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Jaworzno concentration camp

The Jaworzno concentration camp was a concentration camp in WW2 German-occupied Poland and later in Communist Poland. It was first established by the Nazis in 1943 during the Second World War and was later used from 1945 to 1956 by the Soviet NKVD and then by the Ministry of Public Security and other agencies of the Polish communist regime. Today the site is an apartment complex and also houses a memorial to the camp's victims.

Originally, it was established as a Nazi concentration camp called SS-Lager Dachsgrube ("SS Camp Dachsgrube) also known as Arbeitslager Neu-Dachs ("Work Camp Neu-Dachs") established during World War II by the Third Reich on the territory of German-occupied Poland in Jaworzno, Lesser Poland. The camp operated under the Nazi German administration from June 1943 until its evacuation in January 1945.

After the communist takeover of Poland, the camp was reinstated and run first by the Soviet Union and then the People's Republic of Poland till 1956, mainly to intern the local German population,[1] who had formed the region's majority population. During this period, it was renamed as the Central Labour Camp in Jaworzno (Centralny Obóz Pracy w Jaworznie, COP Jaworzno).

During the German occupation of Poland

 
Labor camp Neu-Dachs memorial in 2006

The Nazi concentration camp at Jaworzno was opened on June 15, 1943, as one of many subcamps of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The camp, known as SS-Arbeitslager Neu-Dachs (often also called SS-Lager Dachsgrube), provided forced labor for the German war industry. Inmates were primarily employed in coal mining in Jaworzno, and in the construction of the power plant "Wilhelm" (renamed "Jaworzno I" after the war) for Albert Speer's company EnergieVersorgung Oberschlesien AG (EVO). Among the builders of the camp were British prisoners of war from the Stalag VIII-B at Lamsdorf (Łambinowice). The camp's guard unit of about 200 to 300 SS personnel was composed mostly of the ethnic German Volksdeutsche from occupied Poland and other countries, led by camp commandant Bruno Pfütze and his deputy Paul Weissman.

There were up to 5,000 inmates interned in the camp at any time. The prisoners were composed of various nationalities, chiefly European Jews (about 80% of all inmates);[2] by the time the camp begin its operation, the local Jews of Jaworzno (who numbered about 3,000 before the war) and of the rest of Poland had already been mostly exterminated. There were also Poles, Germans, and others, as well as Soviet prisoners of war. There were 14 reported successful escapes (including several Soviet POWs who then joined the local Polish communist partisans). The camp's survival rate was low due to its lethal conditions, including starvation, disease, hard labor and wanton brutality. In effect, about 2,000 people lost their lives in the Jaworzno camp. Some of them were murdered not by the guards but by German civilian employees of the coal mine (mostly members of the paramilitary organization SA), who had been tasked with overseeing the prisoners at work. In addition, every month about 200 inmates who were unable to work anymore were taken by truck from Jaworzno to the gas chambers at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, resulting in several thousand more deaths.

On the night of January 15, 1945, the camp was bombed by the Soviet Air Force as the front approached. The camp was evacuated two days later on January 17. At the last roll-call, the number of inmates was established at 3,664.[3] The SS executed about 40 prisoners who were unfit for transportation (about 400 others were left behind alive) and approximately 3,200 were marched away on a route leading them some 250 km westward. Hundreds of them died on the way to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Lower Silesia, including about 300 who were shot dead in a massacre which occurred on the second night of this death march (in all, about 9,000 to 15,000 Auschwitz system prisoners perished during the evacuation marches).[4] The abandoned camp was liberated on January 19, 1945, by the local unit of the Polish resistance organization Armia Krajowa (AK). Some 350 former prisoners were still alive when the Soviet Red Army forces arrived there a week later. Commandant Pfütze was killed later in 1945.

Stalinist era

 
Central Labour Camp Jaworzno memorial

Since February 1945 the camp had served the Soviet NKVD and then the Polish Ministry of Public Security (UB) as a prison camp for the so-called "enemies of the nation" (Polish: wrogowie narodu). Some of them were German military POWs (members of the Waffen-SS were interned separately from the rest) and the Nazi collaborators from all over Poland, but most were local Germans from German Upper Silesia, Germans from Polish Polish Upper Silesia, and Silesian civilians from Jaworzno, the nearby Chrzanów, and elsewhere; they included women and children. There were also ethnic Poles who were arrested for their opposition to Stalinism, including members of the Polish non-communist resistance organizations AK and BCh, and later the anti-communist organization WiN.

The camp for Germans was run until 1949, when the last of them were allowed to leave and emigrate from their home region to post-war Germany.

