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Mittelsteine
Concentration camp
350 m
View of Mittelsteine railway junction (2009)
Mittelsteine is located in Poland
Mittelsteine
Location of Mittelsteine in contemporary Poland
Other namesLager Mittelsteine
Gr-R/Mitt
LocationŚcinawka Średnia
(Former eastern territories of Germany)
Operated byGerman Schutzstaffel (SS)
Original useArmy barracks
Operational1942 – April 1945
InmatesJewish women
(nationals of Hungary and Poland)
Number of inmates300–1,000
Notable inmatesSara Selver-Urbach
Ruth Minsky Sender
Sara Zyskind
Notable booksThrough the Window of My Home by S. Selver-Urbach
The Cage by R. M. Sender
WebsiteGross-Rosen Museum
Ścinawka official website

Mittelsteine was a Nazi Arbeitslager or slave-labour camp functional during the Second World War. It was originally established in 1942, but was operated formally between 23 August 1944 and 30 April 1945 (the date of its liquidation) as an all-female subcamp of Gross-Rosen.[1]

Overview

The detainees at the camp included primarily women of Jewish background deported from Hungary and Poland. The number of inmates averaged at 300,[2] or 400,[3] while towards the end of the War the total swelled to nearly 1,000.[4] The function of camp commander or Lagerkommandant (a position sometimes indicated as Zwischen­ge­schaltet­er SS-Offizier) was performed by SS-Hauptsturmführer Paul Radschun.[5] The Ober­auf­seherin or "senior overseer" (the highest female official) was Erna Rinke.[6] The staff included 10–15 female guards.[7] Among the most notorious of them are men­tion­ed the names of the Auf­seherinnen Filomena Locker, Charlotte Neugebauer, and Schneider (first name unknown).[8]

The camp was situated in the locality called Mittelsteine (renamed Ścinawka Średnia in 1947) in what was then the territory of the Third Reich, about 17 kilometres to the north­-west of Kłodzko (Ger., Glatz), the nearest larger town, or 104 kilometres to the south-west of the regional metropolis, Wrocław (Ger., Breslau) — in the territory of Lower Silesia that was awarded to Poland after the War. (Today, the border crossing between the Czech Republic and Poland at Otovice–Tłumaczów is just 8½ km or 5 miles away. The closest town in Germany, Zittau, is 179 km or 111 miles away.)

The camp consisted of three barracks located by the side of the exit road leading towards Ratno Dolne (Ger., Niederrathen).[9] The forced labour involved primarily work for the ar­ma­ments and munitions manufacturer Totex, a subsidiary of Metallwarenfabrik Spreewerk GmbH, itself owned by the Deutsche Industrie-Werke AG (DIWAG), and for other DIWAG munitions concerns located at Mittelsteine, and at the munitions (or, alternatively, aviation parts) factory Fa. Albert Patin, Werkstätten für Fernsteuerungstechnik (whose location within the village is today uncertain).[7][9] With the defeat looming in the last months and weeks of the War the Nazis liquidated the camp and transferred the prisoners to two alternative slave-labour sites: the Hungarian nationals were sent to the preexisting camp of Mährisch Weisswasser in Bílá Voda in the Sudetenland,[10] while the Polish na­tion­als were sent to the newly created camp at Grafenort (now Gorzanów in Poland) at a distance of 27 kilometres from Mittelsteine.[11] As Bella Gutterman, the director of the International Institute for Holocaust Research, comments on these ultimate developments, by 1945 the decisions of the Nazis with regard to the Mittelsteine camp "fol­low­ed no evident logic".[12]

Among the several memoirs published by former inmates during the post-War period, the most detailed description of the camp, according to experts, is offered by Sara Selver-Urbach in her book Through the Window of My Home published in Israel in 1964.[13]

