Transit camp 121 Pruszków
The transit camp 121 ( Dulag 121 ) in Pruszków was a transit camp for the Warsaw population displaced during and after the Warsaw Uprising during the occupation of Poland during the Second World War . The civilians were sent from here for forced labor in the German Reich , in various extermination camps or in southern areas of the Generalgouvernement . Between 550,000 and 650,000 people were smuggled through Dulag 121 within a few months .
history
The creation of Dulag 121 is related to the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising and the subsequent destruction of the city of Warsaw by German troops.
Warsaw Uprising
On August 1, 1944, the Polish Home Army began the armed struggle against the German occupation forces in Warsaw . After 63 days the insurgents capitulated in a hopeless situation. On August 5, 1944, SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski took over the command of the suppression of the uprising ordered by Hitler. On the same day, mass executions of the civilian population (women, children and the elderly) were stopped; on August 12th there were also men. Rather, suitable forced labor should now be found among the population to be deported from the city (and neighboring villages). For this purpose, a transit camp had to be created outside the city in which the appropriate selection could be carried out.
The site of the former ZNTK - Zakłady Naprawcze Taboru Kolejowego railway line on the railway line to Skierniewice was located in the town of Pruszków, around 10 kilometers southwest of the Warsaw city limits . This approximately 50 hectare industrial area was created in 1897; Before the war, around 1,300 workers were employed here for repair work for the Polish state railway PKP . After the occupation by German troops, soldiers of the Polish army were initially imprisoned at the facility . At the end of 1939 the company premises were taken over by the German Eastern Railway , which maintained the Eastern Railway Repair Works here . Until 1941 it was also used as a labor camp for Jewish prisoners. The complex therefore already had a wall and watchtowers. Due to the advance of the Red Army , the workshops were no longer operated from June 1944 and machines had been dismantled. The area offered itself as a location for a transit camp.
Construction of Dulag 121
The transit camp was established on August 5, 1944 under the name Dulag 121 Eisenbahnwerkstätten Pruszków as a central point of contact for the evacuation of the population of Warsaw. Initially, the camp was subordinate to the SS and the German gendarmerie , from August 11, 1944, the Wehrmacht took over responsibility for operations. The local employment office was involved in the selections. A Gestapo office was maintained in the camp . The German city commissioner (Komisarz Miasta) of Pruszków, Walter Bock, commissioned the city's main welfare council (RGO - Rada Główna Opiekuńcza) to organize care for the inmates on August 6th. Around 100 Wehrmacht soldiers and several dozen Soviet prisoners of war were deployed in the camp.
In the first few days, the camp was subordinate to the SA Oberführer Stephan and the head of the local employment office, SS Sturmbannführer August Polland. On August 11, Wehrmacht Colonel Kurt Sieber was appointed camp commandant; he mainly dealt with warehouse security and supply logistics. His deputy, the head of the SS unit stationed in the camp, SS-Sturmbannführer Gustav Diehl, and his employee, SS-Untersturmführer Wetke , decided the fate of the prisoners . Since August 12, 1944, the medical officer Adolf König was appointed chief physician of the camp , his deputies were the Wehrmacht physician Peter Klenner and, for a short time, the junior physician Tössman. In November 1944, König was replaced by Herbert Weigel as chief physician. The Polish medical staff was led by the Polish doctors Kazimierz Szupryczyński and Julia Bielecka, the Russian doctor Anikiejew and the midwife Jadwiga Kiełbasińska. The camp kitchen, which was operated by the RGO, was under Maria Ewa Bogucka. Kazimiera Drescher was the translator manager. Because she helped inmates to be released in disregard of regulations, she was sent to the concentration camp in Auschwitz on September 16, 1944 .
The first transport of civilians (from the Warsaw district of Wola ) reached the camp on August 7, 1944 after a 15-kilometer walk.
Operation of the transit camp
During the Warsaw Uprising and after its suppression, a large part of the civilian population was evacuated from Warsaw and the surrounding towns. For this purpose - following the gradual recapture of individual parts of the city by the German units - the population was rounded up at central assembly points in the city. The two most important collection points on the western bank of the Vistula were at the Adalbert Church (Kościół św. Stanisława Biskupa) in ul. Wolska and at the Zieliak vegetable market at the intersection of ul. Opaczewska and ul. Grójecka in the Ochota district . Other assembly points were in Okęcie , on the Służewiec racecourse , in the Sokolnicki Fort of the Warsaw Citadel and at the orphanage “Nasz Dom” in Bielany . From these assembly points, the residents went in large groups to nearby train stations (in the case of Adalbert's Church, this was the Westbahnhof / Dworzec Zachodni), where they were loaded into wagons, which then drove to the train station in Włochy. From there they went to the camp in Pruszków, the end of the line was the Tworki stop about two kilometers from the camp. From there, the prisoners had to march to the camp on foot and under guard.
