Warsaw concentration camp

Letter from Oswald Pohl to Heinrich Himmler dated 23 July 1943 on creation of KL Warsaw, noting arrival of first 300 prisoners

In February 1943, Heinrich Himmler ordered that local Jews should be placed in a camp to help clear the Warsaw ghetto following its demolition. However, fierce fighting during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising foiled this plan.[4][5] Following the defeat of the uprising in April, surviving Jews were deported to camps in the vicinity of Lublin, sent to Treblinka extermination camp, or summarily killed.[4] The concentration camp was established in July 1943, but Jewish prisoners were not from Warsaw but rather from other concentration camps in Europe.[4] The camp was located at the Gestapo prison (Gęsiówka), which was the only building left intact in the ghetto.[6]

By May 1944 the camp became a subcamp of Majdanek concentration camp, and was named "Lublin concentration camp–Warsaw labor camp" (German: Konzentrationslager Lublin–Arbeitslager Warschau).[1][7][8] According to some sources, it came due to deportations of prisoners to other camps as well as the approach of the Soviet army to Warsaw.[4][9] Historian Bogusław Tadeusz Kopka writes, however, that widespread corruption among the camp's personnel forced SS authorities to arrest camp commandant Nikolaus Herbet, transfer whole guard company back to Germany and, consequently, to strip the camp with its independent status.[10]

Originally planned to close on 1 August 1944, in light of the Soviet advance the camp was closed in July.[1] In July 1944 most prisoners, some 4,500, were sent on a death march to Kutno (the first organized Nazi death march in the war), walking some 30 kilometers a day with many murdered on the way.[11][1] From Kutno, they were crammed onto a train (100 men to a boxcar with no food rations) bound to Dachau concentration camp; some 4,000 survived the journey to Dachau.[1] Around 200 of the most exhausted prisoners were killed prior to the march and 300 prisoners volunteered to remain to dismantle the camp.[1]

Some 350 Jewish prisoners remained during the August Warsaw Uprising and were liberated on 4 August 1944 by Polish forces.[4][11] They included dozens of Jews (including 24 women) who were imprisoned in Pawiak and transferred to the camp on 31 July.[1] The vast majority of released Jewish prisoners took part in the uprising, many of them dying during the fighting.[11][1] Those released were mostly Greek and Hungarian Jews, with some Czechoslovakians and Dutch Jews, who knew very little Polish.[2] Morale among Jewish fighters was hurt by displays of antisemitism, with several former Jewish prisoners in combat units killed by antisemitic Poles,[1]^:1514 in particular those associated with the National Armed Forces.[2] After the defeat of the uprising, survivors fled or hid in bunkers, there were some 200 Jewish survivors (former prisoners as well as Jews who hid on the "Aryan" side) when the Soviets entered Warsaw on 17 January 1945.[1] The book "The Bunker" by Charles Goldstein, a camp inmate, recounts his experiences in the camp and survival.[2]

In executions in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto (around and in the site of the concentration camp), Kopka estimates that the Germans killed some 20,000 people including camp inmates, Polish Jews caught hiding on the "Aryan side" of Warsaw, and Polish Political prisoners.[12][13] Also, the Jews who were hiding in the ruins of the ghetto and were discovered (and subsequently shot) during the demolition works, are counted among the KL Warschau victims.[14]

The Institute of National Remembrance estimates the number of Poles murdered on site of the camp and executed in its vicinity at 10,000. In the foreword to the Kopka's monograph about Warsaw concentration camp Jan Żaryn wrote: "In the years 1943–1944 in the venue of the camp were murdered – as it seems – at least 20,000 prisoners, among them around 10,000 Poles".[12]

Prisoners were tasked with clearing 2.6 million cubic meters of rubble, in order to convert the former ghetto into a park,[6] and in order to salvage building materials (mainly scrap metal and bricks) for the German war effort. The demolition and salvage work were hard and perilous labor, carried out at a brisk pace with no regard to loss of life of the prisoners. By June 1944, 10 million square meters were demolished, with some 8,105 tons of metal and 34 million bricks salvaged.[1]

