SS training and labor camp Trawniki

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
SS training and labor camp Trawniki (Poland)
Warsaw
Warsaw
Forced labor and training camp Trawniki
Forced labor and training camp Trawniki
Map of present-day Poland

The SS training and labor camp Trawniki was set up between June and September 1941 about 40 km south-east of Lublin on the site of an old sugar factory with a railway connection, on which a temporary camp for Soviet prisoners of war already existed. From autumn 1943 the Trawniki forced labor camp was subordinated to the Majdanek concentration camp .

Establishment of the warehouse

The initially provisional prisoner-of-war camp became a forced labor and SS training camp with the appointment of Odilo Globocnik on July 17, 1941 as representative of the Reichsführer SS and the chief of the German police , in which SS and auxiliary workers were trained for various tasks mainly used to carry out the genocide of the Jews . The basis of the order resulted from Globocnik's responsibility for the establishment of SS and police bases in the “ new eastern area ”, the conquered areas of the Soviet Union . The murder of the minorities who settled there and the German resettlement were to be controlled via these bases.

On July 9, 1941, shortly before the training and labor camp was established, 676 prisoners were detained in the camp, who were classified by the security police or the SD as potential collaborators or "dangerous persons".

SS training camp

Camp manager Karl Streibel in the Trawniki camp (before 1945)

In the “Trawniki training camp of the SS”, as it was called in SS jargon, “ foreign ” units were set up and trained for the Lublin SS and police leader , Odilo Globocnik. The units should primarily be used in the context of Aktion Reinhardt for the murder of the Jews in the Generalgouvernement ( German-occupied Poland and Ukraine ).

Camp management

On October 27, 1941, SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Streibel became the commandant of the Trawniki SS training camp, which was subordinate to SS Police Leader Odilo Globocnik and, from late 1944, his successor SS Group Leader and Lieutenant General Jakob Sporrenberg . It was supervised by SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle . Streibel's deputies were SS-Sturmbannführer Erich Raake and SS-Obersturmführer Willi Franz , who was employed in the camp from November / December 1941 until the end of July 1944.

Recruits and training

For the Reich territory, the concentration camp guards were trained in the SS training camps in Dachau , Buchenwald , Sachsenhausen or in Ravensbrück or the affiliated camps (see SS death head associations ).

In the occupied territories, the Trawniki SS training camp was set up for non-German or “ethnic German” personnel.

The first recruits were "popular German" who as Soviet soldiers of the Red Army in captivity had come, they reached the camp in early September 1941. Although often referred to by the German guards and the (Jewish) victims as Ukrainians and mainly among Ukrainians were recruited, the training units also consisted of Latvians , Estonians , Lithuanians and Poles , most of whom came from the main camps in the Lublin district. At least from November 1941, members of these nationalities were no longer released from German captivity and were not treated according to the rules of international war law and the Geneva Conventions . The death rate in the camps increased enormously. It is therefore controversial to what extent one can still assume a real "voluntariness" in the recruitment and service of the collaboration , because these people wanted to avoid death through the terrible conditions in the prisoner-of-war camps with the expected benefits.

From autumn 1942, when the German military was in retreat and suitable Soviet prisoners of war were no longer available, Streibel also obliged civilians to serve. These civilians were mainly young Ukrainians from Galicia , Volhynia , Podolia and the Lublin district.

Overall, the number of those trained is estimated at 4,000 to 5,000. Globocnik reported after his replacement and his departure from Lublin in September 1943 that 3,700 guards were serving in the Trawnikis system. In fact, more than 4,750 membership numbers had been assigned at that time. About 5,082 recruits were trained between 1941 and 1944.