In April 1945 the camp was renamed to the "Central Labor Camp" (COP) (as part of a centralized effort of creation of COPs[5]) and the German inscription "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work makes (you) free") was replaced by Polish "Praca uszlachetnia człowieka" ("Work ennobles man"). The prisoners mostly worked on the construction of Jaworzno power plant or in nearby factories and mines. All of them were interned in separate subcamps and were guarded by more than 300 soldiers and officers from the Internal Security Corps, aided by about a dozen civilian personnel. One of the commandants (from 1949), was a Polish Jew and communist named Solomon Morel, who had gained a reputation for cruelty in the Zgoda labour camp in Świętochłowice; the others included Włodzimierz Staniszewski, Stanisław Kwiatkowski and Teofil Hazelmajer (all answering to Jakub Hammerschmidt, later known as Jakub Halicki), as well as the Soviet NKVD officer Ivan Mordasov.[6] There were also two satellite subcamps located at Chrusty and Libiąż.[7]

 
The COP Jaworzno memorial plate in Polish, located to between the German and Ukrainian plates

A separate subcamp existed for the ethnic Lemko and Ukrainian prisoners. On April 23, 1947, by a decree of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers' Party, COP Jaworzno was selected for the detention of civilians during the Operation Vistula deportation campaign. The first transportation of 17 prisoners from Sanok reached the special subcamp of Jaworzno on May 5 and the number of these prisoners eventually totalled almost 4,000 (including over 700 women and children); the vast majority of them arrived in 1947. Most of them were people suspected of sympathy towards the rebels of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and those otherwise selected from the Operation Vistula transports (including more than 100 Lemko intelligentsia and 25 mostly Greek Catholic priests). The Lemko and Ukrainian prisoners were gradually released from the spring of 1948 until the spring of 1949 when the last of them left Jaworzno. Most of them were deported to the new places of settlement or freed and allowed to return to their homes, but several hundred were sent to military prisons and at least 161 died in the camp.[8]

According to the (incomplete) official statistics from the period, 1,535 people died at COP Jaworzno between 1945 and 1947 (972 of them of a typhus epidemic in the overcrowded camp), out of at least 6,140 who died during this period in all camps and prisons in Poland. Contemporary figures are much higher. According to research conducted by Polish historians on the data released by the prison services in 1993, the list of prisoners who died at COP Jaworzno and its filias between 1945 and 1956 consists of 6,987 names,[9] which was a figure much greater than in any other Polish detention center (for a comparison, approximately 2,915 prisoners died at the second most-lethal work camp in Stalinist Poland, the Central Labour Camp in Potulice, mainly from typhus and dysentery). The victims were mostly the German Volksdeutsche.[10][11]

 
Memorial to the adolescent political prisoners 1951-1956

After Operation Vistula was concluded in 1949, the camp continued to be used as a prison for Polish political prisoners. Between 1951 and 1956, it was turned into the "progressive prison for adolescents" (Polish: Progresywne Więzienie dla Młodocianych) under the age of 21. Some 15,000 people passed through it as inmates, interned in better conditions than the previous batches of prisoners; their forced labour was accompanied by indoctrination and education. The camp's final closure took place during the wave of general post-Stalinist reforms, following a prison revolt in 1955 (a riot sparked by an incident of an escaping prisoner being shot dead).[12]

Aftermath

The former camp was converted into an apartment complex, the brick barracks forming housing and educational buildings (a primary musical school and a kindergarten, as well as a house of culture). As of 2012, residents still lived in the complex.[13] A memorial dedicated in Polish to "the victims of Hitlerism 1939-1945" was erected on the site of the January 1945 mass execution of prisoners by the SS.

