Stutthof concentration camp

Not to be confused with Struthof.

Coordinates: 54°19′44″N 19°09′14″E / 54.32889°N 19.15389°E / 54.32889; 19.15389

Stutthof concentration camp in 2008

Stutthof was the first Nazi concentration camp built outside of 1937 German borders.

Completed on September 2, 1939, it was located in a secluded, wet, and wooded area west of the small town of Sztutowo (German: Stutthof). The town is located in the former territory of the Free City of Danzig, 34 km east of Gdańsk, Poland. Stutthof was the last camp liberated by the Allies, on May 9, 1945. More than 85,000 victims^[1] died in the camp out of as many as 110,000 people deported there.

Camp

Nazi concentration camps in occupied Poland (marked with black squares)

The Nazi authorities of the Free City of Danzig were compiling material about known Jews and Polish intelligentsia as early as 1936 and were also reviewing suitable places to build concentration camps in their area. Originally, Stutthof was a civilian internment camp under the Danzig police chief. In November 1941, it became a "labor education" camp, administered by the German Security Police. Finally, in January 1942, Stutthof became a regular concentration camp.

The original camp (known as the old camp) was surrounded by barbed-wire fence. It comprised eight barracks for the inmates and a "kommandantur" for the SS guards, totalling 120,000 m². In 1943, the camp was enlarged and a new camp was constructed alongside the earlier one. It was also surrounded by electrified barbed-wire fence and contained thirty new barracks, raising the total area to 1.2 km².

The camp staff consisted of SS guards and after 1943, Ukrainian auxiliaries. In 1942 the first female prisoners and female German guards arrived in Stutthof, including Aufseherin Herta Bothe.^[2][3] A total of over 130 women served in the Stutthof complex of camps. 34 female guards, including Gerda Steinhoff, Rosy Suess, Ewa Paradies and Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, have been identified later as having committed crimes against humanity at Stutthof. Starting in June 1944, the SS in Stutthof began conscripting women from Danzig and the surrounding cities to train as camp female guards because of a severe shortage of guards. In 1944 a women's subcamp of Stutthof called Bromberg-Ost (Konzentrationslager Bromberg-Ost) was set up in the city of Bydgoszcz.^[4]

A crematorium and gas chamber were added in 1943, just in time to start mass executions when Stutthof was included in the "Final Solution" in June 1944. Mobile gas wagons were also used to complement the maximum capacity of the gas chamber (150 people per execution) when needed.

Prisoners

Inside the gas chamber

The first inmates imprisoned on 2 September 1939 were 150 Polish citizens, arrested on the streets of Danzig right after the outbreak of the war. The inmate population rose to 6,000 in the following two weeks, on 15 September 1939.

Tens of thousands of people, perhaps as many as 110,000, were deported to the Stutthof camp. The prisoners were mainly non-Jewish Poles. There were also Polish Jews from Warsaw and Białystok, and Jews from forced-labour camps in the occupied Baltic states, which the Germans evacuated in 1944 as Soviet forces approached. These totals are thought to be conservative, as it is believed that inmates sent for immediate execution were not registered.A number of German was also sent^[5] to the camp, where they were known as "camp aristocracy"-a large group of German criminals was also given kapo positions and terrorized other inmates^[6], other Germans included a couple of socialdemocrats , and later members of military faction that tried to gain power from Hitler; in 1945 the camp authorities noted that 35% of inmates are Poles, 8% Russians, and 7% Germans(some of which were Poles who refused to accept Volksliste)^[7]

When the Soviet army began its advance through Nazi-occupied Estonia in July and August 1944, the camp staff of Klooga concentration camp evacuated the majority of the inmates by sea to the Stutthof concentration camp.

Conditions

Crematory building

Conditions in the camp were brutal. Many prisoners died in typhus epidemics that swept the camp in the winter of 1942 and again in 1944. Those whom the SS guards judged too weak or sick to work were gassed in the camp's small gas chamber. Gassing with Zyklon B began in June 1944. Camp doctors also killed sick or injured prisoners in the infirmary with lethal injections. More than 85,000 people died in the camp.