List of a security team from Treblinka I
Link to the picture
(Please note copyrights )

Two battalions and a Unterführer course were formed. The duration of the training was about two to three months in the military part. “Reichsdeutsche” recruits, including members of the Waffen SS, the Schutzpolizei and German civilians from the T4 campaign , received a shortened training course of around one month for their work in the Reinhardt campaign . The non-German graduates of the training were called "Trawniki men" (short: "Trawniki"), "watchmen", " Askaris " or volunteers (Hiwis). They were between 19 and 35 years old, subject to strict discipline and formed the 'intermediate layer' between the SS and the 'working Jews'. They were threatened with flogging or arrest in the event of offense, and in some cases with arbitrary shooting by SS superiors. Other SS personnel regarded the Trawniki as "comrades" because of their "voluntary report for duty". During the prisoner uprising in the Sobibór camp , some Trawniki fled, while others shot the prisoners and deserters. An order from the responsible SSPF Lublin, SS-Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik , dated May 10, 1943, made the ranks binding retroactively to May 1, 1943. At the same time, military pay and food were to be adapted to those of the Waffen SS . There was no other remuneration, such as peace or war pay, nor was there any special provision for the security guards' family members:

Uniforms, ranks and equipment

The clothing of the Trawniki units initially consisted of black-dyed booty uniforms of the Russian or Polish army with the national eagle in the style of the Waffen SS on the left upper sleeve. They were later given gray or earth-brown uniforms. Globocnik's orders provided for the outfitting of field gray German uniforms, but did not give a specific date.

The rank badges were similar to the pattern of the protection teams : teams wore up to two white (?) Strips of fabric or braid across the middle of the epaulettes. Unterführer wore up to three cross braids or stripes, plus braid on the front and lower front edge of the flapless collar.

Usually only (bilingual) ethnic Germans were promoted to the Unterführer levels. The leadership ranks (officers) were reserved for the Reich German cadre personnel. The ranks of the guards were given with or without the addition "SS".

Teams
Rank Rank badge
(SS) security guard ( SS shooter ) simple black epaulettes
(SS-) Oberwachmann ( SS-Sturmmann ) Epaulettes with a horizontal stripe
(SS) Rottenwachmann ( SS Rottenführer )
Unterführer
Rank Rank badge
(SS) group guard ( SS-Unterscharführer ) Epaulettes with two horizontal stripes, one strand on each collar tab
(SS) Zugwachmann ( SS Oberscharführer ) Epaulets with three horizontal stripes, each with a braid on the collar tab
(SS-) Oberzugwachmann ( SS-Hauptscharführer )

Application areas and locations

Trawniki ("Askari") 1943 as auxiliary troops in the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, illustration in the "Stroop Report"

With the failure of the conquest of the Soviet Union, the areas of activity of the Trawniki men were limited to the area of ​​the general government and here to guarding and fighting partisans . Trawniki men were used to guard military and civilian objects, in forced labor camps and in the Trawniki labor camp. From 1943, Trawniki men were also deployed to guard the Auschwitz and Stutthof concentration camps .

Some of the Trawniki men were involved in the murder of Jews as part of Aktion Reinhardt . Several platoons of Trawniki personnel were deployed in the Belzec , Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps . Within the camps they performed functions in the operation of the gas chambers and in the cremation of corpses. The work details that were active outside the camps were also guarded by Trawniki men. On the one hand, there can be no doubt that the Trawniki men fulfilled their murderous tasks in the extermination camps. On the other hand, attempts to escape increased in the autumn of 1942 and in April 1943 because they feared that they would end up being murdered as unwelcome witnesses.

A large number of Trawniki men took part in the "resettlements" or "actions", as the ghetto evacuations and mass shootings were called. Above all, the Reinhardt campaign should be mentioned here, where over 2 million Jews were murdered with carbon monoxide gas and then burned. When the ghetto uprising broke out in Warsaw in April / May 1943 , Trawniki men were also used to suppress the military.

From the autumn of 1943 the focus of the operation shifted to fighting partisans in the Lublin district. From the summer of 1944, the Einsatzkommandos had to withdraw to the west with the German troops. B. were used in the cremation of corpses in Dresden in February 1945.