Bibliography

  • Obozy hitlerowskie na ziemiach polskich 1939–1945: 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. ISBN 8301000651.
  • 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.
  • Studia nad Faszyzmem i Zbrodniami Hitlerowskimi, ed. K. Jonca, vol. 22 (2136), Wrocław, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 1999, page 375. ISBN 8322920474. ISSN 0239-6661, ISSN 0137-1126. (An extremely important source.)
  • Jan Kosiński, Niemieckie obozy koncentracyjne i ich filie, ed. W. Sobczyk, Stephanskirchen near Rosenheim, Drukania Polska Kontrast, 1999. ISBN 30000515X.
  • 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. ISBN 8388526804.
  • Filie obozu koncentracyjnego Gross-Rosen: informator, Wałbrzych, Muzeum Gross-Rosen, 2008, pp. 35, 51–54. ISBN 9788389824073.
  • Bella Gutterman, A Narrow Bridge to Life: Jewish Forced Labor and Survival in the Gross-Rosen Camp System, 1940–1945, tr. IBRT, New York, Berghahn Books, 2008. ISBN 9781845452063, ISBN 1845452062.

See also

References

  1. ^ Edward Basałygo, 900 lat Jeleniej Góry: Tędy przeszła historia: Kalendarium wydarzeń w Kotlinie Jeleniogórskiej i jej okolicach, Jelenia Góra, 2010, p. 240.
  2. ^ Obozy hitlerowskie na ziemiach polskich 1939–1945: 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. ISBN 8301000651.
  3. ^ 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, p. 93. ISBN 8388526804.
  4. ^ Jan Kosiński, Niemieckie obozy koncentracyjne i ich filie, ed. W. Sobczyk, Stephans­kirchen, Drukania Polska Kontrast, 1999, p. 313. ISBN 30000515X.
  5. ^ Filie obozu koncentracyjnego Gross-Rosen: informator, Wałbrzych, Muzeum Gross-Rosen, 2008, p. 53. ISBN 9788389824073. Cf. The Library of Congress item No. LC 89138100 with a personal dedication to Adolf Hitler on the latter's 42nd birthday (April 1931).
  6. ^ Filie obozu koncentracyjnego Gross-Rosen: informator, Wałbrzych, Muzeum Gross-Rosen, 2008, p. 53. ISBN 9788389824073. On Erna Rinke, see also Ursula Pawel, My Child is Back!, London, Portland (Oregon), Vallentine Mitchell, 2000, pp. 91 & 96. ISBN 0853034044.
  7. ^ a b Filie obozu koncentracyjnego Gross-Rosen: informator, Wałbrzych, Muzeum Gross-Rosen, 2008, p. 53. ISBN 9788389824073.
  8. ^ Jan Kosiński, Niemieckie obozy koncentracyjne i ich filie, ed. W. Sobczyk, Stephans­kirchen, Drukania Polska Kontrast, 1999, p. 313. ISBN 30000515X. Kosiński states that Filomena Locker was tried and convicted after the War — without providing further details.
  9. ^ a b Info on the Ścinawka Średnia official website.
  10. ^ Frauen-Arbeitslager Mährisch Weißwasser 1944/45: Zwangsarbeit für TELEFUNKEN; eine Überlebensstation auf dem Weg von Auschwitz nach Palästina mit der EXODUS; Erinnerungen, Daten, Bilder und Dokumente, ed. K. C. Kasper, Bonn-Oberkassel, Verlag Klaus Christian Kasper, 2002, pp. 64–65. ISBN 393056727X.
  11. ^ Filie obozu koncentracyjnego Gross-Rosen: informator, Wałbrzych, Muzeum Gross-Rosen, 2008, p. 35. ISBN 9788389824073.
  12. ^ Bella Gutterman, A Narrow Bridge to Life: Jewish Forced Labor and Survival in the Gross-Rosen Camp System, 1940–1945, tr. IBRT, New York, Berghahn Books, 2008, p. 206. ISBN 9781845452063, ISBN 1845452062.
  13. ^ Sara Selver-Urbach, Through the Window of My Home: Recollections from the Lodz Ghetto, tr. (from Hebrew) S. Bodansky, Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 1964. Cf. 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, p. 93. ISBN 8388526804.
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