Truth of Stuttof

"There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance." -- Goethe

"The search for truth is never wrong.  The only sin is to lack the courage to follow where truth leads." -- Duke.

Lies being taught;

Stuttof was an extermination camp.

Now the truth;

Stutthof was the first concentration camp built by the Nazi regime outside of Germany.  It was hastily set up as an emergency internment center in September of 1939, as German forces were subduing the Danzig Corridor and rescuing German civilians from Polish Communist murderers.  It was located in a secluded, wet, and wooded area west of the small town of Sztutowo (Stutthof in German) in the former territory of the Free City of Danzig, east of Gdansk, Poland, near the Baltic coast at the mouth of the Vistula river.  Stutthof was the last camp liberated by the Allies, on May 9, 1945.

Originally, Stutthof was a civilian internment camp under the Danzig police chief. In November 1941, it became a labor and re-education camp, administered by the German Security Police.  Finally, in January 1942, Stutthof became a regular concentration camp.

The original camp (known as the old camp) was surrounded by barbed-wire fence. It comprised eight barracks for the inmates and a "kommandantur" for the SS guards. In 1943, the camp was enlarged and a new camp was constructed alongside the earlier one. It was also surrounded by electrified barbed-wire fence and contained thirty new barracks.

The camp staff consisted of SS guards and, after 1943, Ukrainian auxiliaries. In 1942 the first female prisoners and SS women arrived in Stutthof.  A total of over 130 women served in the Stutthof complex of camps. 34 female guards were accused of committing crimes against humanity at Stutthof. Starting in June 1944, the SS in Stutthof began conscripting women from Danzig and the surrounding cities to train as camp guards because of a severe guard shortage. In 1944 a female subcamp of Stutthof called Bromberg-Ost (Konzentrationslager Bromberg-Ost) was set up in the city of Bydgoszcz. 

The first inmates imprisoned on September 2, 1939 were 150 Polish citizens, arrested on the streets of Danzig right after the outbreak of the war. The inmate population rose to 6,000 in the following two weeks.  The prisoners were mainly non-Jewish Poles but Polish Jews from Warsaw and Bialystok.  When the Soviet army began its advance through Nazi-occupied Estonia in July and August 1944, the staff of the concentration camp there evacuated the Jews from the Baltic states to the Stutthof concentration camp. 

Many prisoners died in typhus epidemics that swept the camp in the winter of 1942 and again in 1944.

Some prisoners worked in SS-owned businesses such as the German Equipment Works(DAW), located near the camp. Others labored in local brickyards, in private industrial enterprises, in agriculture, or in the camp's own workshops. In 1944, as labor by concentration camp prisoners became increasingly important in armaments production, a Focke-Wulf airplane factory was constructed at Stutthof. Eventually, the Stutthof camp system became a vast network of forced-labor camps; 105 Stutthof subcamps were established throughout northern and central Poland. The major subcamps were Thorn and Elbing. 

Soviet forces evacuated Stutthof on May 9, 1945.

Jewish Version

Stutthof

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 wire fences.

While most of the prisoners at Stutthof were non-Jews, there were some Polish Jews interned in the camp. Stutthof 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).

Truth

STUTTHOF 

An Important but Little-Known Wartime Camp by Mark Weber.

While Stutthof is not as well known as other wartime German camps, a close look at the history of this important internment center actually tells more about the reality of the Third Reich's "final solution" policy than studies of much better known camps such as Dachau or Buchenwald. In particular, a dispassionate look at the pattern of Jewish deportations to and from this camp, and the treatment of the inmates there, simply cannot be reconciled with a wartime German program or policy to exterminate Jews.

In 1943 and 1944 it was considerably enlarged until it included three large sections encompassing an area 2.5 by 1.2 kilometers. The Stutthof camp complex eventually embraced several dozen smaller satellite camps spread across a large part of East and West Prussia. In addition to administration and general upkeep work in the camp itself, inmates were employed in nearby workshops and factories that turned out equipment and clothing for the German armed forces. Other internees worked in a camp brick factory and greenhouse, and on nearby agricultural projects, quarries, ports and airfields. Inmates could send letters and receive parcels. At the end of 1943, a new regulation prohibited punishment by beating.

