Английская Википедия:Grafenort concentration camp

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Шаблон:Lead rewriteШаблон:Infobox concentration camp The Grafenort concentration camp was a subcamp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp located in a castle in the village of Grafenort in Lower Silesia, which was operational throughout World War II. For 68 days from 1 March 1945, the camp was run exclusively as a women's subcamp, with between 250 and 400 female prisoners of Jewish ethnicity transferred from the Mittelsteine concentration camp. The reason behind the liquidation of Mittelsteine and the transfer of prisoners has not been fully understood. The prisoners at Grafenort were subjected to slave labor, building fortifications against the advancing Eastern Front of the Allies, and were known for receiving the most brutal treatment of any Nazi female concentration camp. The camp was liberated on 8 May 1945 by Soviet forces, and while some sources give different dates for the liberation, all Gross-Rosen subcamps were liberated between 8 and 9 May.

Overview

Located in an expropriated Renaissance castle, the concentration camp was operational throughout the War, but for 68 days (2 months and a week) was formally run as an all-female subcamp (Frauenarbeitslager) of Gross-Rosen between 1 March 1945 and 8 May 1945 (the latter being the date of its liberation by the Soviets) in the aftermath of the strategic liquidation of the Mit­tel­steine concentration camp in the latter weeks of the WarШаблон:Mdasha move which the Nazis initiated owing to the advancing Eastern Front. In the course of liquidating Mittel­steine, the Nazis transferred between 250 and 300 female prisoners from Mittelsteine to Grafenort. Some sources put the documented number of prisoners evacuated from Mittelsteine to Grafenort in April 1945 at 400. All of the prisoners in the transfer were women of Jewish ethnicity originally deported from the region of Łódź. The distance between the Mittelsteine and Grafenort concentration camps is about 21 kilometres (13 miles) as the crow flies or 28 km (17 mi) by road. The reasons behind the liquidation of the Mittelsteine concentration camp and the transfer of its inmates to two other campsШаблон:Mdashone of them being GrafenortШаблон:Mdashhave not been fully understood by historians. (See also the history of the Mittelsteine concentration camp.)

The Grafenort concentration camp was one of the group of thirteen subcamps of Gross-Rosen located in the Giant Mountains (Riesengebirge) which were concentrated primarily in the region of the Owl Mountains. The group of camps held collectively over 13,000 prisoners, of whom approximately 40 percent perished from hunger and exhaustion brought about by slave labour.

Location

The camp was situated in the locality called since the latter part of the 17th century Grafenort (renamed Gorzanów after 1945) in what was at the time of the camp's existence the territory of the Third Reich, about 10½ kilometres to the north of Bystrzyca Kłodzka (Ger., Habelschwerdt), the nearest larger townШаблон:Mdashwithin the region of Lower Silesia that was awarded to Poland after the War.

The regional metropolis of Wrocław (Ger., Breslau) is 103 kilometres (64 miles) to the north-east, while Prague in the Czech Republic is 203 km (126 mi) away in the opposite direction.

The camp

The camp was located on the premises of Grafenort Castle (Schloß Grafenort) in the village of Grafenort. Grafenort Castle had been used for the quartering of military gar­ri­sons (as large as 200 strong) in earlier times. Some works of reference indicate simply a preexisting "masonry building" (mu­ro­wa­ny bu­dy­nek) lying on the periphery of the village as the site of the camp. Sara Zyskind, a survivor, recalls that the truck in which the female prisoners were deported from Mittel­steine to Grafen­ort pulled up in front of one of the mansions of which the village of Grafenort was full, but one "much larger than the others and situated somewhat apart"Шаблон:Mdashwhich is consistent with the description of Grafenort Castle. Another famous survivor, Sara Selver-Urbach, writes about the prisoners' delusions indulged in for the sake of mutual moral support and survival:

Шаблон:SpaceAlready in Mittelsteine, we heard about the princely palaces in which we would be housed [at the new camp in Grafenort Шаблон:Mdash explanation added], about the regal, mag­nif­i­cent beds that would be ours, about the gold plate off which we would be served meat and every other delicacy. Scornfully, we'd tell each other those tales with cynical disbelief.
Шаблон:SpaceBut the joke was of another kind altogether. The old building of the new camp had indeed been a regal palace previously, but its looks and accommodations have been transformed thoroughly for the purpose of housing us. The first impression was a shock: all the windows were boarded and barred with barbed wire, ex­act­ly like the Gypsy compound adjoining the Lodz Ghetto. Our second impression, when we entered the "Palatial Hall", was even more horrifying: the place was not divided into "rooms" and contained no bunks whatsoever, not even our former tiered shelves. All the inmates lay sprawled on the floor, all of them together in that one single hall which, to us, looked suddenly like a morgue, filthy blankets, bulging pallets almost glued to one another all over the floor.

However, the physical description of the camp in the report of Ruth Minsky Sender, another survivor, differs markedly, suggesting more than one facility associated with the Grafenort concentration camp. Sender, in her book The Cage, speaks about "many barracks spread about a large field" with "rows and rows of wooden bunks reach[ing] to the ceiling". Clearly, the Grafenort concentration camp consisted of at least two parts where the prisoners were held.