Forced labor camp

Parallel to the establishment of the SS training camp, a forced labor camp was set up in Trawniki as a later satellite camp of the Majdanek concentration camp . Up to this point in time, the sugar factory served as an “M-warehouse” (material warehouse for sorting the remains of murdered Jews for the purpose of recording values). Mainly Soviet prisoners of war and Polish Jews were imprisoned here. From October 27, 1941 SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Streibel was in command of both the training camp and the forced labor camp . The actual management of the camp was left to SS-Hauptscharführer Franz Bartetzko.

The labor camp guards were recruited from the SS training camp. From February 16, 1942 to May 2, 1942, the workforce of Schultz & Co. GmbH was transported from the Międzyrzec Podlaski ghetto from Warsaw to Trawniki. Among the approximately 6,000 deportees from Warsaw were Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum (1900–1944) and 33 members of the Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa . They built an underground organization, procured weapons and prepared an uprising.

Expansion of the warehouse parts

Site plan from 1942

From May 1943, Jews from Białystok and Minsk were transported to Trawniki. Because of the importance of the goods produced there for the Wehrmacht , such as uniforms, etc. a. suggested the Ostindustrie GmbH (Osti) belonging to the SS to expand the camp. According to a drawing by the Central Construction Office of the Waffen SS and Police in Lublin on June 21, 1942, the following planning of the camps was intended:

  • Buildings 1 to 11 and 18 were intended for the training camp
  • Buildings No. 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, and 19 were part of the labor camp or were designated for it

The training camp should have the following structure:

  • No. 1: Housing of the Ukrainians
  • No. 2: Housing of the Ukrainians
  • No. 3: garage
  • No. 4: Accommodation for Estonians and Latvians
  • No. 5: Shower bath and delousing
  • No. 6: Kitchen and other utility rooms
  • No. 7: Accommodation for German staff
  • No. 8: Workshops of the training camp
  • No. 9: Infirmary
  • No. 10: Headquarters
  • No. 11: Stables in dilapidated stone buildings (used for breeding angora rabbits, among others)
  • No. 18: Karl Streibel's residential building outside the planning area

The labor camp should have the following structure:

  • No. 12: workshops
  • No. 13: Accommodation
  • No. 14: M-camp
  • No. 15: Franz Bartetzko's residential and office building
  • No. 16: intended as the Schultz office
  • No. 17: Residential building of the employees of the company Schultz
  • No. 19: intended for 10 to 20 Jewish women who were employed in the training camp
  • No. 20: Execution trenches
  • No. 21: Incineration grate

"Dissolution" of the forced labor camp

Several hundred Jewish prisoners were to peat extraction in Dorohucza in the SS labor camp Dorohucza used. There were also work assignments for earthworks outside the camp. The majority, around 6,000 people, manufactured clothing for the Wehrmacht in the company of Schultz & Co, which had relocated part of its workshops from Warsaw to the warehouse. In October 1943 the factories were to be handed over to Ostindustrie GmbH . On October 22, 1943, SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl ordered that Group D of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA) should take over the Trawniki camp.

Shortly thereafter, however, Heinrich Himmler ordered - possibly out of fear of uprisings like the one in the Sobibor extermination camp on October 14, 1943 - the liquidation of all camps in the Lublin district and the murder of the Jewish forced laborers with the harvest festival .

According to the protocol of Franz Skubinn's testimony, the labor camp was surrounded early in the morning on November 3, 1943 by an SS and SD unit that had been transported to the camp . After an investigation, the detainees were driven to the training camp, where they had to undress. Then they were taken to the execution trenches and shot there. Since the trenches could not contain all the victims, shootings also took place in a former gravel pit. A total of around 6,000 Jews were shot that day. After 14 days, the bodies began to be cremated; this took about three weeks. The cremation was monitored by Ukrainians from the SS training camp. The Jewish cremation squad was then also shot.

