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Old March 13th, 2020 #1
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Default Concentration Camp Stutthof

Concentration Camp Stutthof

By Jürgen Graf and Carlo Mattogno

On 2 September 1939 – the day after the beginning of the German military campaign against Poland – an internment camp for Polish detainees was opened in the village of Stutthof, 36 km east of the old German city Danzig in West Prussia. Early in 1942, the status of the camp was changed from that of an internment camp to “Stutthof Concentration Camp.” Prisoners were sent to Stutthof from many different countries throughout the sixty-eight months of its existence; these prisoners included a number of Soviet prisoners of war.

According to the Polish historical literature, many – mostly jewish – Stutthof inmates were murdered with poison gas beginning in June or July of 1944. This allegation is also contained in several works of western Holocaust literature; namely, the anthology Nazi Mass Murder published by E. Kogon, H. Langbein, A. Rückerl among others, as well as the Enzyklopädie des Holocaust.

And yet there are other historians – even among those who maintain the reality of a systematic extermination of jews in the Third Reich – who make no claim of any extermination of human beings at Stutthof Concentration Camp. Raul Hilberg’s 1300-page standard work on the Holocaust mentions Stutthof briefly only four times, and makes no mention of any gas chamber for the extermination of human beings in that camp. Nor does Gerald Reitlinger, the author of another Holocaust classic, make any claim of homicidal gassings at Stutthof. In this context, it is worth mentioning that Stutthof Concentration Camp was never even mentioned during the Nuremberg Trial.

Among the revisionists, until now, only the American historian Mark Weber has made any effort to study Stutthof. Although his paper on the subject, which appeared in the Journal of Historical Review in 1997, is not based upon original documents, but rather upon the sparse literature available in western languages only, it is nevertheless of high quality. Weber mentions the extensive deportation of Baltic, Polish, and Hungarian jews to Stutthof in 1944.

The point of departure for our study consisted of a visit to Stutthof in very late June and early July 1997; as well as visiting the camp itself, we viewed a considerable quantity of documentation in the archives. We acquired additional important material on Stutthof Camp during a trip to Poland in March 1999. Since the history of the camp is largely undisputed up to 1944 – the time of the large-scale jewish deportations – the principal focus of our investigation revolved around three points:

– the alleged gassings of inmates (primarily jewish);

– the total number of persons who died in the camp;

– the conclusions to be drawn regarding wartime National Socialist jewish policy from the mass deportations of jews which occurred in 1944.

The clarification of these three questions – which are closely related – formed the real object of our study. That it also provides a survey of the history of a camp known in the West almost by name only may be viewed as an additional result of the present study.

As described in an earlier book, wartime National Socialist concentration camps served primarily two purposes: they performed an internal security function through the internment of actual or potential opponents of National Socialism, and they acquired increasing significance for the war effort at a time when increasing numbers of Germans were being called up for military service, causing a serious manpower shortage in the Reich.

Stutthof Camp was created, at least initially, for the first of the two factors mentioned. The present study intends to provide a brief description of the camp. It is based, in particular, on a paper by Polish historian Miroslaw Gliński, which was published in the book on the official history of the camp.

Stutthof had approximately 4,500 inmates at the end of January 1940. These inmates consisted almost entirely of Polish men, including numerous priests, teachers, and other members of the intelligentsia considered politically unreliable. A small number of female detainees also arrived at Stutthof after the middle of the same year. They were housed in Barracks I, which received the designation “Women’s Block.”

At this point, a few remarks on the expansion of the camp are in order; our source of information in this regard is a contribution by the Polish historian Ewa Ferenc. When the first prisoners entered the camp in the beginning of September 1939, there were already a number of tents, a kitchen, a washroom and a latrine. The prisoners were first set to work exclusively on the construction of the internment camp: clearing the forest, leveling the site, etc. As in other camps, the construction phase was particularly arduous for the detainees – the forest commando, occupied with the felling of trees, was considered the hardest job.

Until October 1941, there were only three inmate barracks in Stutthof. At approximately the same time, the sewer installations were completed, and washrooms were installed in the barracks. Prior to that, the inmates had washed themselves in troughs in the open air.

Another barracks was used as an inmate infirmary, containing, among other things, a surgical division, a first-aid room, and a pharmacy. There was also a kitchen barracks and a laundry. A former retirement home on the camp’s property was used as the headquarters building. Barracks for camp workshops were built after the beginning of 1940; when completed, there was a paint shop, a furniture workshop, a joinery, an electrotechnical workshop, and a smithy. Outside the camp, the inmates built stables for livestock and a slaughterhouse.

