Warsaw concentration camp
 
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Warsaw concentration camp in Poland
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The Warsaw concentration camp was established in the summer of 1943 on the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto . The concentration camp was run as a satellite camp of the Majdanek concentration camp from the end of April 1944 , but at that point it was already in the process of being dissolved. On July 28, 1944, the concentration camp was "evacuated".
Claims that the Warsaw concentration camp was an extermination camp with a gas chamber and about 200,000 fatalities have not been historically proven.
Background and history
From March 1942 the SS gradually dissolved the ghettos in the Generalgouvernement and deported the Jews to the Aktion Reinhardt extermination camps or shot them on the spot. On July 22, 1942, the so-called dissolution of the Warsaw Ghetto began by the SS. The Armaments Inspectorate and the Higher SS and Police Leader ( HSSPF ) Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger agreed to initially exclude Jewish workers and their families from war-important companies from deportations . This arrangement was often undermined and complaints increased.
Heinrich Himmler demanded in October 1942 that all operations in the Warsaw Ghetto be consolidated and placed under the control of the SS Economic Administration Main Office (WVHA). As soon as possible, the factories, including the forced laborers , were to be relocated to the Lublin district as "closed concentration camps" in order to carry out Wehrmacht orders there as the SS-owned business enterprise of Ostindustrie GmbH (OSTI).
Contrary to Himmler's instructions, the ghetto operations continued to operate as usual. On January 9, 1943, Himmler furiously demanded the immediate shutdown of private companies, ordered the relocation of the factories within six weeks and ordered those Jews to be deported to the Treblinka extermination camp who were not needed in war-relevant factories. On February 16, 1943, Himmler requested that a concentration camp be set up in the Warsaw ghetto. The prisoners were supposed to tear down the buildings in the residential area after the factories had been relocated and secure the building materials for further use.
The resumption of deportations met with armed resistance on January 18, 1943. A large-scale evacuation operation triggered the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto on April 19 , which ended on May 16, 1943 with the complete destruction of the ghetto.
Warsaw concentration camp
The SS-Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of the Waffen-SS Jürgen Stroop then proposed to use the Dzielna prison (Polish: Pawiak ) as a concentration camp and to have bricks, iron girders and other materials that could be used by inmates recovered. In fact, however, the building of the former military prison on ulica Gęsia (Eng. Goose Street ; today ul. Anielewicza), the Gęsiówka was used for the Warsaw concentration camp; later the headquarters was housed there.
Demolition of the ghetto
The area of the ghetto was 320 hectares; part of it was assigned to the civil administration. 180 hectares with 2.64 million cubic meters of masonry were to be removed. The project required the use of heavy equipment, rails and lorries as well as qualified personnel and exceeded the possibilities of the local offices. Albert Speer classified this extraction of building material as a preferred project.
The original plan was to deploy 10,000 prisoners. In February 1944, however, only 2,040 prisoners were deployed there alongside 2,000 civilian workers. The forced laborers were temporarily in quarantine due to a typhus epidemic, so that only civilian workers were employed.
The work was more than 80% complete at the beginning of June 1944 and was scheduled to expire in August 1944.
Construction of the concentration camp
The headquarters of the new concentration camp used a building on Ulica Gęsia. For the concentration camp, which was originally planned for 10,000 prisoners, some barracks were built from the recovered building materials on a wall of the old central ghetto. On July 23, 1943, 300 non-Jewish prisoners from Buchenwald arrived there . By the end of November, around 3,700 Jewish forced laborers had been admitted from Auschwitz, including 2,500 Hungarian Jews. In February 1944, the planned capacity was reduced to 5,000 prisoners, but it was not until June 10 that the construction management reported that the concentration camp was "ready for occupancy" and that it would soon be fully occupied.
The camp SS
The first camp commandant of the camp was Wilhelm Göcke , former camp manager of the Mauthausen concentration camp . After a few weeks, Göckes was succeeded by SS-Hauptsturmführer Nikolaus Herbet with Obersturmführer Wilhelm Haertel as protective custody camp leader . After the Warsaw concentration camp was subordinated to the Majdanek concentration camp as a satellite camp on April 24, 1944, Obersturmführer Friedrich Wilhelm Ruppert followed as camp commandant and Unterscharfuhrer Heinz Villain as protective custody camp leader.
Not all departments that were common in other concentration camps were set up here. Functional positions remained unoccupied, so there was temporarily no camp doctor .