Criminal penalties

Up to a thousand of the Trawniki men who were returned to the Soviet Union after the war were indicted by criminal and military courts, and almost all of them were convicted as collaborators, and many were executed. In 1954 a trial against Trawniki men took place in Warsaw. In the Federal Republic of Germany, an ethnic German and part of Trawniki's German management staff were on trial. The negotiations against Karl Streibel took place from December 5, 1972 to June 3, 1976. He was acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence. This judgment was very controversial and at the end of 1976 was still not legally binding.

The last investigation into Trawniki men was conducted in Canada and the United States in the 1980s. When it became public in the USA that, after the Second World War , a number of former SS volunteers had also been granted American citizenship, a special investigative agency, the Office of Special Investigations , was founded. The Trawniki could not be prosecuted in the USA because the crimes did not take place on American soil. The aim was therefore to revoke their citizenship and deport them.

People related to the camp

  • Feodor Fedorenko was extradited to the Soviet Union as a suspect in 1984, where he was sentenced and executed in 1987.
  • John Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel in 1986, sentenced to death in the first instance in 1988, but acquitted in the 1993 appeal hearing. He returned to the United States and was deported to Germany in May 2009, where criminal proceedings were brought against him for complicity in murder. In May 2011 he was not legally sentenced to five years imprisonment by the Munich II Regional Court for participating in the mass murder of 28,060 Jews in the Sobibor extermination camp and died before the start of the appeal hearing in March 2012.
  • Josias Kumpf was a spectacular case who died stateless and penniless six months after his deportation in Vienna.
  • Yakiw Palij was trained in the Trawniki camp. In 1949, when he entered the USA, he declared to the authorities that he was a farmer and factory worker. In 2003 he was stripped of his American citizenship by the court, and in 2004 his expulsion was ordered, but no other country would accept him. After diplomatic negotiations, Germany finally agreed to accept it. For lack of evidence, a case against him in the Federal Republic was dropped. As a stateless person, he was deported from the USA to Germany in August 2018 and died in December 2018.
  • Jack Reimer was exposed in the USA as an SS volunteer.

literature

  • Angelika Benz: Trawniki. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 9: Labor education camps, ghettos, youth protection camps, police detention camps, special camps, gypsy camps, forced labor camps. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-57238-8 , pp. 602-611.
  • Angelika Benz: Henchman of the SS. The role of the Trawniki men in the Holocaust , Metropol, Berlin, 2015, ISBN 978-3-86331-203-9 .
  • Peter R. Black: The Trawniki men and "Aktion Reinhard". In: Bogdan Musial (Ed.): "Aktion Reinhardt". The genocide of the Jews in the Generalgouvernement 1941–1944. Fiber, Osnabrück 2004, ISBN 3-929759-83-7 , pp. 309–352 ( individual publications by the German Historical Institute Warsaw 10).
  • Helge Grabitz, Wolfgang Scheffler : Last traces. Warsaw Ghetto. SS labor camp Trawniki, harvest festival. 2nd revised edition. Hentrich, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89468-058-X , ( series German past 32).
  • Witold Mędykowski: Obóz pracy dla Żydów w Trawnikach. In: Wojciech Lenarczyk, Dariusz Libionka (ed.): Harvest Festival 3–4 listopada 1943. Zapomniany epizod Zagłady. Państwowe Muzeum na Majdanku, Lublin 2009, ISBN 978-83-925187-5-4 , pp. 183-210.

