Zgoda camp

Main entrance and memorial for the former Eintrachthütte concentration camp, which later became the Zgoda labor camp

The Zgoda camp (pol .: Obóz Zgoda ) was a labor camp mainly for German civilians in the Zgoda district of the city of Świętochłowice in the People's Republic of Poland . It was the former Eintrachthütte concentration camp , which was a satellite camp of Auschwitz from May 26, 1943 to January 23, 1945 .

history

The camp vacated by the Germans was occupied by the Red Army on January 23, 1945 . It has now been renamed “Zgoda” and in February 1945 it was subordinated to and continued to be used by the Polish communist secret police of the Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego ( Ministry of Public Security ) in Warsaw. It thus became one of the 1,255 internment camps for German prisoners in Poland, in which 15 to 20% of a total of 110,000 people were killed.

The camp commander was Salomon Morel , a former partisan and member of the Polish, communist underground army " Armia Ludowa " (translated People's Army ).

The number of inmates in the Zgoda camp varied. In early August 1945 it peaked with around 5,000 people, including children and women - around 60% were women, 20 to 25% children, the rest old people. The majority were Reich Germans (from the German eastern regions) and ethnic Germans (from Poland), who were initially grouped there in the course of the expulsion from the former German eastern regions, which had come under Polish administration; other nationalities such as Ukrainians were the minority. According to a calculation by the Polish Institute for National Remembrance , 1,855 people died in Zgoda, and many more were systematically tortured.

A report by an American diplomat to the Foreign Office states: “Concentration camps have not been closed, but taken over by the new owners. Most of the time they are led by the Polish militia. In Schwientochlowitz… prisoners who do not starve to death or are beaten to death have to stand up to their necks in cold water night after night until they die. "

Former commander Salomon Morel fled to Israel in 1992 . He was wanted by the Polish government for war crimes and crimes against humanity . Poland applied for his extradition, but the application was rejected by Israel. Morel died in Israel in 2007.

Commemoration

There was an initiative to make the remains of the camp still visible as a memorial.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Directory of the concentration camps and their external commandos in accordance with Section 42 (2) BEG , No. 349 Eintrachthütte, Schwientochlowitz municipality
2. ^ List of civilly missing persons of the Tracing Service of the German Red Cross, Volume III, 1962/1963
3. ^ German Federal Archives, Koblenz: Documentation of expulsion crimes; Federal Ministry for Expellees: Documentation of the expulsion of Germans from East Central Europe, Bonn 1953–1962; Central Office of the Church Tracing Service: Overall survey to clarify the fate of the German population in the expulsion areas, Munich 1965
4. ↑ Eugen Georg Schwarz : Expulsion crime . In: Franz W. Seidler , Alfred de Zayas (ed.): War crimes in Europe and the Middle East in the 20th century. Mittler, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-8132-0702-1 , pages 245-247.
5. ↑ Helga Hirsch : The Vengeance of the Victims. Germans in Polish camps 1944–1950 . Reinbek, Rowohlt rororo, 1998.
6. ↑ Correspondingly also in Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (Ed.): Der Ort des Terrors . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-52965-8 , p. 215.
7. ↑ Thomas Urban : The loss. The expulsion of Germans and Poles in the 20th century , Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-54156-9 .
8. ↑ Camp Zgoda: Memorial initiative encounters resistance from survivors. Our Upper Silesia, December 18, 2003 ( Memento of the original from May 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 85 kB) 

literature

• John Sack : An eye for an eye. Kabel, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-8225-0339-8 .
• Adam Dziurok et al. a .: Obóz Pracy w Świętochłowicach w 1945 roku. IPN, ISBN 8391598365 .
• Adam Dziurok: Obozowe dzieje Świętochłowic Eintrachthütte - Zgoda. IPN, 2002, ISBN 83-89078-11-2 .
• Franz W. Seidler , Alfred de Zayas (Ed.): War crimes in Europe and the Middle East in the 20th century. Mittler, Hamburg, Berlin, Bonn 2002, ISBN 3-8132-0702-1 . (including an essay by Helga Hirsch)
• Alfred de Zayas: The Anglo-Americans and the expulsion of the Germans. Ullstein, 1988, ISBN 3-548-33099-1 .
• Gerhard Gruschka: ZGODA. A place of horror. ars una, Neuried 1997, ISBN 3-89391-607-5 .

Web links

• Report of the RBB

Coordinates: 50 ° 16 ′ 44 ″  N , 18 ° 54 ′ 50 ″  E