Poland youth detention center Litzmannstadt

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Poland youth detention center Litzmannstadt (Poland)
Litzmannstadt youth custody camp
Litzmannstadt youth custody camp
Warsaw
Warsaw
Location in present-day Poland

The youth detention camp Litzmannstadt ( youth or children's concentration camp , officially Poland youth detention camp Litzmannstadt of the security police in Litzmannstadt ) was a concentration camp for children during the German occupation of Poland . The camp in the city of Litzmannstadt ( Łódź ) existed from 1942 to 1945.

Building history

Location of the camp in the Litzmannstadt ghetto (No. 15)

Planning began as early as 1941 under the name Jugendschutzlager Ost . According to his own admission, the suggestion came from Hans Muthesius , who was bothered by the fact that “because of the lack of special facilities, foreign nationals, especially Polish youth, were referred to the German welfare education”. On November 15, 1941 Heinrich Himmler gave the order to accelerate the construction of the camp . In a letter dated May 30, 1942, the SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl announced that he did not consider it justifiable to use the Waffen SS to raise and guard children and therefore had to return responsibility to the criminal police. The camp was set up under the supervision of the SS, but the camp was managed by the Reich Central Office for Combating Juvenile Delinquency , a special department of the female criminal police .

On September 30, 1942, part of the Litzmannstadt ghetto was cleared in preparation for the camp . It concerned the part between the streets Ewaldstraße, Maxstraße and Robertstraße (today ul. Bracka, Emili Plater, Górnicza) and the Jewish cemetery. Some of the buildings on the site were demolished. By order of November 28, 1942 by Himmler, the camp was opened on December 1, 1942. The construction of the barracks was completed in early 1943, and further expansion lasted until the end of 1943. In September 1943, block number 36 was expanded in order to detain children between the ages of two and eight there. But children under the age of eight had also been imprisoned in the camp beforehand. The end of the camp was sealed by the advance of the Red Army . On January 18, 1945, the Germans fled the camp in front of the approaching front .

administration

The camp was divided into six sections. Departments one to five were responsible for various administrative tasks, department six with the supervisor Sydonia Bayer was responsible for the girls and small children. The first camp commandant was Karl Ehrlich , the first camp manager was Hans Heinrich Fuge. Arno Wruck followed as warehouse manager and the last manager was a man named Enders.

Prisoners

Appeal in the Poland youth detention center Litzmannstadt

The camp was intended for around 1,800 to 2,000 prisoners. Originally, children between the ages of 12 and 16 were to be assigned to the camp. The minimum age was lowered to eight in January 1943. The youngest child admitted to the camp was a two year and three month old boy.

Reasons for imprisonment were often only minor theft of food, unauthorized purchase of food cards, “neglect”. But also orphans (so-called “terrorists and bandit children”) of abducted forced laborers, partisans and massacre victims were assigned there by the Reich Criminal Police, the youth welfare offices and the SS.

The first group of children came to the camp on December 11, 1942. In mid-April 1943, around 350 children and young people were housed in the camp, at the end of April there were 1,757, at the end of May 2,673 and in mid-1943 5,899 children. The highest number of imprisoned children was reached at the end of 1943 with 7,832. During the existence of the camp, several thousand children, possibly twelve to thirteen thousand or even 20,000 children, were imprisoned here. When the Red Army marched in, around 800 to 900 children were found in the camp.

The children had to work ten to twelve hours a day. At the beginning they were mainly used to expand the camp. From the summer of 1943, factories were added. Shoes were repaired for the Wehrmacht, cartridge pouches were made, baskets for artillery ammunition were woven and nails were straightened. The youngest had to glue bags or make artificial flowers. A group of mostly girls, at times up to 150, was employed in agriculture on an estate near Litzmannstadt. Punishments, regardless of the age of the children: beatings with a stick or whip , deprivation of food, dark arrest, laying in the snow and pouring cold water over them and the like. How many children perished in the camp is not certain. There are documents that assume 200 deaths per month, which corresponds to about a third of those in prison. Heartbeat and pulmonary tuberculosis were often given as official causes of death . The real causes were inadequate sanitary and hygienic storage conditions, beatings and shootings. In the summer of 1943 a typhus epidemic broke out and many died.

The nutritional situation can be seen at lunch. Each child received 35 grams of meat, 107 grams of potatoes and 60 grams of groats in a rye groats soup made from them.

Some of the children, especially very young, the Aryan looked was to Germanization in the Germanisation of the race office brought in today ulica Sporna 73rd There, Germans checked within a few weeks whether they were considered suitable. Those who passed this were adopted by German families, the others had to go back to the youth detention center.