Until 1944 there were relatively few Jewish internees. Most of the prisoners were Poles. In the fall of 1943 several hundred Jews found in hiding in the Bialystok ghetto (after the suppression of the uprising there) were transferred to Stutthof. Beginning in June 1944, large numbers of Jews began arriving at Stutthof from Auschwitz. The first shipment of 2,500 Jewish women from Auschwitz-Birkenau was soon sent on to several hundred factories in the Baltic region. Between June and October 1944, 20,000 to 30,000 Jewish women, originally from Hungary, arrived at Stutthof from Auschwitz. In addition, Jewish women originally from the Lodz ghetto also arrived at Stutthof from Auschwitz.

During the summer and fall of 1944, as Soviet forces advanced toward the Baltic region, thousands of Jews, including Jewish mothers and their children, were evacuated to Stutthof from more than a dozen camps and remnant ghettos in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. In particular, Jews were transferred from the camps at Riga (Latvia) and Kaunas (Lithuania), and the ghetto of Siauliai (Lithuania) in July 1944. Most were evacuated by sea on scarce ships.

During the second half of 1944, as Soviet forces continued their westward advance, the Germans transferred large numbers of Jews, including hundreds of Jewish children, from Lithuania and Estonia through Stutthof to Auschwitz. Many of these evacuees were Jews who had earlier been deported to the Baltic region from Germany as part of the "final solution" policy of mass deportation to occupied Soviet territories in the "East."

These transfers to Stutthof are difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with a German policy to annihilate Europe's Jews. If there had been such an extermination policy, it is particularly difficult to understand why Jews from the Baltic region -- all of whom were supposedly doomed -- were evacuated on Germany's overtaxed transportation system instead of being killed on the spot. The fact that many of the Jews evacuated by the Germans from the Baltic area to Stutthof were unemployable children is particularly difficult to reconcile with a general extermination policy.

This new influx dramatically changed the camp's character. By late 1944, Jews made up about 70 percent of the inmate population. Russians constituted about 20 percent, and other nationalities made up the remaining ten percent. The camp was divided into separate male and female compounds. Most of the inmates were reportedly young, above all Jewish girls and young women between the ages of 13 and 22. There was a separate barracks block for Jewish boys below the age of 17. As a rule, Jews did not have to work, although some were occasionally assigned to farm work on the outside.

As a result of the chaos and tremendous overcrowding brought about by the worsening military situation, conditions in the camp deteriorated badly during 1944. Although new arrivals were routinely subjected to a quarantine period of two to four weeks, an epidemic of typhus broke out in the second half of the year. The death rate rose dramatically and reached a high point at the end of that year, when nine percent of the total inmate population reportedly died during December 1944. Besides typhus, inmates fell victim to enteric fever and hunger.

Camp administrators did what they could under the almost impossible conditions to save lives. Hospital facilities for inmates were greatly expanded, and eventually took up a whole complex of barracks. Inmate physicians and nurses, as well as SS medical personnel, worked in these facilities, which were divided into 12 departments. Unfortunately, care for sick internees was severely limited by a serious lack of medicines and proper instruments. In mid-January 1945, there were about 50,000 Stutthof inmates, about half of whom were in the main camp. There were 29,000 Jewish internees, including nearly 26,000 women.

On January 25, 1945, with Soviet forces only a few kilometers away and the sound of gunfire audible in the distance, camp commandant SS Major Paul-Werner Hoppe, acting on higher instructions, ordered a general evacuation of internees to the interior of the Reich. Sick inmates, as well as a group needed to dissolve the camp, were to remain behind, he added. Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer has acknowledged the difficulty of reconciling this evacuation order with an extermination policy. At a 1981 conference, he asked rhetorically: "What was their [the Germans'] intention? Why did the SS march these people away? ... Why did the commander of the camp in Stutthof give an order in January 1945 that everybody was to march except for the sick?".

Coming as it did in the middle of winter, this mass evacuation in groups of fifteen hundred each was a terrible ordeal that claimed many thousands of lives. The ten-day march was carried out in snow and freezing temperatures, with very little food or adequate shelter. One Polish historian has estimated that 30,000 died during this evacuation trek. One group of evacuees was rescued by Soviet forces in February 1945, but many in this group died after their liberation.

Stutthof's prisoners were not the only ones to endure this terrible calamity. During this same period, hundreds of thousands of German civilians, most of them women and children, as well civilians of other nationalities, were slowly making their way westward in the snow and freezing weather. Many of these people also died during the winter trek.

