During the Second World War, the concentration camp system saw a huge amount of atrocities.
Guards from the SS inflicted horrific violence and brutality onto the prisoners of camps
such as Bergen-Belsen and after World War 2, a number of evil guards such as Irma Grese
and Josef Kramer were sentenced to death for their crimes.
Camp Commandants such as Rudolf Hoess were also executed for their involvement in the
evils of the camps, but there was a feeling that the majority of the people who worked
in the camps were never brought tot justice.
There are still trials happening in Germany today, but there was one camp that saw a huge
amount of evil.
It’s estimated that between 63,000 and 65,000 prisoners at Stutthof Concentration camp and
it’s sub camps died from the horrific treatment they were subject to.
But there were some huge public executions that took place where a number of the guards
of Stutthof were executed on huge public gallows.
But what happened at Stutthof?
Join us today as we look at the justified executions of the guards of Stutthof, remember
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Stutthof was set up along with many other camps that were created for the Nazis to carry
out their liquidation of populations.
It was established in Pomerania in northern Poland, and before the Second World War began
lists of people were drawn up to be arrested.
The Nazis were then trying to find areas for their new concentration camps in Poland, and
initially Stutthof was a civilian internment camp, and then it was expanded on a huge scale.
It became a labour education camp similar to Dachau in November 1941, and was overseen
by the German Security Police, but then in January 1942 it became a regular concentration
camp.
The initial camp was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and it had 8 barracks for prisoners
and a area for SS guards.
The camp was then expanded and a new one was made alongside the original in 1943, and it
was then surrounded by a heavily electrified barbed wire fence, and then this new area
had 30 new barracks.
In 1943, the camp had a crematoria and gas chamber built, and this was done for the final
solution where thousands of people would be killed inside of the chambers.
To hurry up the killing process at Stutthof, the SS even brought in mobile gas wagons to
speed up the killing and 150 people were killed inside these at each time.
The camp staff was made up of German SS guards and also Ukranian Auxillaries after 1943,
and there were also around 300 female guards and Aufseherinnen guards who worked at Stutthof,
and they oversaw a number of female prisoners.
There were many notorious female guards such as Herta Bothe, Jenny-Wanda Barkmann and Elisabeth
Becker who worked there, and following the war 34 female guards were identified and then
they were sentenced at war crimes trials for crimes against humanity.
Women were conscripted at Danzig and surrounding cities in June 1944, and there was a severe
shortage of women to oversee the camps operations.
A number of other Waffen SS volunteers from Norway also worked as guards there.
But the first 150 prisoners at Stuthof arrived on the 2nd September 1939 following the Invasion
of Poland, and they had immediately been arrested.
Over the next 2 weeks, 6,000 people were imprisoned there and almost all of the prisoners were
polish until 1942.
Then a huge number of Jews were deported to Stutthof from ghettos and also other camps
such as Auschwitz to work.
There were a huge number of inmates from many other countries such as France, Holland, Finland,
Denmark, Latvia and many other European lands.
Amongst 110,000 prisoners were Jews from all over Europe, along with memebers of the Polish
resistance, and polish civilians deported from Warsaw during the uprising.
Other prisoners were made up of Lithuanian and Latvian members of the intellectual sector,
Latvian resistance fighters, mentally ill prisoners and soviet POWs.
But inside of Stutthof, the camp conditions were very harsh and terrible.
Dozens of thousands of prisoners died from starvation and disease, and typhus swept throughout
the camp a number of times killing many in winter 1942 and 1944.
The prisoners who the SS deemed were too sick and weak to work were then sent straight to
the small gas chamber or the gas vans to be killed.
The first executions occurred on the 11th January and on the 22nd March 1940, where
on a make shift firing range, 89 polish activists and members of the polish government were
shot by SS guards.
It was from June 1944, where prisoners were gassed with the Zyklon B pesticide, and 4000
prisoners including women and children were killed in the gas chamber.
Also a number of doctors at Stutthof killed ill prisoners inside of the infirmary with
lethal injections of phenol to the heart which would kill, and guards would instil their
reign of terror and fear by drowning prisoners in the mud at the camp, and also beating them
to death with their truncheons.