After the fall of communism in Poland, the monument was joined by a small commemorative plinth to the inmates of the political prison in the nearby primary school grounds. On May 23, 1998, Polish and Ukrainian Presidents Aleksander Kwaśniewski and Leonid Kuchma opened another memorial, dedicated in three languages to "all German, Polish and Ukrainian innocent victims of communist terror who died or were murdered" in the camp, which was erected on the previously unmarked mass grave site in a nearby forest.[14]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Das Lager in Jaworzno". 21 February 2020.
  2. ^ Yisrael Gutman, Michael Berenbaum, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Part 805, citing Franciszek Piper.
  3. ^ "Number of Prisoners in Auschwitz Camps (January 17, 1945)". Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. 1945-01-17. Retrieved 2013-11-13.
  4. ^ . En.auschwitz.org.pl. Archived from the original on 2011-10-05. Retrieved 2013-11-13.
  5. ^ "Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego utworzyło Centralne Obozy Pracy"
  6. ^ "Stalinowskie obozy pracy w Polsce - Historia" (in Polish). polskieradio.pl. 2007-01-04. Retrieved 2013-11-13.
  7. ^ "Response by the State of Israel to the application for the extradition of Salomon Morel and a report by Dr. Adam Dziurok and Prosecutor Andrzej Majcher". Ipn.gov.pl. Retrieved 2013-11-13.
  8. ^ (in Polish). Dziennikzachodni.pl. 2012-09-08. Archived from the original on 2013-11-13. Retrieved 2013-11-13.
  9. ^ Marek Iwaniszyn (August 26, 2007), "Jaworznicki obóz dwóch totalitaryzmów." Review of book Obóz dwóch totalitaryzmów - Jaworzno 1943-1956 by various authors. Publisher: Muzeum Miasta Jaworzna. (in Polish)
  10. ^ (in Polish) "Wyłączanie wrogich elementów", Gazeta Wyborcza, 12/02/2000.
  11. ^ (in Polish) Adam Dziurok (2001), Volksdeutsche w Centralnym Obozie Pracy w Jaworznie.
  12. ^ (in Polish). Wiadomosci.onet.pl. 2013-08-07. Archived from the original on 2013-11-13. Retrieved 2013-11-13.
  13. ^ "Jaworzno: Centralny Obóz Pracy. Tam nadal mieszkają ludzie - Jaworzno - Naszemiasto.pl" (in Polish). Jaworzno.naszemiasto.pl. 20 September 2012. Retrieved 2013-11-13.
  14. ^ (in Polish). Jaworzno.pl. Archived from the original on 2013-11-13. Retrieved 2013-11-13.

Literature

  • (in Polish) Jerzy Zwiastowski and others, Jaworzno: Zarys dziejów w latach 1939-1990, Kraków 1996
  • (in Polish) Kazimierz Miroszewski, Zygmunt Woźniczka, Obóz dwóch totalitaryzmów. Jaworzno 1943-1956, Jaworzno 2007

External links

  • (in Polish) Bogusław Kopka, ("Polish Gulag"), Wprost, No. 12/2002 (1008)