Between the beginning of April and the end of September 1941, for reasons which are not readily apparent, Stutthof was referred to in the concentration-camp nomenclature as a “transit camp,” although its function had not changed as against the preceding period.19 Very few documents from this period have survived.

In addition to the inmates from 1941 were the so-called Erziehungshäftlinge (rehabilitation inmates). These were nationals of occupied territories – and, to a lesser extent, Germans – who had violated their labor contracts or neglected to comply with the call-up to the labor service. On May 28, 1941, Himmler, in a circular letter to all offices of the Sipo (Security Police), ordered the construction of labor rehabilitation camps. He explained the reasons for this decision as follows:

With the increasing use of foreign labor and other manpower in companies important to the national and the war economy, the cases of reluctance to work [also] increase, which, in the interest of the war effort of the German people, must be countered by all means. Workers who refuse to work or who endanger the morale of the workers otherwise and who thus have to be arrested by the police to maintain order and security, should be interned in special labor re-education camps and be given regular work. The labor re-education camps are intended exclusively to accommodate the work shirkers and idlers. Internment will occur for the purpose of re-education, nothing else.”

At that time the camp was very small and, as indicated by Willich, contained about 2,000 inmates. An undated “List of the necessary manpower for the permanent staff and for the guards of the labor re-education camp Stutthof” stemming from this period included a total of just 291 staff members.

Compared to the political inmates, the “rehabilitation inmates” had an easy time and were usually freed after 56 days and assigned to a job. Their internment was not considered a punishment and did not affect the criminal record of the inmates. Furthermore, unlike other prisoners, the Polish and jewish rehabilitation inmates were entitled to compensation for work done during the internment of 2 Reichsmark per day for married prisoners and 0.50 Reichsmark for unmarried inmates.

Stutthof became a labor re-education camp officially on October 1, 1941. On that day the administration of the former civil internment camp was also transferred to the Gestapo. At that time it consisted of three residential barracks, one of them for female inmates, one infirmary building, a kitchen building, a disinfestation building as well as four watchtowers. From the transfer protocol it can be gleaned that the disinfestation building contained a room with an autoclave and a disinfestation boiler, a vestibule, a bathroom, a room for changing clothes, and a laundry facility.

Himmler visited Stutthof on November 23, 1941 and finally decided to change the status of the camp to that of a regular concentration camp. The decisive factor in this decision was economic; this is proven by the following letter sent by Heinrich Himmler to the chief of the SS Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt Oswald Pohl on December 19, 1941:

Dear Pohl! I recently visited Stutthof Camp during my visit to the district of Danzig West Prussia. I have become convinced that Stutthof is of great significance to the subsequent settlement of the district of Danzig-West Prussia. Stutthof has all the possibilities for workshops, joineries, metalworking shops, etc. I believe that we must further expand and utilize Stutthof. In my opinion, the expansion must strive at the following:

1) The installation of building joineries and metal workshops for settlement activity in West Prussia.

2) The fullest use of the tailor shop, joinery, and other workshops for us. A great quantity of orders for the armed forces is being fulfilled.

3) Installation of an auto repair workshop for the local SS headquarters.

4) Purchase of a brickyard on the bay, which is very favorable and which has a narrow-gauge railway and canal, and which is being offered to us there now.

5) Stutthof must also be expanded to accept 20,000 Russian prisoners of war at a later time, who can be used to build a settlement in the district of Danzig-West Prussia. I enclose a statement on the preparation of the site, drawn up in Danzig. Some of the sludge could be of interest for the fertilization of the meadows if it is worth mining it at a depth of 10-12 m, as well as the white, soft, medium-hard and hard limestone lying at a depth of 100 meters on the other hand. If I am not mistaken, there is a great lack of cement and limestone in the district of Danzig-West Prussia. Both can be derived from limestone. Stutthof is now to be taken over by yourself and SS Brigadeführer Glücks as a recognized concentration camp with industrial function. Heil Hitler! Your H. Himmler


As a result of this decision, SS Unterscharführer Johann Pauls delivered a plan for the camp expansion to the Reichsführer SS, which was approved by Himmler on March 3, 1942. Among other things, it provided for the construction of housing for 20,000 inmates west and north of the already existing structures, now known as the “old camp.” To enable the planned expansion, the brickyard that was mentioned in Himmler’s letter of April 1942, as well as the Werdershof estate (also located south-east of the camp), were leased by Department II of the SS-WVHA (Budget and Construction), where the “Germanic camp” was to be built the following year.

