Concentration Camps/Death Camps-Main Page

here are some pics and info, urqh.. Photos of Gas Chamber in Auschwitz main camp - Krema I

 

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Hartheim/gaschamber01a.html Gas Chamber at Hartheim Castle.

 

Cheers Sniper...The reason Im asking this is to defend the holocaust story not to deny it...In many discussions ive had over the years the figures have been easy to defend..the deniers amongst us though have always spat out...prove the gas chambers...not that I thibk how somebody is murdered differs..See Belsen for example..but ive seen too many of our younger folk lose the argument to the deniers by getting uppity with them. id rather confront with concrete information. Cheers for all info mate.

 

that is the way it should be, based on concrete evidence, and I would expect nothing less..to debate on hearsay, he said, they said? has no support, nor a place in the argument/debate..

 

In addition to the contributions of both Ray and Lou, might I offer this report by a Nazi statistician named Korherr. Open up the sub-links as well, very detailed. And as you say, nothing better than using the Nazi's own records against them.

Goto:

The Korherr Report

 

Cheers lou..ray. clint ...more the merrier thanks.

 

The Holocaust in Kraslava


Between 1942 and 1945, the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) secretly recorded thousands of conversations between captured German generals and other senior Nazi officers at the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC) in Latimer House in England. The recording shows conclusively that the Wehrmacht knew exactly how the SS was dealing with the Jews and Gypsies.

The following is a portion of a conversation in December 1944 between Generalleutnant Schaefer, Generalmajor Von Felbert, Generalmajor Johannes Bruhn and Generalleutnant Heinrich Kittel (Commandant of Metz) during which Kittel described in detail the executions of Jews in Dvinsk during one of the Aktzias.

TOP SECRET
C. S. D. I. C. (U.K.) (Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre)
S(ecret) R(ecording) Report, S.R.G.G. 1086(C)

