Central Labor Camp Potulice

The Central Labor Camp Potulice (Polish: Centralny Obóz Pracy w Potulicach, COP Potulice) was an internment and labor camp in the Polish city of Potulice from 1945-1950 .

prehistory

General plan of the previous Lebrechtsdorf – Potulitz camp ; the infrastructure was still used.

In Potulitz, which was annexed and Germanized in 1939 , a camp was set up on February 1, 1941 for the Poles expelled by the Germans as part of the “resettlement” . From 1942 it was part of the Stutthof concentration camp . Initially, the cellars and outbuildings of the Potulice Palace (Villa Potulice) were used as storage. In autumn 1942 30 barracks were built. From 1942 it also became a forced labor camp (also Lebrechtsdorf – Potulitz camp ), and from 1943 a camp for children of Soviet and Polish partisans . Between 1,000 and 6,800 people were interned in the camp at the same time, a total of 25,000 people. About 1,300 of the internees died in the camp.

History of the Central Labor Camp Potulice

In 1945, after the end of the Second World War , the existing infrastructure was used to set up the Potulice Central Labor Camp, which housed around 36,000 Germans, but also anti-communist Polish civilians and some prisoners of war . The internment took place in the context of the expulsion of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in 1945–1950 . The group of ethnic Germans and members of the German People's List were by far the largest group of prisoners. There were initially 1,285 children among the internees; in April 1948 there were 1,100 children under the age of 12. Other internees came from the Polish Home Army or were prisoners of war from the Czech Republic , Hungary or Romania . The internees worked in workshops within the camp, but mostly in agriculture, where they cultivated 1,174.6 hectares . Until June 1945, the former external labor camp Bromberg-Brahnau of the Stutthof concentration camp in what is now the Łęgnowo district belonged to the camp ; the Red Army interned around 1,500 Germans here by June 1945. On September 24, 1946, 234 Germans interned or assigned to a labor camp in the Toruń district of Rudak (had existed since May 1945) were transferred to Potulice because the camp in Toruń was closed. All of the smaller camps in the northeastern voivodeships of Poland were subordinate to the COP Potulice.

At least 2,915 people are known to have died in the camp, some of them from infectious diseases such as typhoid , dysentery or tuberculosis or malnutrition; other sources cite around 3,500 deaths. The corpses of the Germans were thrown into a pit near the city and buried. Later a garbage dump was built at this point. The COP was initially commanded by Milicja Obywatelska , and later directly by the Ministry of Public Security . In 1950 the COP Potulice was closed as a warehouse for Germans.

Later used as a prison

Around 1950/1951 the labor camp was first converted into a prison for political prisoners . In the years from 1961 the prison was rebuilt and rebuilt and developed into a regular prison for criminals. In 1974 a wall was built around the area. Today the state prison has space for 1,446 prisoners.

memorial

Memorial to the victims of both camps

At the time of the People's Republic of Poland , memory of the Polish labor camp was taboo, so it was only after 1998 that a memorial for the victims of the period from 1945 to 1950 could be erected. A memorial for the previous camp at the time of National Socialism was built in 1969. The monument was created by George Buczkowski. Today it commemorates the victims of both camps.

literature

• Helga Hirsch : Revenge is a disease. In the Potulice camp, Poles first suffered and after 1945 Germans. The German victims will be commemorated for the first time on September 5th. This is thanks to a German - and a Pole. In: Die Zeit , 37, of September 3, 1998.
• Helga Hirsch: The revenge of the victims. Germans in Polish camps 1944–1950. Rowohlt Berlin, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-87134-308-0 .
• Martha Kent: A china shard in the trench. A German refugee childhood. Scherz, Bern 2003, ISBN 3-502-18390-2 .
• Mariusz Skoczek (Master's thesis), on the Potulice camp after 1945 (Polish).
• Witold Stankowski, Gustav Bekker (ed.): Wspólna czy podzielona pamieć? Obóz Potulitz / Lebrechtsdorf / Potulice w latach II wojny światowej i jego powojenne losy 1941–1945 - 1945–1949. Praca zbiorowa. = Shared or shared memory? The Potulitz / Lebrechtsdorf / Potulice camp in World War II and then 1941–1945 - 1945–1949. Bydgoski Dom Wydawniczy Margrafsen, Bydgoszcz 2007, ISBN 978-83-609-7632-6 .

Web links

• Potulice - cemetery for the victims of the Second World War
• CASUS "POTULICE" (on the documentary film, 1999; Polish)
• Potulice: one place - two kinds of memories (PDF file; 1.17 MB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Karin Orth: The System Of The National Socialist Concentration Camps: A Political Organization History , Hamburger Edition, 1999, ISBN 9783930908523 , p. 153
2. ↑ Photography budowy obozu niemieckiej Centrali Przesiedleńczej w Potulicach w latach 1941–1944 - Catalog Skarbów - Skarby Dziedzictwa Narodowego - Polska.pl ( Memento from May 31, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ Hans Mausbach, Barbara Mausbach-Bromberger: Enemies of Life: Nazi Crimes against Children , Röderberg, 1979, p. 204
4. ↑ Przewodnik po Miejscu Pamięci Potulice ( Memento of November 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file; 1.44 MB)
5. ↑ Landsmannschaft Westpreußen: Westpreussen-Jahrbuch, Volume 46 , Westpreußen, 1996, p. 146
6. ^ ^{A b} Helga Hirsch: Vengeance is a disease: In the Potulice camp, Poles first suffered, and after 1945 Germans. , Zeit Online from September 3, 1998
7. ↑ filmpolski.pl: CASUS "POTULICE"
8. ↑ Przewodnik po Miejscu Pamięci Potulice ( Memento of November 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file; 1.44 MB)