STUTTHOF WAS THE LAST CAMP LIBERATED BY THE ALLIES!

LEST WE FORGET! THORN AND ELBING, BUT
STUTTHOF WAS THE LAST CAMP LIBERATED BY THE ALLIES
IN 1945 IT TOOK IN MOST OF INMATES FROM OTHER CAMPS,
OF THE 100,000 INMATES 70% WERE JEWS!

IN HONOR OF THE VICTIMS OF HITLER’S HOLOCAUST!
JOHN R HERNANDEZ@NDMC-INTERNATIONAL 2015

Memorial to the Victims of the Stutthof Concentration Camp

Pronunciation: Shtoot-hof

“In September, 1939, the Nazis built the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig in the extreme northeast of
Germany. Originally, the camp was under the jurisdiction of the Danzig chief of police; however, in 1941, it was
reassigned as an SS camp. In 1943, the camp was enlarged and surrounded by electrified barbed fences.

There were many Stutthof sub-camps, including (partial listing):
Bottschin Brodnica Bromberg
Chorabie Danzig-Burggraben Danzig-Neufahrwasser
Danzigerwerf / Gdansk Dziemiany Elbing
Elblag (Org. Todt) Elblag (Schinau) Gdynia
Gdansk Kokoszki Gerdenau Graudenz
Greendorf Grodno Grodzisk Mazowiecki
Gutowo Burggraben Gwisdyn
Cieszyny Heiligenbeil Jessu
Kokoschken Kolkau Krzemieniewo
Lauenberg Malken Mierzynek Nawitz
Niskie Obrzyckoth Police near Szczecin
Prault Pruszcz Scherokopas
Schiffenbeil Seerappen Slupsk
Sophienwalde Starorod Turun

Some of the perpetrators at the camp are listed here.

Around 70 percent of the inmates at the Stutthof Concentration Camp were Jewish. More than 110,000
persons were deported there, and more than 85,000 were murdered there. It was primarily a forced labor
camp. The DAW (German Armament Works) installed a factory just out outside the camp and in 1944 a
Focke-Wulff airplane factory was constructed there (USHMM, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust, 1996:160).

In 1944 a women’s subcamp of Stutthof called Bromberg-Ost (Konzentrationslager Bromberg-Ost) was set
up in the city of Bydgoszcz. Two years earlier, in 1942, is when the first female prisoners and first female
Nazi guards arrived in Stutthof. The original camp (“old camp”) was surrounded by barbed-wire fence. It
comprised eight barracks for the inmates and a command post (kommandantur) for the S.S. guards. In 1943,
a new camp was constructed alongside the original. It contained thirty new barracks and barbed-wire fence.
A crematorium and gas chamber were added in 1943, just in time to start mass executions after Stutthof
became part of the Nazi “Final Solution” in June of 1944. Mobile gas wagons were also used when the
gas chamber reached its maximum capacity of 150 people per execution. When the Soviet army began its
advance through Nazi-occupied Estonia in July and August 1944, the camp staff of Concentration Camp at
Klooga evacuated the majority of the inmates by sea and sent them to the Stutthof Concentration Camp.

Among the transports in 1944 alone:
June 29th – 2502 Hungarian Jewish women from Auschwitz
July 12th – 282 Jews from Kowno
July 13th – 3331 Jewish prisoners from Kowno
July 16th – Another transport from Kowno with 1172 Jewish prisoners
July 17th – 1208 Jewish prisoners from Kowno
July 19th – 2169 Jewish prisoners from Kowno
July 20th – 2500 Hungarian Jewish women from Auschwitz
July 25th – 1503 Jewish prisoners from Kowno and 500 from Buchenwald
August 4th – Transport with 793 Hungarian, German, etc. Jewish women from Kowno
August 9th – 2nd transport from Riga with 6832 Jewish prisoners
August 14th – 2800 Hungarian Jewish women from Auschwitz
August 16th – 2800 Hungarian Jewish women from Auschwitz
August 23rd – 4408 Polish, Lithuanian and German Jews from Riga
August 28th – 2800 Jewish prisoners from Auschwitz; One transport from Lodz, another from Warsaw totaling 3174 individuals
Sept. 3rd – 2405 Jewish prisoners from Auschwitz
Sept. 10th – Two transports with 1750 Jewish prisoners from Auschwitz
Sept. 27th – 4501 Jewish women from Auschwitz
Oct. 1 – 3155 Jewish women diff. nationality from Riga
Oct. 13th – 190 Jewish prisoners from Riga
Oct. 28th – 1500 Jewish prisoners from Auschwitz
(source: Stutthof, das Konzentrationslager)

The conditions in the camp were brutal. Many prisoners died in typhus epidemics that swept the camp
in the winters of 1942 and 1944. Those deemed too weak or sick to work by the S.S. were gassed in the
camp’s gas chamber. Gassing with Zyklon B began in June of 1944. Camp doctors also killed sick or
injured prisoners in the infirmary with lethal injections. The Nazis used Stutthof prisoners for forced labor.
Some prisoners worked in S.S.-owned businesses such as the German Equipment Works (DAW) while
others laboured in local brickyards, private industrial enterprises, or in the camp’s workshops. One-
hundred and five (105) Stutthof subcamps were established throughout northern and central Poland — an
extensive network of forced labor camps. The major subcamps of Stutthof were Thorn and Elbing.

In 1945, 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 S.S. guards,
thousands died during the march. In late April 1945, the remaining prisoners were removed from the
camp by sea because Stutthof was completely encircled by Soviet forces. Again, hundreds of prisoners
were forced into the sea and shot. Over 4,000 Stutthof prisoners were sent by small boat to Germany,
some were to the Neuengamme Concentration Camp near Hamburg, and some were sent 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 prisoners on board were saved May 5, 1945. Shortly
before the German surrender, some prisoners were transferred to Malmo, Sweden, and released into the
care of that neutral country. Stutthof was the last camp liberated by the Allies on May 9, 1945. Around
100 prisoners who had hidden in the camp were liberated. It was the last camp to be liberated.” SOURCE: http://chelm.freeyellow.com/stutthof.html

IN HONOR OF THE VICTIMS OF HITLER’S HOLOCAUST!
JOHN R HERNANDEZ@NDMC-INTERNATIONAL 2015