Web links

Commons : Trawniki concentration camp  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Angelika Benz: Handlanger der SS. The role of the Trawniki men in the Holocaust , Metropol, Berlin, 2015, ISBN 978-3-86331-203-9 , p. 65ff.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 7: Niederhagen / Wewelsburg, Lublin-Majdanek, Arbeitsdorf, Herzogenbusch (Vught), Bergen-Belsen, Mittelbau-Dora. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-52967-2 , p. 99.
  3. ↑ a b c d Trawniki , description on the pages of the USHMM
  4. ^ The history of Ravensbrück - section: The second phase - forced labor and internationalization via Ravensbrück as a training camp; Retrieved July 12, 2016.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Summary and book review of the book by Angelika Benz: Handlanger of the SS - The role of the Trawniki men in the Holocaust ; Berlin: Metropol 2015; ISBN 978-3-86331-203-9 .
  6. ↑ Description of a photo from the Trawniki camp
  7. ↑ a b Friedrich Schmidt: The wrong Iwan. The Tangled Story of John Demjanjuk In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 12, 2009, p. 3.
  8. ↑ Dieter Pohl: The Trawniki men in the Belzec extermination camp 1941–1943. In: Alfred Gottwaldt u. a. (Ed.): Nazi tyranny. Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89468-278-7 , p. 279.
  9. ↑ Angelika Benz: Handlanger der SS. The role of the Trawniki men in the Holocaust , Metropol, Berlin, 2015, ISBN 978-3-86331-203-9 , pp. 40–46.
  10. ↑ Dieter Pohl: The Trawniki men…. In: ISBN 3-89468-278-7 , p. 279.
  11. ↑ Hein, Bastian 1974-: The SS: History and crime . Orig.-issued edition. Beck, Munich 2015, ISBN 3-406-67513-1 , p. 98 .
  12. ↑ Justice and Nazi Crimes, Bd. XLIX proceedings Ser. No. 924, LG Munich II, May 12, 2011, p. 280 f.
  13. ↑ In Belzec 220-250 Trawniki, s. Dieter Pohl: The Trawniki men. In: ISBN 3-89468-278-7 , p. 281.
  14. ↑ Dieter Pohl: The Trawniki men. In: ISBN 3-89468-278-7 , pp. 286–287.
  15. ↑ see the Trawniki wounded list in the Stroop report ( Memento from January 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  16. ↑ Report by Dr. Orest Subtelny in the case of The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration vs. Wasyl Odynskyi. UCCLA Accusations of War Crimes Against Ukrainian Canadians, October 26, 1998, archived from the original April 16, 2005 ; accessed on January 10, 2015 .
  17. ↑ Wolfgang Benz: The place of terror. CHBeck, 2005, ISBN 978-3-406-52967-2 , p. 99 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  18. ↑ Warsaw Ghetto Miedzyrzec Podlaski (English)
  19. ↑ Smoke and fur goods factory, main office in Warsaw: Neue Burgstr. 60, headquarters: Danzig, Dominikswall 11. The Trawniki labor camp was run by the company as "Operation III". Compare Grabitz, last traces
  20. ↑ On Emanuel Ringelblum ( Memento from June 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  21. ↑ Helge Grabitz, Wolfgang Scheffler, Last Traces - Ghetto Warsaw - SS Labor Camp Trawniki - Harvest Festival, 1993, ISBN 3-89468-058-X .
  22. ↑ Dorohucza (Polish)
  23. ↑ Statement of May 30, 1963, Hamburg public prosecutor's office, 147 Js 43/69, p. 7027 ff. In Grabitz, last traces
  24. ↑ File number: Hamburg Public Prosecutor's Office 147 Js 43/69.
  25. ↑ Murderous Eyes . In: Der Spiegel . No. 31 , 1993, pp. 103-105 ( Online - Aug. 2, 1993 ).
  26. ↑ John Demjanjuk - Condemned But Free. In: sueddeutsche.de. May 12, 2011, accessed April 3, 2018 .
  27. ↑ What the "henchmen" of the SS and Wehrmacht did , article on welt.de from August 21, 2018, accessed on January 18, 2019.
  28. ↑ Former concentration camp guard Palij died , article on tagesschau.de from January 11, 2019, accessed on January 11, 2019.

Coordinates: 51 ° 7 '53.2 "  N , 23 ° 0' 53.9"  E