North of the old camp 30 barracks were now built as the first part of the “new camp”; of these, 20 (labeled with numbers I to XX) were intended for inmates, including the camp canteen, the kitchen, and the quarantine barracks for inmates suffering from contagious diseases. The DAW (Deutsche Ausrüstungs-Werke) factories were housed in the remaining barracks, including a furrier’s workshop, tailor’s workshop, weaving workshop, shoemaker’s workshop, and a bicycle-repair workshop (see Document 7 in the Appendix for a Polish post-war camp map). The first inmates were transferred to the new camp in July 1943. The women remained in the old camp.

Following completion of the barracks, construction began on the streets, sewerage, and water mains for the new camp. At the same time, construction began on a barracks for guard personnel west of the old camp; the guard personnel in question moved in on March 28, 1943. Northeast of the new camp, work began in October 1943 on the construction of two factory hangars for the DAW. These were put into operation one year later. The Focke-Wulf Company manufactured airplane parts in the first factory hangar, while motors and machine parts were repaired in the second, the “DAW Maschinenhalle.”

Inmate labor was basically divided into two categories: the construction and maintenance of the camp itself, and labor for industrial enterprises. Inmates were made available to the latter against payment. As stated above, a few companies, such as the DAW or Focke Wulf, established operations in the camp itself. Otherwise, inmates assigned to companies were put to work in “subsidiary camps” or “exterior commandos,” in which case there was a gradual transition between both types. Polish historiography assumes a total of 60 subsidiary camps and exterior commandos. All the above-mentioned factors prove the great significance of Stutthof Camp from an economic point of view.

Many inmates were released from the camp. According to the official history of the camp, the total number of released inmates amounted to 5,000. Special lists of released inmates were compiled every day by the camp’s “Political Section.” Hundreds of such lists are preserved by the Stutthof Museum, which cover almost the entire history of the camp.

It should be noted that some of these releases took place at a time when, according to the orthodox version of history, large numbers of inmates were being murdered in the gas chamber. According to the orthodox version of history, therefore, the Germans released witnesses to their alleged mass-extermination program, enabling them to report about what they had seen! Since the alleged gas chamber was located immediately at the edge of the old camp and was easily visible from the old camp (see Document 7 in the Appendix), there would have been no way to conceal any homicidal mass gassings.

As in other camps, disease was the principal danger and chief cause of the high mortality. Typhus – which broke out in the spring of 1942 for the first time – was especially devastating. Another epidemic broke out in April 1943, and lasted until June. Of the more than 1,100 inmates who died in that period, the majority doubtlessly died of typhus.

Conditions in Stutthof changed drastically starting in mid-1944. In addition to a few transports of non-jews, numerous mass transports of jews – the vast majority of whom were women – arrived between 29 June and 28 October. I will return to this in Chapter IV.

The manner in which the camp administration reacted to the continuous arrival of mass transports is described by SS Hauptsturmbannführer Theodor Meyer, protective-custody camp commander in Stutthof, in his notes written in a Polish prison while awaiting execution:

When the Lublin and Riga camps and outer camps in the East were evacuated, Stutthof was designated a reception camp. Transports with thousands of Jewish women arrived, even from Auschwitz. These transports were mostly in a condition that exceeded anything ever seen before. They were sent on the transports without sufficient clothing and food. Now they were supposed to be accepted in a camp that was itself on subsistence level. Telexes, radio messages, went back and forth between Berlin and Stutthof to make the gentlemen in Berlin realize that this was impossible; that Stutthof could no longer accept any more inmates. The camp commandant himself traveled to Berlin for a conference intended to prevent any more inmates from being sent to Stutthof, but without success. Berlin only promised to ensure that the inmates would be detailed off in workers. A representative appeared and made contacts with industry. Commandos were detailed off to Königsberg, Elbing, Danzig, Gotenhafen, Stolp, Bromberg, Stettin, and to the nearer or more distant surroundings. New masses arrived. The various offices of the Gestapo emptied their camps and ghettos and sent the inmates to Stutthof without making any inquiry at any time. Typhus infected inmates spread the disease in the camp, and this epidemic caused many victims among the masses tightly packed together in the camp. Where, and how, could an improvement be made? More and more transports arrived. Could one refuse to accept them? No! When the transports arrived with their inmates, they had to be accepted.”

