Presidium of the Council of Europe and the survivor Dr. T. Balberyszski.

The memorial

The memorial is laid out as a path that zigzags an existing forest path. It contains a total of nine stations. Coming from the southwest, today's Klooga-aedlinn train station, this route connects the memorial stones and information boards on various aspects of the Klooga camp and the Holocaust: Klooga camp , life in Klooga camp , the dissolution of the camp on September 19, 1944 , a The memorial stone designed by the architect Tiit Kaljundi , The Discovery of Mass Murder , the tomb with the monument from 1951 designed by the architect Ants Mellik , the memorial stone designed by the architect Rein Luup and the artist Heino Müller from 1994, The Holocaust in Estonia and The Holocaust .

literature

  • Riho Västrik: Klooga koonduslaager - Vaivara ssteemi koletu lõpp In: Vikerkaar , 8–9 (2001), pp. 147–155.
  • Paula Chan: Red Stars and Yellow Stars: The Soviet Investigation of Klooga Concentration Camp. In Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 33, H. 2, Fall 2019 doi : 10.1093 / hgs / dcz022 pp. 197–224.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gates of the Klooga concentration camp , representation of the camp gate with the official name, accessed on July 31, 2018.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Olev Liivik in: Methodical Materials - Holocaust Commemoration in the Baltics , Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Latvia with support of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and The Dutch Jewish Humanitarian Fund, Riga, 2016 (PDF, 3 , 0 MB, English).
  3. ↑ a b Klooga concentration camp on estonica.org, accessed on July 31, 2018.
  4. ↑ a b c Wolfgang Benz: The place of terror: Riga-Kaiserwald, Warsaw, Vaivara, Kauen (Kaunas), Płaszów, Kulmhof. CHBeck, 2005, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 , p. 162 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  5. ↑ Digitized prisoner ID cards from Klooga concentration camp , accessed on August 29, 2018.
  6. ^ The Makings of "Aunty Betty" biography of inmate Basia Daiches , accessed July 31, 2018.
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Curilla: The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and Belarus: 1941–1944 , Verlag Schöningh, Munich, 2006, p. 856, digitized .
  8. ↑ a b c Ruth Bettina Birn : The Security Police in Estonia: 1941–1944; a study on collaboration in the east, Verlag Schöningh, Paderborn, Munich, pp. 183/184, digitized
  9. ↑ Ruth Bettina Birn: Klooga . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps . Vol. 8, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 , p. 162.
  10. ↑ a b c d e Information boards at the memorial, station 3
  11. ^ Andrej Angrick: "Aktion 1005" - removal of traces of Nazi mass crimes 1942–1945. Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3268-3 , Vol. 2, pp. 686-690 (with photos).
  12. ↑ LIFE . from Oct. 30, 1944, ISSN  0024-3019 , Volume 17, No. 18 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  13. ↑ Location of the mass grave with the first memorial stone
  14. ↑ Speech by Prime Minister Andrus Ansip on May 8, 2005 (Engl.)
  15. ↑ Klooga Concentration Camp Commemoration in Estonia , article on the IHRA website of September 30, 2014, accessed July 31, 2018.
  16. ↑ Location of the memorial north of the railway line

Coordinates: 59 ° 19 ′ 12.5 ″  N , 24 ° 12 ′ 48.1 ″  E