The guard consisted of almost 150 " ethnic Germans " and Eastern European Trawniki men .
living conditions
Heavy physical work six days a week with inadequate nutrition and inadequate accommodation dominated the prisoners' everyday life. With the use of heavy machinery, lighter work in cleaning and stacking bricks prevailed. By appropriating valuables that were found in the ruins, black market deals could be initiated through civil workers. Former prisoners judge living and working conditions very differently.
Dissolution of the camp
The camp was run as a satellite camp of the Majdanek concentration camp at the end of April 1944 , but at that time it was already in the process of being dissolved. The organizational reorganization, which was accompanied by extensive personnel changes, was triggered by extensive corruption scandals. SS-Obersturmführer Friedrich Wilhelm Ruppert became the new camp manager .
On July 28, 1944, the camp was "evacuated" by the SS. Before that, 200 prisoners unable to march were shot. 380 forced laborers remained in the camp to dismantle materials and transport equipment. Around 4,000 prisoners had to march on foot to Kutno , killing many people , from where they were transported in freight wagons to the Dachau concentration camp .
On August 5, 1944, a unit of Armia Krajowa reached the subcamp and was able to free 348 prisoners before they had to withdraw. With the invasion of the Red Army on January 17, 1945, the camp was finally liberated. Until 1956 it continued to exist in parts in various functions as an internment camp, prisoner of war camp and prison for political opponents.
historiography
The Polish public prosecutor Maria Trzcińska published in 2002 about the Warsaw concentration camp and described it as an “extermination camp in the center of Warsaw”. She claimed the concentration camp spanned five camp complexes across the city. Trzcińska has been claiming since the 1980s that gassings by means of Zyklon B had been carried out in an underground tunnel between October 1942 and August 1944 . A total of 200,000 Poles were murdered in the Warsaw concentration camp.
These theses met with opposition. There are no statements from prisoners pointing to gassings. In a paper published in 2008, Andreas Mix judges that Maria Trzcińska's theses are “scientifically not serious and are criticized by historians”. Nonetheless, the claims find an echo in the Polish “national Catholic milieu”.
The claim that a gas chamber was operated in the road tunnel in the Wola district, in which 200,000 Warsaw residents were gassed, was officially denied by the Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, IPN). Despite this, the National Catholic activists are demanding that the Warsaw City Council build a monument next to the tunnel, at state expense.
literature
- Bogusław Kopka: The Warsaw Concentration Camp: History and Aftermath , Instytut Pamięci Narodowej IPN, Warszawa, 2010. ISBN 978-83-7629-079-9 .
- Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 8: Riga, Warsaw, Vaivara, Kaunas, Płaszów, Kulmhof / Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 .
- Maria Trzcińska: Obóz zagłady w centrum Warszawy , Polskie Wydawnictwo Encyklopedyczne, Radom, 2002. ISBN 83-88822-16-0 (Polish)
Web links
- Warsaw concentration camp on deathcamps.org
- Enlargement of the above aerial photo of Warsaw, approx. 1943 (three camp sections along Gęsia Street)
Individual evidence
- ↑ "The Fake Nazi Death Camp: Wikipedia's Longest Hoax, Exposed" , Haaretz , October 4, 2019.
- ^ Andreas Mix: Warsaw main camp . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel: The Place of Terror. Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 , Volume 8, p. 93.
- ^ Andreas Mix: Warsaw main camp . P. 94.
- ↑ “Stroop Report”, Document 1061-PS, IMT: The Nuremberg Trial. Reprint Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7735-2521-4 , Volume 26 (= Document Volume 2), p. 642.
- ^ Andreas Mix: Warsaw main camp . P. 98 with note 34 on Nbg. Doc. NO-2503.
- ^ A b Andreas Mix: Warsaw main camp . P. 103.
- ^ Andreas Mix: Warsaw main camp . P. 102.
- ^ Andreas Mix: Subcamp Warsaw. In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel: The Place of Terror - History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps , Munich 2008, Volume 7, pp. 101f.
- ↑ Benz, Distel - 2008, Vol. 7, p. 102, speak of over 250 security guards.
- ^ Andreas Mix: Warsaw main camp . P. 109.
- ↑ Maria Trzcińska: Obóz zagłady w centrum Warszawy , Polskie Wydawnictwo Encyklopedyczne, Radom, 2002. ISBN 83-88822-16-0 (Pol.)
- ↑ Review of the book
- ^ Andreas Mix: Warsaw main camp . P. 117.
- ↑ Iwona Szpala: pomnik Wykrzyczą? , Gazeta Wyborcza Stołeczna, October 8, 2009, p. 4.
Coordinates: 52 ° 14 ′ 34.5 ″ N , 20 ° 59 ′ 34.9 ″ E