In March and April 1945, Soviet war planes repeatedly attacked the Stutthof camp. A bomb that hit the Jewish hospital on March 26, 1945, killed 28 and wounded 35. During the following weeks, Soviet air and artillery strikes became more frequent. By April 20, 1945, a former Jewish inmate later recalled

Stutthof was bombarded from the air and ground. The bombing went on day and night.... The Stutthof camp was enormous and from one end to the other it was burning down from the air attacks. Countless numbers of Katzetler [inmates] were killed by the bombs. I myself was lucky, because a bomb hit our ward and three-quarters of the sick were killed or wounded.

Evacuation by Sea

In late April 1945, with Stutthof now cut off from unoccupied Germany except by sea, it was finally decided to evacuate the 3,000 or so Jewish women still remaining in the camp. One inmate who was evacuated on a cargo ship later recalled her terrible ordeal:

We sailed and sailed and went into ports many times. Which, I can't remember. But no port would let us stay because there was a yellow flag flying from the top, meaning the ship was supposed to be carrying people with contagious diseases on board. ...At every port, the captain declared that he was carrying women refugees and asked permission to unload them.

But time and time again they were turned away, although at one port some German soldiers gave them some bread. With almost no water or food, the ship drifted for eleven days from one port to another. During this terrible period, Allied planes twice attacked the unarmed vessel, killing many of the Jews on board. During a third bombing attack, which came while the ship was anchored outside of Kiel harbor and only a day before the arrival of British troops there, the vessel caught fire and sank. Many died in the flames or during the mad scramble to get on deck, and others drowned. One survivor recalls that all but 33 of the 2,000 Jewish women on board perished.

The final evacuation from Stutthof took place on April 27, 1945. Under attack from Soviet warplanes, the prisoners were loaded onto several barges at nearby Hela harbor, which were then towed westward to territory still under German control. One barge, packed with sick inmates, was destined for Kiel. Others were taken to the port town of Neustadt near Lübeck. One Polish historian has estimated that 3,000 of the Stutthof internees who were evacuated by sea lost their lives in the ordeal.

Not all of Stutthof's inmates were evacuated. Hundreds who were not able to move were left behind in the camp, which remained in German hands as part of the fiercely defended Danzig enclave until it was surrendered to Soviet forces on May 10, 1945.

Gas Chamber Allegations

Some historians have insisted that prisoners were killed at Stutthof in a camp gas chamber. According to a 1985 statement by Munich's Institute for Contemporary History "more than one thousand" people were killed in a Stutthof gas chamber. However, the evidence cited for homicidal gassings at Stutthof is meager and not very credible. The camp's "gas chamber" building, which is still intact, is a small brick structure about two and a half meters high, five meters in length, three meters wide. American historian Konnilyn Feig has written that it looks "almost like a toy." Polish officials have seriously claimed that the Germans gassed one hundred persons at a time in the chamber (that is, six or seven persons per square meter). Homicidal gassings with Zyklon were supposedly carried out intermittently between June and December 1944 in this chamber.

Polish historian Krzysztof Dunin-Wasowicz believes that this building was neither designed nor built as a homicidal gassing facility. In an essay published in a semi-official work about the alleged homicidal "gas chambers," he writes that this building was built as a (non-homicidal) gas chamber for treating clothes. However, he goes on to claim that this it was sometimes also improvisationally used to kill people. ("Originally the gas chamber was built as a room for delousing clothing, and it continued to be used for this purpose, too, for as long as it existed.")

Interestingly, the "gas chamber" building is not at all hidden or camouflaged, nor is it disguised as a shower. Therefore, if it had actually been used as a homicidal gassing facility, prospective victims apparently would have been under no illusion about the fate that awaited them. It is worth noting that the Germans in charge of the camp never made any effort to destroy or dismantle Stutthof's supposed "extermination facility," which is difficult to believe if, in fact, it had been a execution gas chamber.

A West German court that heard "eyewitness testimony" about homicidal gassings at Stutthof declared in its 1964 verdict that "with regard to the gassings a positive determination was likewise not possible." Evidence given by several supposed witnesses of gassings was found to be dubious or not credible. Raul Hilberg makes no mention of homicidal gassings at Stutthof in his detailed three-volume Holocaust work. Two other prominent Holocaust historians, Lucy Dawidowicz and Nora Levin, likewise said nothing about the camp's alleged extermination facility.

Crematory building at Stutthof

Notice, the fake smokestack

Fake smokestacks were added to all crematory buildings.  Why?  Because survivors all said that they could see the smoke of their loved ones being burned.  They said they could smell it.  One even claimed he could tell where the Jew was from by the smell or color of the smoke.