A couple thousand of Polish civilians, who were paid, also worked alongside the Jewish prisoners, as did dozens of German technicians. German constructions firms operated on contract to carry out salvage: Berlinisches Baugeschäft (Berlin), Willy Keymer (Warsaw), Merckle (Ostrów Wielkopolski), Ostdeutscher Tiefbau (Naumburg). The Ostbahn railway company assisted them.[1]

Prisoners of camp with Polish soldiers from Battalion Zośka on 5 August 1944

The first transport of some 300 hundred prisoners came from Buchenwald concentration camp,[6] who were German political prisoners and criminals who would be tasked with day-to-day administration of the camp as kapos.[1][2] The German kapo prisoners, in particular those imprisoned as criminals, intimidated the Jewish prisoners and acted towards them with cruelty, seeing them as expendable.[1]

The prisoners were mainly Jewish males from Auschwitz concentration camp, who were selected on the basis of decent physical condition for hard work and not being Polish.[1] Lack of knowledge of Polish was deemed key by the Germans to prevent escape attempts and limit contact with Polish workers who were also employed, though in the November 1943 transport some 50 Polish Jews were included to meet the 1,000 transport quota.[1][2] From August through November 1943, four transports of 3,683 Jews were sent to the camp from Auschwitz,[1] many of them Greek Salonikan Jews.[11][15] In May and June 1944, some 4,000 to 5,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to the camp, to replenish the prisoner workforce that at that point numbered approximately 1,000 and the Germans considered to be depleted.[1][11]

A minor camp, the Warsaw camp is absent from most standard Holocaust accounts. Over the course of its operation an estimated 8,000–9,000 prisoners were engaged in slave labor, of whom 4,000 to 5,000 are estimated to have died in the camp, during the death march from the camp, the uprising, and hiding after the uprising.[1] Successful escapes were rare, and those caught in the attempt were hanged in front of the assembled prisoner population.[1] Hundreds died due to executions, cruelty, and exhaustion from labor.[1] Following a typhus epidemic which decimated the prisoner population in January through February 1944,[1] only a third of the inmates survived.[2] Survival on the meager rations provided was impossible, and prisoners survived by locating valuables in the rubble and selling them to the Polish civilians who worked alongside them.[1] As such finds became rare late in the camp's operations, many prisoners resorted to extracting gold fillings from their teeth for sale.[1]

Multilingual (German, Polish, Hungarian and French) sign at camp fence, reads: "Attention! Neutral zone. Shooting without warning!"

The camp was first commanded by Wilhelm Göcke until September 1943, then by Nikolaus Herbet and finally Wilhelm Ruppert who commanded the evacuation in July 1944.[1] The Schutzstaffel (SS) force guarding and operating the camp was approximately the size of a company.[1] The original SS unit was gathered from various other camps, including Trawniki concentration camp and Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and following the attachment to Majdanek in May 1944 they were replaced with SS personnel from Lublin.[1]

The SS personnel mainly guarded the perimeter of the camp and were brutally violent towards the Jews, viewing them as enemies of the state.[1]

Following the war, eight SS men from the camp were executed for their role in murder; three were sentenced by a Polish court and five by a German court. Walter Wawrzyniak, who was initially sentenced to death in 1950 by an East German court, had his sentence reduced on appeal to a life term. In July 2000, Theodor Szehinskyj, who immigrated to the US, had his US citizenship stripped as a US court found that he had lied in his initial visa application about his SS past.[1]

Ruins of the tenement house at 27 Dzielna Street in former Warsaw Ghetto, near Pawiak prison, this site was used as an execution spot in 1943–1944

Camp inmates, Polish Jews caught hiding on the "Aryan side" of Warsaw, Polish political prisoners (Pawiak inmates) and Polish hostages captured during the street roundups were executed in the ruins of the former ghetto (which surrounded the camp) in 1943–1944. It is impossible to determine the exact number of victims of executions in the ruins, however historian Bogusław Tadeusz Kopka estimates that some 20,000 people were executed in the period. These included camp inmates, Polish Jews caught hiding on the "Aryan side" of Warsaw, and ethnic Poles.[16][13] The ruins of the ghetto supplanted previous execution sites, which were in the countryside around Warsaw, such as the Kampinos Forest (the site of the Palmiry massacre). Proximity of the Pawiak prison and the isolation of the former ghetto from the rest of the city, made them – from the German perspective – a far more suitable place for mass killings.[17]