FELBERT: Have you also known places from which the Jews have been removed?
KITTEL: Yes.
FELBERT: Was that carried out quite systematically?
KITTEL: Yes.
FILBERT: Women and children everybody?
KITTEL: Everybody. Horrible!
FELBERT: Were they loaded into trains?
KITTEL: If only they had been loaded into trains! The things I've experienced! I then sent a man along and said: "I order this to stop. I can't stand it any longer.' For instance, in Latvia, near Dvinsk, there were mass executions of Jews carried out by the SS or Security Service. There were about fifteen Security Service men and perhaps sixty Latvians, who are known to be the most brutal people in the world. I was lying in bed early one Sunday morning when I kept on hearing two salvoes followed by small arms fire. I got up and went out and asked: "What's all this shooting?" The orderly said to me: "You ought to go over there, sir, you'll see something." I only went fairly near and that was enough for me. 300 men had been driven out of Dvinsk; they dug a trench - men and women dug a communal grave and then marched home. The next day along they came again - men, women and children - they were counted off and stripped naked; the executioners first laid all the clothes in one pile. Then twenty women had to take up their position naked on the edge of the trench, they were shot and fell down into it.
FELBERT: How was it done.?
KITTEL: They faced the. trench and then twenty Latvians came up behind and simply fired once through the back of their heads. There was a sort of step in the trench, so that they stood rather lower than the Latvians, who stood up on the edge and simply shot them through the head, and they fell down forwards into the trench. After that came twenty men and they were killed by a salvo in just the same way. Someone gave the command and the twenty fell into the trench like ninepins. Then came the worst thing of all; I went away and said: "I'm going to do something about this." I got into my car and went to this Security Service man and said: "Once and for all, I forbid these executions outside, where people can look on. If you shoot people in the wood or somewhere where no-one can see, that's your own affair. But I absolutely forbid another day's shooting there. We draw our drinking water from deep springs; we're getting nothing but corpse water there.' It was the Mescheps spa (presumably Mezciems) where I was; it lies to the north of Dvinsk.
FELBERT: What did they do to the children?
KITTEL: (very excited): They seized three-year old children by the hair, held them up and shot them with a pistol and then threw them in. I saw that for myself. One could watch it; the SD had roped the area off and the people were standing watching from about 300 m. off. The Latvians and the German soldiers were just standing there, looking on.
FELBERT: What kind of SD people are they, then?
KITTEL: Nauseating! I'm convinced that they'll all be shot.
FELBERT: Where were they from, from which formation?
KITTEL: They were Germans and they were wearing the SD uniform with the black flashes on which is written 'Sonder-Dienst'.
FELBERT: Were all the executioners Latvians?
KITTEL: Yes.
FELBERT: But a German gave the order, did he?
KITTEL: Yes. The Germans directed affairs and the Latvians carried them out. The Latvians searched all the clothes.
The SD fellow saw reason and said: "Yes, We will do it somewhere else." They were all Jews who had been brought in from the country districts. Latvians wearing the armband - the Jews were brought in and were then robbed; there was a terrific bitterness against the Jews at DVINSK, and the people simply gave vent to their rage.
FELBERT: Against the Jews?
SCHAEFER: Yes, because the Russians had dragged off 60,000 Estonians. But, of course, the flames had been fanned. Tell me, what sort of an im-pression did these people create? Did you ever see any of them shortly before they were shot? Did they weep?
KITTEL: It was terrible. I once saw them being transported but I had no idea that they were people who were being driven to their execution.
SCHAEFER: Have the people any idea what is in store for them?
KITTEL: They know perfectly well; they are apathetic. I'm not sensitive myself but such things just turn my stomach; I always said: "One ceases to be a human being; that's got nothing more to do with war-fare." I once had the senior chemist for organic chemistry from IG Farben as my adjutant and because they had nothing better for him to do, he had been called up and sent to the front. He's back home again now, though he got there quite accidentally. The man was done for weeks. He sat in the corner the whole time and wept. He said: "When one considers that it may be like that everywhere!" He was an important scientist and a musician with a highly strung nervous system.
FELBERT: That shows why Finland deserted us, why Romania deserted us, why everyone hates us everywhere - not because of that single incident but because of the great number of similar incidents.
KITTEL: If one were to destroy all the Jews of the world simultaneously there wouldn't remain a single accuser.
FELBERT: (Very excited and shouting) It's obvious; it's such a scandal; it doesn't need to be a Jew to accuse us we ourselves must bring the charge; we must accuse the people who have done it.
KITTEL: Then one must admit that our State system was wrongly built.
FELBERT: (Shouting) It is, it's obvious that it's wrong, there's no doubt about it. Such a thing is unbelievable.
....

FELBERT: It wasn't possible to remain in the army in this State of ours; one was compelled to take measures against it.
SCHAEFER: At the time when you saw those murders at Dvinsk, surely you had some-one in authority over you?
KITTEL: The 'Heeresgruppe'.
SCHAEFER: You must have gone to official lectures about the construction of field works, etc. - was not a position like yours important enough for you to report the murders and add an expression of your horror?
KITTEL: I told the people that.
SCHAEFER: How do our C-in-Cs react to that?
KITTEL: "We can't do anything about it; it's nothing to do with us." It's a matter of organisation.
....

Copies:
From: (SIS) M.I.19.a To: War Office, Admiralty, Air Ministry
(29111) Wtr51755/3515 37,000 2/45

On the 2nd August 1941 the lives of around 1200 Children, Women, Men, Old, Young, Rabbis, Educators, Doctors, Merchants, Bundists, Zionists, Communists, Religious, Secular - all Jews from Kraslava, were lost.​

An Inadvertent Account of an Eyewitness to the Massacre of Jews in Daugavpils​

Heinrich Kittel
Eyewitness to Murder​

'Haftling (Prisoner) No. 94771' is a memoir written by Paula (Pesia) Frankel-Zaltzman relating her experiences in Dvinsk, Riga, and Nazi labour and concentration camps. Originally published in Yiddish in 1949, the narrative notes in minute detail the events, places and names of individuals whom the author knew or came to know in the ghettoes and camps. Frankel-Zaltzman retold her moving story of how she battled to care for her sick father in the Dvinsk Ghetto till he mercifully died a natural death under the title 'A Natural Death' published in 'Arguing with the Storm' an anthology of Yiddish women's literature.