The Germans used Stutthof prisoners as forced labourers. Some prisoners worked in SS-owned businesses such as the German Equipment Works (DAW), located near the camp. Others laboured in local brickyards, in private industrial enterprises, in agriculture, or in the camp's own workshops. In 1944, as forced labour by concentration camp prisoners became increasingly important in armaments production, a Focke-Wulf aircraft factory was constructed at Stutthof. Eventually, the Stutthof camp system became a vast network of forced-labour camps; 105 Stutthof subcamps were established throughout northern and central Poland. The major subcamps were Thorn and Elbing.

The Stutthof camp has been suggested as one of the possible sources for human remains that Dr. Rudolf Spanner used to make a limited quantity of soap from human fat.^[8]

The former prisoner of Stutthoff and Lithuanian writer Balys Sruoga later wrote a novel Dievų miškas (The Forest of Gods) describing the everyday life of this camp.

Soap production from the bodies of victims

Some evidence exists of small-scale soap production of soap made from human corpses in the Stutthof concentration camp.^[9]

In his book "Russia at War 1941 to 1945", Alexander Werth reported that while visiting Gdańsk/Danzig in 1945 shortly after its liberation by the Red Army, he saw an experimental factory outside the city for making soap from human corpses. According to Werth it had been run by "a German professor called Spanner" and "was a nightmarish sight, with its vats full of human heads and torsoes pickled in some liquid, and its pails full of a flakey substance - human soap".^[10]

Death march

Camp memorial

The evacuation of prisoners from the Stutthof camp system in northern Poland began in January 1945. When the final evacuation began, there were nearly 50,000 prisoners, the majority of them Jews, in the Stutthof camp system. About 5,000 prisoners from Stutthof subcamps were marched to the Baltic Sea coast, forced into the water, and machinegunned. The rest of the prisoners were marched in the direction of Lauenburg in eastern Germany. They were cut off by advancing Soviet forces. The Germans forced the surviving prisoners back to Stutthof. Marching in severe winter conditions and treated brutally by SS guards, thousands died during the march.

In late April 1945, the remaining prisoners were removed from Stutthof by sea, since Stutthof was completely encircled by Soviet forces. Again, hundreds of prisoners were forced into the sea and shot. Over 4,000 were sent by small boat to Germany, some to the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, and some to camps along the Baltic coast. Many drowned along the way. A barge full of prisoners was washed ashore at Klintholm Havn in Denmark where 351 of the 370 on board were saved on 5 May 1945. Shortly before the German surrender, some prisoners were transferred to Malmö, Sweden, and released into the care of that neutral country. It has been estimated that over 25,000 prisoners, one in two, died during the evacuation from Stutthof and its subcamps.

Liberation

Soviet forces liberated Stutthof on May 9, 1945, and liberated about 100 prisoners who had managed to hide during the final evacuation of the camp.

Stutthof sub camps

Sub-camps of the German concentration camp Stutthof near Danzig during the Third Reich:^[11]

Bottschin Bromberg Chorabie Cieszyny Danzig–Burggraben/ Kokoszki Danzig–Neufahrwasser Danziger Werft / Gdańsk Dzimianen Elbing Elbing (Org. Todt)

Elbing (Schichau-Werke) Pölitz / Szczecin Gdynia Gerdenau Graudenz Grenzdorf Grodno Gutowo Gwisdyn Heiligenbeil

Jesau Kokoschken Kolkau Krzemieniewo Lauenburg Malken Mierzynek Nawitz Niskie Obrzycko Praust

Rosenberg / Brodnica Scherokopas Schippenbeil Seerappen Sophienwalde Slipsk Starorod Pruszcz Brusy Toruń(AEG, Org. Todt)

Commanders

• SS-Sturmbannführer - Max Pauly - September 39 - August 42
• SS-Sturmbannführer - Werner Hoppe - August 42 - January 45

Stutthof Trials

Main article: Stutthof Trial

Entrance to the camp

Stutthof concentration camp in 2007

The Nuremberg Trials did not include staff of the Stutthof concentration camp. However, the Poles held four trials in Gdańsk against former guards and kapos of Stutthof, charging them with crimes of war and crimes against humanity. The first trial was held against 30 ex-officials and kapos of the camp, from April 25, 1946, to May 31, 1946. The Soviet/Polish Special Criminal Court found all of them guilty of the charges. Eleven of them, including the former commander, Johann Pauls, were sentenced to death. The rest were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.