Individual and mass executions of the hostages and prisoners of Pawiak were conducted in the venue of the camp or in his proximity. Members of KL Warschau personnel, along with the members of other SS and Ordnungspolizei formations in Warsaw, were among the executioners. Furthermore, a special "death detachment" composed with the Jewish prisoners of the KL Warschau was used to dispose the bodies of the victims. At the beginning bodies were burnt in open air pyres, later, in the camp's crematory.[18]

The Red Army entered Warsaw on 17 January 1945. The former Nazi camp was operated by the Soviet NKVD for German prisoners of war, as well as for the soldiers of the Armia Krajowa (the Home Army) loyal to the Polish government-in-exile and other persons suspected of opposing the Soviet occupation. The camp was turned over to the Ministry of Public Security in mid-1945 and most of the German prisoners were released in 1948 and 1949. Subsequently, common criminals and people accused of "economic sabotage" were imprisoned there and forced to work, mostly in manufacturing of construction materials which were later used for rebuilding of Warsaw.[19] According to Bogusław Kopka, 1800 people died in the postwar prisons.[20] The site was closed and demolished in 1956;[21] no element of the Nazi camp was preserved.[22] The fact that the former Nazi camp was taken and run by the communist authorities was the main reason why Chief Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland ceased its investigation into the Nazi camp in 1947.[23] As of 2007, the site is occupied by a garden square, residential buildings, and the building of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.[24]

Eight former SS guards were tried, convicted, and executed for crimes committed at the camp by 1950; five of them had been tried by German courts and three by Polish courts. Walter Wawrzyniak was convicted in 1950 for murder of prisoners, but his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In 2000, Theodor Szehinskyj, a former guard who immigrated to the United States, was denaturalized because of his SS service at various concentration camps, including Warsaw. Jürgen Stroop's trial in 1950 included significant evidence relating to the concentration camp. Both German and Polish authorities conducted criminal investigations into the camp, which were halted in 1980 and 1996 respectively because of the deaths of many perpetrators and difficulty locating others.[1]

Tunnels at Warszawa Zachodnia station, the second tunnel from the left is the supposed site of a giant gas chamber used to exterminate non-Jewish Poles

Despite basic research being available on the camp,[13][25] a legend[13] or conspiracy theory[3] developed in Poland around the camp.[3][13] This was first advanced by judge and author Maria Trzcińska in the 1970s and is promoted by Polish nationalists who argue that Poles suffered a Holocaust during World War II, called by some supporters "Polocaust". The legend/conspiracy theory claims that the camp was much larger, and functioned as an extermination camp for the non-Jewish population of Warsaw, killing 200,000 mainly non-Jewish Poles. The alleged killing used a giant gas chamber supposedly constructed in the Józef Bem Street tunnel (near Warszawa Zachodnia station).[3] By promoting a theory that the Germans constructed a gas chamber to kill non-Jews, coupled with the killing of as many as 200,000 additional victims of the Warsaw Uprising (for a total of 400,000 non-Jewish victims in Warsaw), supporters of the theory attempt to create a parity between Jewish and non-Jewish Poles which would make the Holocaust less unique.[3] The nationalist daily Nasz Dziennik has promoted this conspiracy theory and the camp as a symbol of Polish martyrdom, advocating introduction of material to school curricula and the construction of a museum.[26]

In 2008, Kopka wrote that there is no evidence for the conspiracy theory. In 2010 the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) commissioned a report from historian and aerial photography specialist Zygmunt Walkowski. Walkowski states that his report thoroughly refutes all aspects of the conspiracy theory. The report was submitted in December 2016; as of 2020, the IPN is yet to publish it. Subsequent to his report, Walkowski has received anonymous threats to his life.[27][28][29]

Havi Dreifuss, Jan Grabowski and Gideon Greif relate the conspiracy theory to the Polish government's historical policy.[30][31] Historian Daniel Blatman sees the gas chamber story as Holocaust denial: "one of numberless stories that Holocaust deniers around the world are posting online".[32]

An English Wikipedia article about the Warsaw concentration camp was first drafted in 2004 and presented Trzcińska's research as a mainstream view for 15 years, despite the theory being debunked by 2007. The false information was fully removed in August 2019, subsequently publicized in the media in October 2019 as "Wikipedia’s longest-standing hoax".[33][34][35]