Post war history

Monument to the Martyrdom of Children

After the war, the director of the girls' camp Sydomia Bayer was sentenced to death in 1948 and executed.

The deputy camp manager Eugenia Pohl changed her name to Poll after the war and worked as a kindergarten teacher in Łódź without being recognized. It is speculated that she had an influential protector in the city administration. She was not arrested until December 12, 1970. The verdict was announced on April 2, 1974. Among other things, for the murder of the 13-year-old Urszula Kaczmarek Pohl to 25 years prison sentenced, they for good behavior did not have to fully serve.

In 1947 the remains of the camp were cleared away and two schools and apartment blocks were built on the site. There were no reports of the camp until 1964. A memorial to the victims of the camp was only unveiled on May 9, 1971. The Monument to the Martyrdom of Children ( Pomnik Martyrologii Dzieci ) was funded from a collection of scrap and paper and shows a naked child in front of a broken heart.

literature

  • Józef Witkowski: Hitlerowski Obóz Koncentracyjny dla małoletnich w Łodzi (in German about: The Hitler Concentration Camp for Minors in Lodz). Breslau (Wrocław) 1975.
  • Roman Hrabar: Obóz dla dzieci i młodzieży w Łodzi przy ulicy Przemysłowej. (In German, for example: The children's and youth camp in Lodz on Przemysłowa Street). In: Zbrodnie hitlerowskie wobec dzieci i młodzieży Łodzi oraz okręgu łódzkiego. Łódź 1979.
  • Roman Hrabar and others: The fate of Polish children in the war. Warsaw.
  • Michael Hepp: Because hell became theirs. Children and young people in the “Litzmannstadt youth custody camp”. In: Communications from the documentation center on Nazi social policy. Issue 11/12, April 1986, pp. 49-71. ISSN  0179-4299 .
  • Czesław Kempisty, Stanisław Frejtak: Wstępne wyniki badań lekarskich byłych więźniów obozu dla dzieci i młodzieży w Łodz. (Preliminary results of medical examinations on former inmates of the children's and youth camp in Lodz). In: Biuletyn Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce. Volume 23, 1976.
  • Kozłowicz, Tatiana: Karny obóz pracy dla dzieci i młodzieży w Łodzi. (The criminal labor camp for children and young people in Lodz). In: Zbrodnie hitlerowskie na dzieciach i młodzieży polskiej 1939–1945. Warsaw 1969.
  • Maria Niemyska-Hessenowa: Dzieci z "Lagru" w Łodzi. (The children from the "camp" in Lodz). In: Służba społeczna. No. 1, 1946.
  • Julia Wasiak: Obóz dla dzieci i młodzieży polskiej przy ul. Przemysłowej. (The camp for Polish children and young people on Przemysłowa Street). In: A. Głowacki, S. Abramowicz (eds.): Obozy hitlerowskie w Łodzi. Łódź 1998.

Web links

Commons : Jugendverwahrlager Litzmannstadt  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Ernst Klee: Crimes against Polish children - idea: a concentration camp. In: The time. No. 38, September 14, 1990.
  2. ↑ Hepp 1986, p. 51.
  3. ↑ Hepp 1986, p. 54.
  4. ↑ a b Witkowski 1975, p. 36.
  5. ↑ a b Witkowski 1975, p. 39.
  6. ↑ Witkowski 1975, pp. 192-193.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Memento. The children's concentration camp in Litzmannstadt. Retrieved on Sept. 27, 2009 (original Polish site)
  8. ↑ Witkowski 1975, p. 41.
  9. ↑ a b Witkowski 1975, pp. 38-39.
  10. ↑ Witkowski 1975, p. 44.
  11. ↑ Witkowski 1975, pp. 36-39.
  12. ↑ Witkowski 1975, p. 29.
  13. ↑ Witkowski 1975, pp. 32-33.
  14. ↑ Hepp 1986, p. 49.
  15. ↑ a b c d Witkowski 1975, p. 113.
  16. ↑ Hepp 1986, p. 55.
  17. ↑ Hepp 1986, p. 56.
  18. ↑ Hepp 1986, pp. 56-60.
  19. ↑ Hepp 1986, p. 61.
  20. ↑ Hepp 1986, p. 65.
  21. ↑ Witkowski 1975, pp. 173-175.
  22. ↑ Hepp 1986, p. 66 and p. 70.
  23. ^ Małgorzata Kołodziejska, Anna Słowińska: The case of Eugenia Pol. at : lern-aus-der-geschichte.de , accessed on January 31, 2017.
  24. ↑ Witkowski 1975, p. 37.

Coordinates: 51 ° 47 ′ 32.9 ″  N , 19 ° 28 ′ 18 ″  E