Coordinates: 50°12′48″N 19°14′22″E / 50.21342°N 19.23936°E / 50.21342; 19.23936

jaworzno, concentration, camp, concentration, camp, german, occupied, poland, later, communist, poland, first, established, nazis, 1943, during, second, world, later, used, from, 1945, 1956, soviet, nkvd, then, ministry, public, security, other, agencies, poli. The Jaworzno concentration camp was a concentration camp in WW2 German occupied Poland and later in Communist Poland It was first established by the Nazis in 1943 during the Second World War and was later used from 1945 to 1956 by the Soviet NKVD and then by the Ministry of Public Security and other agencies of the Polish communist regime Today the site is an apartment complex and also houses a memorial to the camp s victims Originally it was established as a Nazi concentration camp called SS Lager Dachsgrube SS Camp Dachsgrube also known as Arbeitslager Neu Dachs Work Camp Neu Dachs established during World War II by the Third Reich on the territory of German occupied Poland in Jaworzno Lesser Poland The camp operated under the Nazi German administration from June 1943 until its evacuation in January 1945 After the communist takeover of Poland the camp was reinstated and run first by the Soviet Union and then the People s Republic of Poland till 1956 mainly to intern the local German population 1 who had formed the region s majority population During this period it was renamed as the Central Labour Camp in Jaworzno Centralny Oboz Pracy w Jaworznie COP Jaworzno Contents 1 During the German occupation of Poland 2 Stalinist era 3 Aftermath 4 See also 5 References 6 Literature 7 External linksDuring the German occupation of Poland Edit Labor camp Neu Dachs memorial in 2006 The Nazi concentration camp at Jaworzno was opened on June 15 1943 as one of many subcamps of the Auschwitz concentration camp The camp known as SS Arbeitslager Neu Dachs often also called SS Lager Dachsgrube provided forced labor for the German war industry Inmates were primarily employed in coal mining in Jaworzno and in the construction of the power plant Wilhelm renamed Jaworzno I after the war for Albert Speer s company EnergieVersorgung Oberschlesien AG EVO Among the builders of the camp were British prisoners of war from the Stalag VIII B at Lamsdorf Lambinowice The camp s guard unit of about 200 to 300 SS personnel was composed mostly of the ethnic German Volksdeutsche from occupied Poland and other countries led by camp commandant Bruno Pfutze and his deputy Paul Weissman There were up to 5 000 inmates interned in the camp at any time The prisoners were composed of various nationalities chiefly European Jews about 80 of all inmates 2 by the time the camp begin its operation the local Jews of Jaworzno who numbered about 3 000 before the war and of the rest of Poland had already been mostly exterminated There were also Poles Germans and others as well as Soviet prisoners of war There were 14 reported successful escapes including several Soviet POWs who then joined the local Polish communist partisans The camp s survival rate was low due to its lethal conditions including starvation disease hard labor and wanton brutality In effect about 2 000 people lost their lives in the Jaworzno camp Some of them were murdered not by the guards but by German civilian employees of the coal mine mostly members of the paramilitary organization SA who had been tasked with overseeing the prisoners at work In addition every month about 200 inmates who were unable to work anymore were taken by truck from Jaworzno to the gas chambers at Auschwitz II Birkenau resulting in several thousand more deaths On the night of January 15 1945 the camp was bombed by the Soviet Air Force as the front approached The camp was evacuated two days later on January 17 At the last roll call the number of inmates was established at 3 664 3 The SS executed about 40 prisoners who were unfit for transportation about 400 others were left behind alive and approximately 3 200 were marched away on a route leading them some 250 km westward Hundreds of them died on the way to the Gross Rosen concentration camp in Lower Silesia including about 300 who were shot dead in a massacre which occurred on the second night of this death march in all about 9 000 to 15 000 Auschwitz system prisoners perished during the evacuation marches 4 The abandoned camp was liberated on January 19 1945 by the local unit of the Polish resistance organization Armia Krajowa AK Some 350 former prisoners were still alive when the Soviet Red Army forces arrived there a week later Commandant Pfutze was killed later in 1945 Stalinist era Edit Central Labour Camp Jaworzno memorial Since February 1945 the camp had served the Soviet NKVD and then the Polish Ministry of Public Security UB as a prison camp for the so called enemies of the nation Polish wrogowie narodu Some of them were German military POWs members of the Waffen SS were interned separately from the rest and the Nazi collaborators from all over Poland but most were local Germans from German Upper Silesia Germans from Polish Polish Upper Silesia and Silesian civilians from Jaworzno the nearby Chrzanow and elsewhere they included women and children There were also ethnic Poles who were arrested for their opposition to Stalinism including members of the Polish non communist resistance organizations AK and BCh and later the anti communist organization WiN The camp for Germans was run until 1949 when the last of them were allowed to leave and emigrate from their home region to post war Germany In April 1945 the camp was renamed to the Central Labor Camp COP as part of a centralized effort of creation of COPs 5 and the German inscription Arbeit macht frei Work makes you free was replaced by Polish Praca uszlachetnia czlowieka Work ennobles man The prisoners mostly worked on the construction of Jaworzno power plant or in nearby factories and mines All of them were interned in separate subcamps and were guarded by more than 300 soldiers and officers from the Internal Security Corps aided by about a dozen civilian personnel One of the commandants from 1949 was a Polish Jew and communist named Solomon Morel who had gained a reputation for cruelty in the Zgoda labour