We see not the slightest grounds for doubting the truthfulness of the content of this testimony.

At the end of August 1944, the camp census, including the outer camps, was approximately 60,000; it had therefore multiplied tenfold in eight months! The last large transport arrived from Auschwitz on October 29. In the following month, only individual groups of inmates arrived at Stutthof; the last inmate, the Pole Jan Zielina, no. 105,302, arrived from Auschwitz on January 17, 1945. The fact that transports from Stutthof departed after October 1944 was one reason for the renewed decline in the camp census. A second reason was the typhus epidemic that broke out in late summer 1944 for the second time and took on devastating proportions by the end of the year. The poor hygienic conditions in the further-overcrowded housing naturally contributed to propagation of the lethal epidemic.

As of January 24, 1945, the day before the first waves of evacuation, the camp census report indicated a census of 28,390 female and 18,115 male inmates (including the subsidiary camps). This number included 25,775 jewish women and 2,898 jewish men.

Documentation on the tragic last months of Stutthof Camp is very fragmentary. In Polish literature on the subject, commonplace facts and atrocity propaganda are intermixed in a veritable stew. For this reason, it seems to us impossible to offer even an approximate estimate of the number of victims caused by the evacuation of the camp, and we will refrain from putting forth any estimates.

What has survived, though, are daily records on the camp strength from a series consisting mainly of Morgenappell (morning roll call) documents ranging from January 24 to April 22, 1945. They show the numbers given in Table 1 (next page).

The fate of Stutthof inmates at that time was very little different from – or even identical to – the fate of the millions of German civilians who fled before the advancing Red Army during that harshest winter of the war, under almost inconceivable circumstances and who therefore suffered horribly high losses.

The tragedy of the Stutthof refugees who died during the evacuation must be viewed in the context of this tragedy extending over an immense territory. The decision to evacuate the camp appears to have been made by Fritz Katzmann, the Higher SS and Police Chief of Danzig, after the onset of the large-scale winter offensive of the Red Army on January 12, 1945. After January 20, all work in the camp was directed at the forthcoming evacuation, and approximately 11,000 inmates were led out of Stutthof on January 25 and 26. They were supposed to march on foot to Lauenberg, 140 km further west, for internment in a non-commissioned officers’ school for the Waffen-SS. The distance was to be covered in seven days, exclusively on backroads, because the main roads were filled with German refugee columns and German troops. At night, the inmates were supposed to be lodged in villages.

The evacuation did not run according to plan, particularly because of the heavy snowdrifts and poor road conditions. Many inmates died on the road, others escaped, and considerable numbers were overtaken by the advancing Soviet troops and liberated. The majority of the evacuees were halted by the Wehrmacht before they reached Lauenberg, and put to work building anti-tank ditches. In early March, following the onset of another Soviet offensive, those who were able to march were led in the direction of Gotenhafen and Putzig, where they were supposed to be transported to Germany by ship. They did not get there, because the columns were captured on the way by the Soviets. According to Polish sources based on estimates that cannot be verified, approximately 5,000 died out of the 11,500 evacuated on January 25 and 26.

Stutthof still had 33,948 inmates on January 30, approximately one third of them in the main camp. At approximately the same time, the camp began to fill with German refugees who took up temporary lodgings there, taking over the new camp and part of the old camp. Many of these German civilians were later evacuated to the west by sea. The camp was attacked by Soviet bombers on March 25 and on several occasions afterwards; several of the women’s barracks in the old camp burnt down.

The Red Army entered Stutthof on May 9, 1945, but found only approximately 150 inmates – most of whom were sick – in addition to approximately 20,000 German civilians. Paul Ehle, acting unofficially as the last concentration-camp commander, had fled a few days before. The existence of Stutthof Concentration Camp coincided almost precisely with the duration of war: it opened the day after the war began, and was captured by Soviet troops the day after it ended.

In 1946 and 1947, four trials were held in Poland against a total of 80 members of Stutthof Camp guard personnel. After trial, 21 death sentences were handed down and carried out, with one exception. Another five camp functionaries, including the second commander, P.W. Hoppe, were brought to court in three trials in the Federal Republic of Germany (1955, 1957, and 1964); four of them received sentences of imprisonment of up to nine years.


https://holocausthandbooks.com/index.php?page_id=4

http://holocausthandbooks.com/dl/04-ccs.pdf

http://www.renegadetribune.com/conce...camp-stutthof/
 
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