The text details the formation of the Ghetto, life within its walls, the brutal actions of the Nazis and the Latvian collaborators and the numerous Aktzia during which most of the inhabitants were murdered. Quoted here is a short section concerning the arrival and quick disposal of the Jews of Kraslava.

The full text, published by the Concordia University Chair in Canadian Jewish Studies and The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, is available online.

Life and Death in the Dvinsk Ghetto - Haftling (Prisoner) No. 94771 by Paula Frankel-Zaltzman​

"On July 20 (1941) we heard that for the remaining Jews living in town, a ghetto is being prepared on the side of the 'Grive' (the bridgehead of the Dinaburg fortress). This embittered us all, because we knew the significance of this. Besides, the Grive wasn't a place where one could live. That was where the Latvian military stabled its horses and there they sent erring soldiers for punishment and communists. Besides, the Grive was half destroyed by the German bombardment.

However, they didn't let us think much nor did they ask us if we like the place or not. On July 25, Saturday morning, all the Jews from the Grive were told to go to the ghetto.
...

On Saturday, July, 10 o'clock in the morning, we entered the ghetto. The ghetto was three kilometers from the Grive quarter that was separated from the town (Daugavpils) by the Dvina. There were very old barracks there that had served as horse stables for the Latvian military when they were stationed on that side of the river in the 'Krepose.' Now the barracks/stables had neither floors nor windows, nor a roof, only bare walls. At one time there were windows up high, now everything was ruined.

There all the Jews of the town were pressed in. People lay on top of another and it was choking. We barely found a spot where to put father down; on a piece of bare earth. There wasn't even anything with which to hand him a drink of water. To add to our troubles, it started to rain.
...

On July 27 (1941), Dr. Gurewitz came in with the engineer, Yashe Kroin, and started to complete a list of all the old people. That's what the Germans ordered because all the old and sick were to be taken to another camp, not far from the ghetto.
...

In the evening I went to the window and saw drunken Latvians, with cudgels in their hands, chasing with wild shouts, the sick, old and blind into the forest. Dr. Gurewitz went with them. Had to go with them. My uncle, Mendl Snider was also with them together with his eldest daughter Eda.

I looked at the tragic picture and thought that my heart would break.

The next day rumours started to spread that bread had been sent for the old who had been sent away. This was nothing more than a trick so that people would think that it's good there and that if it should be called for, others would let themselves be led there. But instinctively our hearts told us that the other camp doesn't exist and has never existed and that those who were dragged away are no longer alive.

We weren't given a chance to do much thinking. On Tuesday evening we heard cries from the distance. The cries came nearer and nearer until we realized that these were the cries of tortured Jews. The next day we discovered that into the ghetto the remaining Jews had been gathered from all the surrounding villages. From Dvinsk alone, then from Dondo, Vishkes, Krislovke (Kraslava), Indra, Livengoff, Nitzkol and from all the way to Riga. The Latvian population had been told that they will no longer see a Jew, not even in the museum, even if one were to pay two 'lot' (Latvian money) for a Jew there would not be one to be had.

If, up to now, the crowding was bad, it got even worse, unbearable. But the commandants of the ghetto said that it would soon become 'roomier.' A new camp/lager would be established for the newcomers and whoever will want to will be able to go along.

In three days time an order was issued that all newcomers must go to a new camp. Of the former ones, anyone who wants to can go also. First it was necessary to register; and in the evening, line up in rows of five and go to the other camp.