The majority of the evacuated population was sent to transit camp 121. Since October 1944, displaced persons were also housed in smaller camps in Ursus , Piastów , Ożarów and Włochy . Around 550,000 people from Warsaw and another 100,000 people from the neighboring villages were resettled via Dulag 121 .
The stay in the camp usually lasted no longer than a week. During this time, the camp personnel carried out the selections that decided the further fate of those detained: transporting those unable to work to the General Government, transporting those able to work into the Reich for forced labor or deportation to a concentration camp.
Between August 1944 and January 1945 a total of around 650,000 people were detained in nine barracks fenced in with barbed wire. On September 27, the German troops were able to recapture the Mokotów district; 12,000 soldiers of the Polish Home Army who were captured there were brought to the Dulag. Shortly afterwards, the civilians expelled from Mokotów came to Pruszków. As a result of the surrender of the Home Army, around 150,000 residents of downtown Warsaw were admitted from October 2nd. Trains with displaced persons drove to the camp every hour. The overcrowding in the dirty and stuffy halls and the poor hygienic conditions led to the spread of epidemics. There was a lack of water and toilets; Deaths among sick adults and children were described by the German occupiers as "natural selection".
The camp kitchen had to cater for an average of 20,000-25,000 people. Up to 400 people worked here almost continuously. The inmates mainly received soup, adults also received bread and substitute coffee , and children received milk dishes.
On August 20, 1944, Bishop Antoni Szlagowski of Warsaw visited the camp; shortly afterwards he was interned in neighboring Milanówek . Bach-Zelewski was present in September 1944. After the two visits, the camp management agreed to the pastoral care of the inmates by Catholic clergy. An altar was set up in Hall 2, where the first service was celebrated on September 10, 1944. In addition to several priests, nuns of the Benedictine Sisters , the Ursulines , the Vincentian Sisters, the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception and Mary Magdalene also supported the prisoners.
Camp commandant Kurt Sieber during a kitchen inspection
Bishop Szlagowski visited the camp in August 1944
Female inmates on the way to loading
Removal from Pruszków
Since records of the German occupiers no longer exist, the information on the number of inmates and their whereabouts after the selections vary considerably. 100,000–150,000 prisoners fit for work were brought to transit camps for forced laborers in the Reich in cattle wagons . It was mainly younger men and women, sometimes also mothers with children. These people were employed in factories, on farms, or in labor camps. About 300,000 inmates who were unable to work (including wounded and sick, the disabled, pregnant women and the elderly) were under the administration of General Governments in areas around Łowicz , Sochaczew , Jędrzejów , Końskie , Częstochowa , Wolbrom , Krakow , Kielce , Tarnow or Podhale transported .
50,000–60,000 inmates of the Dulag were sent to various concentration camps: Buchenwald , Mauthausen , Stutthof , Auschwitz , Sachsenhausen , Oranienburg , Ravensbrück , Groß-Rosen , Neuengamme , Flossenbürg and Dachau . About 13,000 adults and children came to Auschwitz. Most of those affected did not see the end of the war. Thousands of Dulag inmates also managed to escape. Others were released from the camp.
International Red Cross
On August 25, 1944, the Warsaw insurgent radio station sent an appeal to the International Red Cross to help the inmates in Pruszków. In connection with this, Diehl ordered representatives of the RGO to issue a confirmation of the proper management of the camp with adequate care for the inmates. A refusal would have led to the replacement of RGO staff.
On September 13, 1944, Red Cross deliveries with food and medicine arrived. They had been sent by train from Switzerland via Krakow . As representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (Delegation Berlin), the Swiss doctor Paul Wyss and the Swedish pastor Sven Hellqist visited the Dulag on September 17th and 18th. They were accompanied by a representative of the German Foreign Office . As the camp had been cleaned and supplies improved shortly before the announced visit, the subsequent report by Wyss was satisfactory. He made major criticisms of the family separation.