Yet it has been proved that crematoria are incapable of emitting any flames or smoke and were used as a sanitary means of handling the dead, including German dead.  Typhus and other diseases were contagious.  Cremating the remains killed the disease.

Holocaust liars count on you not knowing the truth

 Inside the "gas chamber"

In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, Jewish sites, Wikipedia, and other "historians" continue to insist that Jews were "gassed."  They refuse to accept the fact that the Germans used these facilities to delouse bedding and clothes in order to prevent typhus and other diseases -- and save lives!

Estimates of Victims

According to Polish historian Czeslaw Pilichowski, director of Poland's "Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes," of the 120,000 people (Jews and non-Jews) who were ever interned in Stutthof or its satellite camps, 85,000 died. Polish historian Krzysztof Dunin-Wasowicz has estimated that of the camp's 120,000 inmates, "about 80,000 of them either died or were murdered." Another Polish historian gives a "conservative" estimate of 65,000 Stutthof victims.

Altogether more than 52,000 Jews were interned in Stutthof and its satellite camps, according to Jewish historian Martin Gilbert and the Encyclopaedia Judaica. Only about 3,000 survived, they estimate, and add that perhaps 26,000 of the Jewish victims died or drowned during the evacuation in 1945.

Although it is difficult to determine the actual number of deaths with any precision, in this regard it is important to keep in mind that the great majority of Stutthof's victims were direct and indirect victims of war, including thousands who lost their lives in Allied air attacks during the final weeks of fighting. As was also the case at Dachau, Buchenwald and other German camps, a considerable portion of those who died in the Stutthof main camp were victims of typhus and other diseases who succumbed during the final months of the war.

As we have seen, most Stutthof victims apparently lost their lives in the grim and hastily organized evacuations by foot or sea. As harsh as they were, these evacuations were not part of any extermination program. In spite of its high death rate, Stutthof was certainly not an "extermination camp," and the many deaths there were not the result of a policy or program.

Summarized from http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n5p-2_Weber.html

If the Germans hated the Jews so much, why did they go to such extreme measures toe vacuate them as the Russians were closing in?

Why not leave them at the camps and let the Russians have them?

The enormous amount of energy, manpower, resources and time this took away from the war effort just doesn't make sense --

If the Germans hated the Jews and wanted them dead

The joy of liberation was of short duration for many inmates (from Stutthof) captured by the Red Army. Accused of collaboration with the Germans or of membership in Polish nationalist movements such as the Armija Krajowa (Homeland Army), or the Boy Scout-type organization Szare Szeregi (Gray Ranks), they were promptly arrested again and disappeared into Soviet concentration camps, some of them for many years. Three examples were Marian Pawlaczyk, Jan Będzińsky and Mieczysław Goncarzewski, who were only released from the Gulag archipelago after Stalin's death in 1953. 

Their crime: During interrogations held after their liberation by the Soviet secret service NKVD, they were found to be too well informed about the structure of the camp. This sealed their fate: in the eyes of the NKVD, this proved that they had collaborated with the Germans.

Poland/Russia/Communists executed Stutthof Prison Guards Including Women

     Female guards on trial

What were their crimes?

"Selecting" women and children for non-existent gas chambers! 

They were also accused of "sadistic abuse of prisoners".

They weren't even given the dignity of covering their heads

 On one end of the gallows row, the truck has just pulled away from Jenny Wanda Barkmann who was only in her mid-20’s. Down the row, one can see that some of the prisoners are already swinging, while others have not yet been dropped.

 Upon hearing her sentence, Jenny Barkmann retorted, “Life is indeed a pleasure, and pleasures are usually short.” In this closer view of her, just as in the first photo, she is still alive and struggling. Next to her, Ewa Paradies, another guard, is prepared for the same fate.

 The central triple gallows. Commandant Johann Pauls hangs in the middle with Gerda Steinhoff — one of the senior female guards — in the foreground.

Look at the enormous crowd that came to watch the

July 4, 1946 execution

• Johann Pauls
• Waclaw Kozlowski
• Fanciszek Szopinski
• Jan Breit
• Tadeusz Kopczynski

Remember their names

Victims of Jewish Propaganda

 Executed by Communists/Jews

July 4, 1946

• Ewa Paradies
• Gerda Steinhoff
• Jenny Wanda Barkmann
• Elizabeth Becker
• Wanda Klaff

Remember their names

Just five of the millions murdered by Jews/communists

For more information; http://www.vho.org/GB/Books/ccs/2.html

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