camp in Swietochlowice the others included Wlodzimierz Staniszewski Stanislaw Kwiatkowski and Teofil Hazelmajer all answering to Jakub Hammerschmidt later known as Jakub Halicki as well as the Soviet NKVD officer Ivan Mordasov 6 There were also two satellite subcamps located at Chrusty and Libiaz 7 The COP Jaworzno memorial plate in Polish located to between the German and Ukrainian plates A separate subcamp existed for the ethnic Lemko and Ukrainian prisoners On April 23 1947 by a decree of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers Party COP Jaworzno was selected for the detention of civilians during the Operation Vistula deportation campaign The first transportation of 17 prisoners from Sanok reached the special subcamp of Jaworzno on May 5 and the number of these prisoners eventually totalled almost 4 000 including over 700 women and children the vast majority of them arrived in 1947 Most of them were people suspected of sympathy towards the rebels of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army UPA and those otherwise selected from the Operation Vistula transports including more than 100 Lemko intelligentsia and 25 mostly Greek Catholic priests The Lemko and Ukrainian prisoners were gradually released from the spring of 1948 until the spring of 1949 when the last of them left Jaworzno Most of them were deported to the new places of settlement or freed and allowed to return to their homes but several hundred were sent to military prisons and at least 161 died in the camp 8 According to the incomplete official statistics from the period 1 535 people died at COP Jaworzno between 1945 and 1947 972 of them of a typhus epidemic in the overcrowded camp out of at least 6 140 who died during this period in all camps and prisons in Poland Contemporary figures are much higher According to research conducted by Polish historians on the data released by the prison services in 1993 the list of prisoners who died at COP Jaworzno and its filias between 1945 and 1956 consists of 6 987 names 9 which was a figure much greater than in any other Polish detention center for a comparison approximately 2 915 prisoners died at the second most lethal work camp in Stalinist Poland the Central Labour Camp in Potulice mainly from typhus and dysentery The victims were mostly the German Volksdeutsche 10 11 Memorial to the adolescent political prisoners 1951 1956After Operation Vistula was concluded in 1949 the camp continued to be used as a prison for Polish political prisoners Between 1951 and 1956 it was turned into the progressive prison for adolescents Polish Progresywne Wiezienie dla Mlodocianych under the age of 21 Some 15 000 people passed through it as inmates interned in better conditions than the previous batches of prisoners their forced labour was accompanied by indoctrination and education The camp s final closure took place during the wave of general post Stalinist reforms following a prison revolt in 1955 a riot sparked by an incident of an escaping prisoner being shot dead 12 Aftermath EditThe former camp was converted into an apartment complex the brick barracks forming housing and educational buildings a primary musical school and a kindergarten as well as a house of culture As of 2012 residents still lived in the complex 13 A memorial dedicated in Polish to the victims of Hitlerism 1939 1945 was erected on the site of the January 1945 mass execution of prisoners by the SS After the fall of communism in Poland the monument was joined by a small commemorative plinth to the inmates of the political prison in the nearby primary school grounds On May 23 1998 Polish and Ukrainian Presidents Aleksander Kwasniewski and Leonid Kuchma opened another memorial dedicated in three languages to all German Polish and Ukrainian innocent victims of communist terror who died or were murdered in the camp which was erected on the previously unmarked mass grave site in a nearby forest 14 See also EditList of subcamps of AuschwitzReferences Edit Das Lager in Jaworzno 21 February 2020 Yisrael Gutman Michael Berenbaum Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp Part 805 citing Franciszek Piper Number of Prisoners in Auschwitz Camps January 17 1945 Jewishvirtuallibrary org 1945 01 17 Retrieved 2013 11 13 A New Guide to the Route of the Death Marches En auschwitz org pl Archived from the original on 2011 10 05 Retrieved 2013 11 13 Ministerstwo Bezpieczenstwa Publicznego utworzylo Centralne Obozy Pracy Stalinowskie obozy pracy w Polsce Historia in Polish polskieradio pl 2007 01 04 Retrieved 2013 11 13 Response by the State of Israel to the application for the extradition of Salomon Morel and a report by Dr Adam Dziurok and Prosecutor Andrzej Majcher Ipn gov pl Retrieved 2013 11 13 Ofiary akcji Wisla i Centralnego Obozu Pracy przyjechaly do Jaworzna in Polish Dziennikzachodni pl 2012 09 08 Archived from the original on 2013 11 13 Retrieved 2013 11 13 Marek Iwaniszyn August 26 2007 Jaworznicki oboz dwoch totalitaryzmow Review of book Oboz dwoch totalitaryzmow Jaworzno 1943 1956 by various authors Publisher Muzeum Miasta Jaworzna in Polish in Polish Wylaczanie wrogich elementow Gazeta Wyborcza 12 02 2000 in Polish Adam Dziurok 2001 Volksdeutsche w Centralnym Obozie Pracy w Jaworznie Oboz wyjatkowy in Polish Wiadomosci onet pl 2013 08 07 Archived from the original on 2013 11 13 Retrieved 2013 11 13 Jaworzno Centralny Oboz Pracy Tam nadal mieszkaja ludzie Jaworzno Naszemiasto pl in Polish Jaworzno naszemiasto pl 20 September 2012 Retrieved 2013 11 13 66 rocznica Akcji Wisla Jaworzno in Polish Jaworzno pl Archived from the original on 2013 11 13 Retrieved 2013 11 13 Literature Edit in Polish Jerzy Zwiastowski and others Jaworzno Zarys dziejow w latach 1939 1990 Krakow 1996 in Polish Kazimierz Miroszewski Zygmunt Wozniczka Oboz dwoch totalitaryzmow Jaworzno 1943 1956 Jaworzno 2007External links Edit in Polish Boguslaw Kopka Polski Gulag Polish Gulag Wprost No 12 2002 1008 Coordinates 50 12 48 N 19 14 22 E 50 21342 N 19 23936 E 50 21342 19 23936 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Jaworzno concentration camp amp oldid 1041646375, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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