[WW2] - De "rikstyska" koncentrationslägren

After the war the Soviet secret police continued to operated Buchenwald as a concentration camp for "potential class enemies" and other "possibly dangerous" German civilians. In September 1949, more than four years after the end of the war, there were still 14,300 inmates in the "special camp." Conditions were horrible. Even the Soviet official in charge of the concentration camps in Germany, General Merkulov, acknowledged the severe lack of order and cleanliness, particularly at Buchenwald. At least 13,000 and as many as 21,000 persons died in Soviet-run Buchenwald, but no one has ever been punished for the deaths and mistreatment in this notorious postwar camp.

Next to the crematorium is a building with a "Genickschuss Anlage" (shot in the back of the neck installation) which was rebuilt by former Soviet POW's. I have an idea that they also installed those hooks in the morgue (According to a sign 1100 people were strangled in the morgue. I did not check for the evidence of such deeds.)

The official goal of Buchenwald was the destruction of the prisoners by work. Thousands of prisoners were murdered in Buchenwald by work, torture, beatings, or simply starvation and lack of hygiene. One of the worst criminals of Buchenwald was certainly Martin Sommer, who "worked" in the bunker - the high security prison of the camp.

Thousands of inmates, especially Soviet POWs, were murdered in the infirmary by lethal injections, whereas others were the victim of medical experiments, especially many who were contaminated by the typhus bacillus.

A "souvenir" made by the SS: the shrunken head of a Russian POW...

Another way to kill prisoners was used in the stable. The prisoners had to enter a fake infirmary room and place themselves under a height gauge. At this time, an SS man killed them with a revolver by shooting through a small hole placed at the height of the prisoners neck. The noise of those executions was masked by a radio at maximum volume.

One of the worst crimes committed by the Nazies has been in Stutthof. Professor Rudolf Spanner, an SS officer and "scientist", was owner of a small soap factory located in Danzig. In 1940, he invented a process to produce soap from human fat. This "product" was called R.J.S. - "Reines Judische Fett" - which means "Pure Jewish Fat".

The alleged gas chamber was a lower level room adjacent to one of the castle towers. This room has an area of 192 square feet and a volume of 1,728 cubic feet. It has a vaulted ceiling of some 8.9 feet at the highest point. The installation had one (1) door and one (1) window, although a rectangular aperture has now been made into an adjacent room. There are no facilities to inlet "Zyklon B" or evacuate the gas after use. The room now has been completely remodeled. It has recently plastered walls and ceiling. There are three (3) new floor surfaces, one on top of the other. Even the door has been changed to a modern conventional mental institution cell door with a shuttered view port. The window is alleged to have been original, but would leak gas if used for this purpose. Neither the door nor the window has any provision for gasketing. Allegedly, all gassing apparatus was removed by January, 1945. In truth, there was no gassing equipment in that the walls are very thick, as characteristic of castle architecture and construction, and not easily cut to accommodate the installation of gas vents or gas inlet ports. It and the adjacent room contain memorial plaques to those who allegedly died in gassings here. The castle is presently used as an apartment building.

- Public Prosecutor: What kind of exterminations were committed in your camp?
- Kaindl: Until mid of 1943, prisoners were killed by shooting or hanging. For the mass exterminations, we used a special room in the infirmary. There was a height gauge and a table with an eye scope. There were also some SS wearing doctor uniforms. There was a hole at the back of the height gauge. While a SS was measuring the height of a prisoner, another one placed his gun in the hole and killed him by shooting in his neck. Behind the height gauge there was another room where we played music in order to cover the noise of the shooting.

Hundreds of children were incarcerated in Ravensbrück. The cruelty and the sadism of the Nazis against the children had no limits, and the fate of those little victims was absolutely awful. Children and babies were in fact sentenced to death before they were born. Newborn babies were immediately separated from their mother and drowned or thrown into a sealed room until they died. Most of the time, this was done in front of the mother. There are dozen of testimonies about children thrown alive into the crematory, buried alive, poisoned, strangled, or drowned in Ravensbrück. Several children were also used for sadistic "medical" experiments. Hundreds of little girls, sometimes only 8, were sterilized by direct exposure of genitals to X-rays. In the early months of Ravensbrück, children were immediately killed. The SS doctor Rosenthal and his girlfriend Gerda Quernheim aborted by force pregnant women, and this was often done using bestial methods. Later, newborn children were sometimes allowed to survive, but due to the lack of food and the awful sanitary conditions, these babies died very soon.

Every two or three weeks, the SS commandant of the camp Suhren and the SS doctors Schwarzhuber and Pflaum selected the ill or weak women for the "transport to Mittweida". The women had to lift their skirts over their hips and run in front of the SS guards and doctors. Women with swollen feet, injuries, or scars or those simply too ill or too weak to run were immediately selected for a "recovery" period in Uckermark. This "recovery" period consisted in fact of being jailed in sealed barracks without medical care and food until death. But most of the selected women never arrived in the Uckermark "Youth Camp". They were gassed in special vans transformed in mobile gas chambers. The exhaust pipe of the engine was directly connected to the van's freight compartment, and gassing was done in 15-20 minutes. One of those gas vans was a captured sanitary truck from the Dutch Army. Others trucks were sealed German freight trucks, often named by the prisoners "Green Mina". The so-called "transport to Mittweida" was an SS code name [standigt dessa koder! ] for gassing. "Mittweida" was supposed to be a place where prisoners could recover from their slave work. Of course, it was an imaginary place and "Mittweida" was just a synonym for "gas chamber".

The estimated number of victims in Neuengamme is approximately 56,000. Thousands of inmates were hanged, shot, gassed, killed by lethal injection or transferred to the death camps Auschwitz and Majdanek. In the last weeks of the war, the SS decided to evacuate Neuengamme. This was the start of one of the worst death marches of the war. During these death marches, approximately 10,000 inmates perished by shootings or simply starvation.

There are those among us who say the Holocaust did not happen at all. Or, maybe a few people were killed, but not millions. Historical facts have proven, time and time again , that Nazi Germany, planned and implemented their plan to rid Europe of those whom they considered sub-human. Accurate numbers for exactly how many humans died as a result of the Nazi plans are simply not available and never will be. Research by some of the worlds most able historians place the number of Holocaust victims murdered by government policy to be not less than twelve million and probably more.