Cessation of warehouse operations
Towards the end of 1944, the transit camp ceased; the last Wehrmacht soldiers left the facility on December 12, 1944. Barracks and infirmary were closed; only the doctor Bielecka and a few nurses remained in the complex. For a few weeks only small groups of Poles who had been arrested during raids (e.g. in the absence of a valid ID card ) were held on the premises . As a result of the advance of the Red Army, the facility was finally cleared by the Germans on January 16, 1945.
today
After the war, the complex was used again to repair railway wagons and was the largest employer in Pruszków. On the occasion of the death of Ho Chi Minh , the company had had the name of the Vietnamese politician as an addition since 1969. In 1997 the company was closed. In 1998/1999 ZNTK was sold to a private group of investors (the main shareholder is the Dutch Cajamarca Holland BV ). Since then, the facility has been run as a service logistics center under the Millennium Logistic Park brand . On 43 hectares, customers have a total usable area of around 170,000 square meters for the operation of warehouse, goods handling and light production. The facility has a siding and a customs station. In 2007 the name was changed - ZNTK w Pruszkowie SA became MLP Group SA The center in Pruszków ( MLP Pruszków I ) was the first project of the MLP Group, today (2019) it operates six further logistics centers in Poland. Around 50 companies have settled in MLP Pruszków I and employ around 3000 people there.
Various historical buildings in today's logistics center are under monument protection. This includes pre-war buildings of the ZNTK as well as devices erected during the war, such as still preserved watchtowers and a steel bunker in the former entrance area. The objects registered in the monument protection register in 1999 also include a fragment of a siding and a memorial to the victims of displacement and the Dulag that was erected after the war. Of the four surviving watchtowers, only three were protected in 1999. In 2009 there was a public discussion about the demolition of a section of the former camp wall at this watchtower. As a gas station was built next to the tower, the owner decided, against the opposition of historians, to remove around 150 meters of wall.
Warehouse structure
The camp covered an area of about 50 hectares. It was enclosed by a concrete wall with watchtowers. Former production and workshop halls, office buildings and other functional buildings located on the site were rededicated for warehouse operations. The large halls were numbered and served as accommodation for the inmates.
In Barrack No. 1, the former hall for workshop vehicles, the inmates who were not suitable for work assignments and were to be deported to the General Government were housed. Barrack No. 2, in which technical services were previously provided, was used by the camp management as an outpatient infirmary (western section) and as a provisional hospital (eastern section). The hospital consisted of six rooms, three of which were furnished with cots. Barrack No. 3 was the smithy; trams used to be repaired here. Families intended for forced labor in the Reich came here as part of the camp; later it was only men. The women intended for forced labor were housed in Barrack No. 4, the former machine maintenance hall.
Railway access gate XIV
Former workshop for freight wagons, built in 1927
Former foundry, built in 1929
Former forge, built in 1929
The largest building was Barrack No. 5. The former hall for repairing railway wagons covered an area of around 5,000 square meters. Newcomers (men, women and children) who had not yet been selected were accommodated in the barracks. In the former depot, Barrack No. 6, the men who were to be deported to concentration camps were kept under strict guard. Barrack No. 7 was the carpenter's hall, which was temporarily used as a barracks during the war and into which combatants arrested from the Warsaw districts of Mokotów and Żoliborz who were arrested after the Warsaw Uprising was put down were assigned. Barrack No. 8 was the former material store, which was used as a makeshift hospital for wounded insurgents.
A food warehouse was set up in the former warehouse. The camp kitchen was in another building (10). The house of the Jabłkowski brothers was available to the so-called work detachments , which were deployed under German guard to destroy and loot Warsaw. The units of the German Wehrmacht were quartered in the original school building for railway workers. The police troops were in the former workshop office. Gestapo offices were set up in some of the cars . The camp commandant and the head of the employment office lived in the “gardener's house”. Family members of the German staff lived in the residential buildings belonging to the workshops.
Deceased inmates
- Stanisław Żukowski (1873–1944), Polish impressionist and member of the Russian artists' association Mir Iskusstwa
memorial
The central memorial is in the middle of today's logistics park. Access is possible through the museum. In front of the former Barrack 5, a concrete platform was built around a tree on a historic siding. Hall and platform bear the inscription
Transit camp 121 Pruszków
6. VIII - 5. XI 1944
Tędy przeszła Warszawa
( This is where Warsaw went )
Ta hala, to drzewo świadkami tragedii 1944 r.