Some of the sentences of the first trial:

• Johann Pauls: death sentence (executed on July 4, 1946)
• Gerda Steinhoff: death sentence (executed on July 4, 1946)
• Kapo Josef Reiter: death sentence (executed on July 4, 1946)
• Wanda Klaff: death sentence (executed on July 4, 1946)
• Erna Beilhardt: 5 years imprisonment
• Kapo Waclaw Kozlowski: death sentence (executed on July 4, 1946)
• Jenny-Wanda Barkmann: death sentence (executed on July 4, 1946)
• Kapo Fanciszek Szopinski: death sentence (executed on July 4, 1946)
• Ewa Paradies: death sentence (executed on July 4, 1946)
• Kapo Kazimierz Kowalski: 3 years imprisonment
• Jan Breit: death sentence (executed on July 4, 1946)
• Kapo Tadeusz Kopczynski: death sentence (executed on July 4, 1946)
• Elisabeth Becker: death sentence (executed on July 4, 1946)
• Werner Hoppe: Apprehended in 1953 in West Germany, later sentenced to 9 years imprisonment

The second trial was held from January 8, 1947, to January 31, 1947, before a Polish Special Criminal Court. 24 ex-officials and guards of the Stutthof concentration camp were judged and found guilty. Ten were sentenced to death.

The sentences of the second trial:

• Theodor Meyer: death sentence (executed on October 10, 1947)
• Ewald Foth: death sentence (executed on October 10, 1947)
• Karl Reger: 8 years imprisonment
• Eduard Zerlin: 12 years imprisonment
• Emil Wenzel: 10 years imprisonment
• Adalbert Wolter: 8 years imprisonment
• Karl Eggert: death sentence (executed on October 10, 1947)
• Wilhelm Vogler: 15 years imprisonment
• Paul Wellnitz: death sentence (executed on October 10, 1947)
• Kapo Alfred Nikolaysen: death sentence (executed on October 10, 1947)
• Hans Rach: death sentence (executed on October 10, 1947)
• Adolf Grams: 10 years imprisonment
• Josef Wennhardt: 8 years imprisonment
• Fritz Peters: death sentence (executed on October 10, 1947)
• Kurt Dietrich: death sentencee (executed on October 10, 1947)
• Hugo Ziehm: 3 years imprisonment
• Erich Thun: life imprisonment
• Albert Paulitz: death sentence (executed on October 10, 1947)
• Werner Wöllnitz: 10 years imprisonment
• Martin Stage: 8 years imprisonment
• Oskar Gottchau: 10 years imprisonment
• Karl Zurell: death sentence (executed on October 10, 1947)
• Walter Englert: 3 years imprisonment
• Johannes Görtz: 8 years imprisonment

The third trial was held from November 5, 1947, to November 10, 1947, before a Polish Special Criminal Court. 20 ex-officials and guards were judged. 19 were found guilty, and one was acquitted.

The sentences of the third trial:

• Karl Meinck: 12 years imprisonment
• Gustav Eberle: 10 years imprisonment
• Harry Müller: 4 years imprisonment
• Alfred Tissler: 5 years imprisonment
• Otto Schneider: 10 years imprisonment
• Johann Lichtner: 5 years imprisonment
• Ernst Thulke: 5 years imprisonment
• Otto Welke: 10 years imprisonment
• Willy Witt: 10 years imprisonment
• Heinz Löwen: 5 years imprisonment
• Erich Stampniok: 5 years imprisonment
• Richard Timm: 4 years imprisonment
• Adolf Klaffke: 10 years imprisonment
• Hans Möhrke: 4 years imprisonment
• Hans Tolksdorf: acquitted and released
• Nikolaus Dirnberger: 4 years imprisonment
• Friedrich Tessmer: 4 years imprisonment
• Erich Jassen: 10 years imprisonment
• Johann Sporer: 4 years imprisonment
• Nikolai Klawan: 3 years imprisonment

The fourth and final trial was also held before a Polish Special Criminal Court, from November 19, 1947, to November 29, 1947. 27 ex-officials and guards were judged, 26 were found guilty, and one was acquitted.

