SS labor camp Neu-Dachs

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Neu-Dachs SS labor camp or Jaworzno concentration camp was a German concentration camp in Jaworzno . As a sub-camp of the Auschwitz concentration camp , it served since 1943 for extermination through work and as a collection camp for the main camp and the complex of labor camps and the extermination camp there . In the first phase as a concentration camp until January 19, 1945, around 2,000 concentration camp prisoners died or were murdered there.

From 1945 to 1956 it was used by the Soviet Union and Poland as a political prison under the name of the "Central Labor Camp". The number of deaths in this phase is still controversial or not clear (there are data that name over 1500 deaths). In 1956 a new complex was built on the site of the camp.

history

German concentration camp

The Polish city of Jaworzno was incorporated into the German Reich after the German occupation of Poland in 1939 and assigned to the newly formed Krenau district. On June 15, 1943, the construction of the sub-camp in Jaworzno began. Forced labor was mainly called up from the coal mines and needed to build the “Wilhelm” power plant, later “Jaworzno I”, for Energieversorgung Oberschlesien AG (EVO, a state-owned company under Albert Speer ). The concentration camp was also built by British prisoners of war from " Stalag VIII " in Lamsdorf . Construction work was stopped again in September 1944.

There were up to 5,000 prisoners at the same time, including Germans, Poles and Soviet prisoners of war . After all, the Jewish prisoners are said to have formed around 80 percent of the inmates there. There have been reports of 14 successful outbreaks. The poor living conditions can be seen from the fact that every month around 200 prisoners, who had become emaciated as “ Muselmen ” , were transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp for extermination . The number of deaths in Neu-Dachs is estimated at a total of 2,000. The 200 to 300 SS guards, mostly made up of ethnic Germans residing in Poland , were under the orders of Bruno Pfütze . The work details are said to have been under the supervision of brutal German civilian employees who were in the SA .

As the front approached, the camp was bombed by Soviet planes on January 15, 1945 . On January 17, the SS guards shot and killed 40 prisoners who were too weak for the transport. They left 400 alive and marched off at 3,200. Hundreds died on the march to the Groß-Rosen concentration camp . From there the surviving prisoners were taken to Buchenwald concentration camp by train. In another massacre on the second night of the death march , they shot another 300.

On January 19, 1945 the camp was liberated by fighters from the local Armia Krajowa . Approx. 350 prisoners were still in the camp when the Red Army arrived a week later.

Forced labor camp after 1945

Since February 1945 the camp was used by the NKVD and then by the Ministry of Public Security (Poland, MBP or UB) as a prison camp for alleged " enemies of the people ". It was renamed the Central Labor Camp. The guards were soldiers of the Internal Security Corps (Korpus Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego). From 1949 the commandant was Salomon Morel , who before that was known for his atrocities in the Zgoda labor camp in Świętochłowice . Other commanders were Stanisław Kwiatkowski , Ivan Mordasov and Teofil Hazelmajer .

According to the incomplete official figures, 1,535 people died between 1945 and 1947, 972 of them in a typhus epidemic . There were sub-camps in Chrusty and Libiąż .

After 1956, partial demolition

In 1956 a school and housing complex was built on the site of the camp. A conspicuous memorial stone for the victims of the German camp was erected on the site of the massacre of 1945, next to it a smaller memorial for the prisoners of the political prison on the grounds of the elementary school only after the end of communism in Poland.

On April 15, 1996, an investigation into the crimes against Poles of Ukrainian origin began. In 1998 the Presidents of Poland and Ukraine, Aleksander Kwaśniewski and Leonid Kuchma, erected a memorial on the site of the previously anonymous mass grave for 162 people in the nearby forest.

literature

  • Bohdan Kordan: Making Borders Stick: Population Transfer and Resettlement in the Trans-Curzon Territories, 1944-1949 " International Migration Review, Vol. 31, No. 3. (Autumn, 1997), pp. 704-720.
  • Kazimierz Miroszewski: Ukraińcy i Łemkowie w Centralnym Obozie Pracy Jaworzno, In: Pamiętny rok 1947, Rzeszów 2001
  • Gerold Schneider: The past that does not want to pass. Wrong ways in German-Polish neighborhood. St. Benno, 1998 - 4th A. 323 pp. ISBN 3-7462-1275-8
  • Karl Schröder: Large steam power plants. Kraftwerkatlas Volume 1, Berlin et al. 1959. (on the Wilhelm plant)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Federal Ministry of Justice: List of concentration camps and their external commandos in accordance with Section 42 (2) BEG No. 1031, Neudachs-Jaworzno / Silesia June 15, 1943 to January 19, 1945.

Coordinates: 50 ° 12 ′ 48.3 "  N , 19 ° 14 ′ 21.7"  E