The slave labour consisted in building fortifications (anti-tank trenches) against the advancing Eastern Front of the Allies, and the camp was perhaps the most notorious among all Nazi female concentration camps for the brutality of the treatment of prisoners. Bella Gutterman, the director of the International Institute for Holocaust Research, singles out Grafenort as the only camp where women prisoners were employed exactly like men in gruelling excavation work.

Liberation

The Grafenort concentration camp was liberated, according to best sources, on 8 May 1945. Some sources indicate the date of the liberation of the camp as 7 May 1945 or 9 May 1945. According to the information collected by the Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team and other researchers, no Gross-Rosen subcamp was liberated on 7 MayШаблон:Mdashall of the Gross-Rosen subcamps were liberated between 8 and 9 May 1945. The first Soviet soldier to enter Grafenort, a Russian Jew, was overcome with emotion when he realized that there were still some survivors left at the camp.

Notable inmates

• Ruth Minsky Sender, writer

Bibliography

• Obozy hitlerowskie na ziemiach polskich 1939Шаблон:Ndash1945: informator encyklopedyczny, ed. Cz. Pilichowski, et al. (for the Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce and the Rada Ochrony Pomników Walki i Męczeństwa), Warsaw, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1979, p. 509. Шаблон:ISBN.
• Alfred Konieczny, Kobiety w obozie koncentracyjnym Gross-Rosen w latach 1944Шаблон:Ndash1945, Wrocław, Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1982.
• Roman Mogilanski, comp. & ed., The Ghetto Anthology: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Extermination of Jewry in Nazi Death Camps and Ghettos in Poland, rev. B. Grey, Los Angeles, American Congress of Jews from Poland and Survivors of Concentration Camps, 1985, page 246.
• Zygmunt Zonik, Anus belli: ewakuacja i wyzwolenie hitlerowskich obozów koncentracyjnych, Warsaw, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1988. Шаблон:ISBN. (Inconceivably, the Grafenort concentration camp is misnamed "Grafendorf [sic!]" in this source.)
• Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, ed. I. Gutman, vol. 1, New York, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1995, pages 624Шаблон:Ndash625. Шаблон:ISBN. OK
• Enzyklopädie des Holocaust: die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden, ed. E. Jäckel, et al., vol. 1, Berlin, Argon, 1993, page 571. Шаблон:ISBN, Шаблон:ISBN.
• Women in the Holocaust: A Collection of Testimonies, comp. & tr. J. Eibeshitz & A. Eilenberg-Eibeshitz, vol. 2, Brooklyn (New York), Re­mem­ber, 1994, pages 67, 204Шаблон:Ndash205. Шаблон:ISBN, Шаблон:ISBN.
• Alfred Konieczny, Frauen im Konzentrationslager Groß-Rosen in den Jahren 1944Шаблон:Ndash1945, Wałbrzych, Państwowe Muzeum Gross-Rosen, 1994.
• Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, vol. 2, Washington, D.C., United States Holocaust Memorial Council in cooperation with the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, 1996, pages 267Шаблон:Ndash268. Шаблон:ISBN.
• Studia nad Faszyzmem i Zbrodniami Hitlerowskimi, ed. K. Jonca, vol. 22 (2136), Wrocław, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 1999, page 375. Шаблон:ISBN. ISSN 0239-6661, Шаблон:ISSN. (An extremely important source.)
• Edward Basałygo, 900 lat Jeleniej Góry: Tędy przeszła historia: Kalendarium wydarzeń w Kotlinie Jeleniogórskiej i jej okolicach, Jelenia Góra, 2010. (See online.)
• Andrzej Strzelecki, Deportacja Żydów z getta łódzkiego do KL Auschwitz i ich zagłada: opracowanie i wybór źródeł, ed. T. Świebocka, Oświęcim, Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2004. Шаблон:ISBN.
• Filie obozu koncentracyjnego Gross-Rosen: informator, Wałbrzych, Muzeum Gross-Rosen, 2008, pp. 35, and passim. Шаблон:ISBN. OK
• Der Ort des Terrors: Geschichte der national­sozialistischen Konzentrationslager, eds. W. Benz & B. Distel, et al., vol. 8 (RigaШаблон:NdashKaiserwald, Warschau, Vaivara, Kauen (Kaunas), Płaszów, Kulmhof/Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka), Munich, Beck, 2008, p. 324. Шаблон:ISBN. OK
• Bella Gutterman, A Narrow Bridge to Life: Jewish Forced Labor and Survival in the Gross-Rosen Camp System, 1940Шаблон:Ndash1945, tr. IBRT, New York, Berghahn Books, 2008. Шаблон:ISBN, Шаблон:ISBN.
• The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, ed. Geoffrey P. Megargee, vol. 1 (Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA)), Bloomington (Indiana), Indiana University Press, in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2009, pages 700, 737Шаблон:Ndash738, 766. Шаблон:ISBN. OK

See also

• Mittelsteine concentration camp
• Gross-Rosen concentration camp
• List of subcamps of Gross Rosen
• List of Nazi-German concentration camps
• History of children in the Holocaust