Sentences of the fourth trial:

• Christof Schwarz: 3 years imprisonment
• Albert Weckmüller: 15 years imprisonment
• Kurt Reduhn: 10 years imprisonment
• Walter Ringewald: 7 months imprisonment
• Hermann Link: 5 years imprisonment
• Richard Wohlfeil: 7 months imprisonment
• Waldemar Henke: 5 years imprisonment
• Anton Kniffke: 3 years imprisonment
• Kapo Franz Spillmann: acquitted and released
• Gustav Brodowski: 7 months imprisonment
• Johann Wrobel: 7 months imprisonment
• Ernst Knappert: 7 months imprisonment
• Martin Pentz: 5 years imprisonment
• Horst Köpke: 10 years imprisonment
• Bernard Eckermann: 7 months imprisonment
• Rudolf Berg: 10 years imprisonment
• Josef Stahl: 10 years imprisonment
• Johann Pfister: 5 years imprisonment
• Johannes Wall: 5 years imprisonment
• Leopold Baumgartner: 7 months imprisonment
• Willi Buth: life imprisonment
• Richard Akolt: 3 years imprisonment
• Fritz Glawe: 10 years imprisonment
• Emil Lascheit: 10 years imprisonment
• Gustav Kautz: 5 years imprisonment
• Emil Paul: 7 months imprisonment
• Erich Mertens: 5 years imprisonment

See also

• Stutthof Trial
• Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles
• Soap made from human corpses
• List of Nazi-German concentration camps
• List of subcamps of Stutthof
• Rescue of Stutthof victims in Denmark

References

1. ^ Stutthof, the first Nazi concentration camp outside Germany
2. ^ Herta Bothe: the female Nazi concentration camp guard at Bromberg-Ost
3. ^ Herta Bothe, her life as an "SS" concentration camp guard
4. ^ Benjamin B. Ferencz. Less Than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation.
5. ^ Schwartze-Köhler, Hannelore (2009) (in German). Die Blechtrommel von Günter Grass: Bedeutung, Erzähltechnik und Zeitgeschichte. Verlag für wissenschaftlishe Literatur. p. 99. ISBN 3-86596-237-9. http://books.google.de/books?id=2nue91Rlg-0C&pg=PA99&dq=stutthof&hl=de&ei=j4NDToDzMsTHtAbK2pzQBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CFIQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=stutthof&f=false. 
6. ^ Monografia KL Stutthof. Stutthof MuseumStruktura społeczna obozu.Więźniarski aparat nadzoru
7. ^ Kl Stutthof obozem międzynarodowym
8. ^ Tests show that Nazis used human remains to make soap : Mail & Guardian Online
9. ^ Denying history: who says the Holocaust never happened and why do they say it? Michael Shermer, Alex Grobman, University of California Press, 2002, The Human Soap Controversy, pp. 114- 117
10. ^ Werth, Alexander (1964). Russia at War, 1941-1945. Dutton. p. 1019. 
11. ^ Stutthof - Sztutowo (Poland), by JewishGen.org

External links

• Stutthof National Museum
• KL Stutthof monography (Polish)
• SS personnel serving at Ravensbrück
• SS personnel serving at Stutthof
• Karl M. Haugan describes conditions at Stutthof (Norwegian)
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia entry
• Brief facts and photos of the camp (The accuracy of the statements in this link are dubious, for instance the allegation it makes regarding the meaning of R.J.F. is completely untrue. See the link below for further info.)
• "The Soap Allegations"