They also shot a number, resulting in up to 65,000 people being killed at the camp.
Prisoners were also forced to work very hard, many worked inside of SS businesses including
armaments factories which were there, and prisoners were forced to make weapons and
ammunition for the German war effort.
Also a number were forced to work in local brickyards and other workshops, and then a
Focke-Wulf aircraft factory was created at the camp.
As time went on it also became a network of forced labour camps, and there were around
105 sub camps set up inside the Stutthof complex.
Many of the sub camps worked for specific companies and produced specific resources
for the German war effort.
There were two commandants at the camp, SS Sturmbannfuhrer Max Pauly who finished his
time in office in August 1942, and SS Sturmbannfuhrer Paul Werner Hoppe, who ended his office in
January 1945 when the camp was closed.
This came on the 25th January 1945 where the evacuation of prisoners at Stutthof began,
and there were around 50,000 prisoners at the time.
5000 were marched towards the Baltic coast, and in horrific scenes were walked to their
executions.
On the banks of the Baltic stood SS firing squads with their machine guns, and were forced
into the the sea and then shot dead by the Germans.
The other prisoners were marched towards eastern Germany and when the Soviet advances cut off
the Germans, they forced the last prisoners back to Stutthof and many more died in the
winter conditions, and the SS guards brutalised the prisoners killing thousands in the final
days of the war.
The last prisoners were removed by sea as the camp was surrounded by the Soviets, and
yet again hundreds were forced into the sea and shot dead.
There were many other war crimes connected with Stutthof and there was a series of Stutthof
Trials that aimed to punish those guards who worked there.
During the first war crimes tribunal held at Gdansk from April 25th 1946 to May 31st
1946, Soviet and Polish court officials convicted 13 ex officials and overseers at Stutthof.
11 of them were sentenced to death, and others were imprisoned.
Those who were executed include Johann Pauls, the commander of the guards, Jenny Wanda Barkmann
a viscous female guard known as the Beautiful spectre, Elisabeth Becker, another evil guard
and many other camp functionaries and guards.
The executions of the first trials took place in a huge public hill known as the Biskupa
Gorka in Gdansk.
There were its estimated around 200,000 people who flocked to see the public executions,
and assembled were a huge number of large gallows structures that were used to hang
the condemned.
Each of the executed people were put onto a large truck, and they were joined by guards.
They were then secured to the gallows using a noose and this was placed around their neck.
Then the truck drove away, and the executed men and women were left hanging and swinging
from the rope and they slowly struggled for breath as life was choked out of them and
they were executed.
The executions took place on a large gallows, where everyone could see.
Further war crimes trials took place to bring those people who worked at Stutthof to justice.
The Second Stutthof Trial resulted in 10 more people being sentenced to death, 9 SS men
and a Kapo.
Each of these were found guilty of brutally beating prisoners and also being very violent.
A third Stutthof Trial occurred in 1947, and with this 19 guards and members of staff had
been found guilty, and after this they were all sentenced to varying times in prison depending
on how serious their crime was.
The same occurred at a fourth trial in 1947, with 26 further SS members of staff found
guilty and imprisoned, with Willi Buth being sentenced to life imprisonment.
Fifth and Sixth trials also took place, and in 1953 SS Rottenfuhrer Emil Strehlau was
sentenced to death for war crimes and was executed in November 1953.
Still today a number of former SS members of staff and guards at Stutthof are being
tried.
In 2017 the prosecution of two former guards occurred, and in November 2018 Johann Rehbogen
was tried for working at Stutthof between 1942 and 1944.
However this trial collapsed due to the defendants deteriorating health.
In October 2019, Bruno Day was accused of being complicit in the killings of over 5000
prisoners at Stutthof and was tried by a juvenile caught as he was 17.
He was convicted of being an accessory to murder on 5232 counts and was convicted of
one count of accessory of attempted murder.
Following the Second World War, the war trials of the guards of Stutthof continued, and there
were more of these than what occurred at other camps.
But these trials did not make up for the horror that occurred at the camp, and specifically
after with the mass executions of prisoners inside of the Baltic Sea.
The camp was one of the worse camps of the Second World War, and was a brutal and tragic
site of execution, killing and violence.
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