( This hall and this tree are witnesses to the tragedy of 1944 ) "
On both sides of the platform, large blocks of stone bear the names of the Warsaw districts and the date on which the population was expelled from there. At a memorial opposite, the wounded or killed helpers of the camp inmates are commemorated in poetry:
"Bohaterom i męczennikom Warszawy,
którzy daninę bólu, krwi i życia
złożyli Ojczyźnie w obozie
( The heroes and martyrs of Warsaw who served their homeland in the camp
with the gift of suffering, blood and life )"
Central memorial in today's logistics park
Heroes memorial
Inscription on wall at the watchtower III
Guard bunker made from parts of a former tank artillery train wagon
museum
At Ulica 3 Maja 8a is in Pruszkow the Museum Dulag 121 . For the exhibition, a small, two-story brick building with the appearance of a hall was erected on the edge of the former camp site. The cost was 800,000 zlotys. The foundation stone was laid on October 2, 2009, and the opening on October 1, 2010; The client was the Starost , the patron of the then Sejm Marshal and later President of Poland, Bronisław Komorowski .
The exhibition recalls the fate of the expellees in Warsaw and the helpfulness of the residents of Pruszków, who helped the prisoners of the transit camp - sometimes at risk of death. It consists of five parts: “Warsaw Uprising”, “Exodus from Warsaw”, “How the Dulag 121 works”, “Help for the camp” and “The last months of the camp”. The modern, multimedia exhibition presents photograms, souvenirs, documents, folders, listening stations with eyewitness interviews, multimedia stations with biographies and newspaper articles. A documentary film about the camp and a model of the Dulag 121 on a scale of 1: 160 can also be seen.
Front of the museum
Wall painting on an outbuilding
Information board in front of the museum
7.5 meter model of the camp on a scale of 1: 160 with 4,000 figures
Web links
- Museum website (in English)
- Karol Karwat, Dulag 121 Pruszków , in: Chronicles of Terror 39–45 , Instytut Solidarności i Męstwa im. Witolda Pileckiego (in English)
- Agata Mirosz, Pruszków - Museum Dulag 121 , at: Places of Remembrance of the Second World War in Germany and Poland , website of the German-Polish Youth Office
- Stuart Dowell, Thousands march to remember victims of Pruszków wartime transit camp , September 30, 2018, TheFirstNews (in English)
literature
- Aleksandra Wojda and Maciej Boenisch, Muzeum Dulag 121 , Dulag 121 Museum (eds.), 24-page information brochure with a foreword by Zdzisław Sipiera, District Administrator of the Pruszków District
References and comments
- ↑ It is possible that Ukrainian assistants were also used, according to Iwona Galińska, Dulag 121 - Muzeum wypędzonych warszawiaków , August 29, 2017, Prawy.pl (in Polish)
- ↑ Herbert Diercks, Zwangsarbeit und Gesellschaft , Edition 8 of the Articles on the History of National Socialist Persecution in Northern Germany , ISBN 9783861083795 , Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (Ed.), Edition Temmen 2004, p. 46
- ↑ a b c Information boards in the museum
- ↑ During this time inmates were murdered and severely ill-treated
- ↑ History on the website of the Adalbert congregation in Warsaw (in Polish)
- ^ The resettlement of Warsaw , website of the Polish-German Reconciliation Foundation
- ↑ Lena Ohm, Leszek Stanowski, "We didn't know where we were going" , Unheil und Bewältigung, January 24, 2018, evangelisch.de
- ↑ 74th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising , August 1, 2018, website of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum (in English)
- ↑ Na Wojennej ścieżce: Pruszkow. , June 15, 2012, dobroni.pl (in Polish)
- ↑ The Red Cross and the Polish refugees in the Pruszkow camp , in: The Red Cross: official organ of the Swiss Central Association of the Red Cross, Switzerland. Military Medical Association and the Samaritan Association , Volume 52, 1944, Issue 47, pp. 457-460
- ↑ Website MLP PRUSZKÓW I (in English)
- ↑ a b Tomasz Urzykowski, Zburzyli historyczny mur, a na wieży powiesili kamery , December 22, 2009, Gazeta Wyborcza (in Polish)
- ↑ The metal plate contains the Polish-language inscription: During the Warsaw Uprising from August 6 to October 10, 1944, transit camp 121 for 650,000 Warsaw residents was located in these production facilities
Coordinates: 52 ° 10 ′ 23.1 ″ N , 20 ° 48 ′ 27.4 ″ E