All the newcomers and many others immediately signed up for the other camp because they thought that it's better there.

They were all taken to the road that leads to the spa Pagulonska, eight kilometers from town. But after this 'trickery' no news came from the other camp, and we felt once more, instinctively, that something is fowl here. Soon a Christian woman came into the ghetto and told us that all those who had been led out were shot in the forest Pagulanska and that fresh pits are being dug there. . .

We were gripped with a terrible fear. In this fear we were allowed to 'live' and await our day."
...

The Aktzia of the Dvinsker Jews

After the murder of the Jews from the Shtetlach surrounding Daugavpils the Ghetto was less crowded but the Nazis had no intention to save the lives of so many Jewish inhabitants. In mid-August the Jews were divided between those useful for labour and the old, sick and children. Those deemed of no use were led immediately to their deaths. In the period between July 13th 1941 to August 21th 1941 Jaeger reports that a total of 9012 Jews, Jewesses and Jewish children and 573 active communists were exterminated by a detachment of Einsatzkommando 3 in Dunaberg (Daugavpils). After a short period of relative calm the mass murder resumed. Between the 8th and 10th of November 1941 a huge Aktzia took place under the command by Obersturmbannfuhrer Gunter Tabbert. During this episode 3000 to 5000 Jews were murdered in the Pogulanka Forest with the active involvement of the local Latvian Auxiliary Police sources and members of the infamous Arajs commando who were bussed in on municipal buses from Riga to help expedite the killing. By December only 963 Jews, regarded as useful for work, remained in the Ghetto. Half were murdered in the final Aktzia on the 1st May 1942 including all the members of the Comitat, the Jewish Police and their families. On the same day the 487 remained Jews were concentrated in a few working factories, the largest of which was 'Unit 322' in the Daugavpils fortress. In October 1943 the few surviving Daugavpils Jews were transferred to the Kaiserwald Concentration Camp near Riga.

Source: Paula Frankel-Zaltzman. 1949. Haftling (Prisoner) No. 94771. Edited by M. M. Shafir. Translated from the Yiddish by Miriam Dashkin Beckerman. Concordia University Chair in Canadian Jewish Studies and The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies. Montreal.

​

(From Page 5 of the Jaeger Report)
EK 3 detachment in Dunaberg in the period 13.7-21.8.41: 9,012 Jews, Jewesses and Jewish children, 573 active Communists. (Total Number of executions) 9585. ​

(From Page 2 of the Jaeger Report)
22.8.41 Dunaburg 3 Russ. Comm., 5 Latvian, incl. 1 murderer, 1 Russ. Guardsman, 3 Poles, 3 male Gypsies, 1 female Gypsy, 1 Gypsy child, 1 Jew, 1 Jewess, 1 Armenian, 2 Politruks (prison inspection in Dunaburg) Total 21 ​

The Holocaust in Daugavpils in the Jaeger Report of the 1st December 1941​

The Last Jews in Kraslava

After the expulsion of the Jews from Kraslava to Daugavpils the Nazis left thirty Jewish families in the town. The remaining old and week were also soon taken to the Daugavpils Ghetto and executed on the 17 August 1941. A few artisans stayed, mostly tanners and blacksmiths, with their families together with some twenty rich Jews who paid the authorities to remain in Kraslava on condition that they worked to provide basic essential services. On the 27th August 1941 these last few Jews were shot in the Augustovka Forest to the west of the town.


A Few Survivors and Some Righteous Gentiles

A small number of Jewish children had been hidden by their parents with Christian families and with the priest. With the danger of betrayal the children were turned in and the children were taken to the Daugavpils Ghetto in autumn 1941. One young man tried to convert to save his life and even entered a Catholic seminary. Later he became a priest in a village till he too was identified and taken to the police. The Barkan family, were hidden by the Catholic priest in the Kraslava, on condition that the convert to Christianity. A difficult condition, which they accepted, saved the lives of Zusia and Loyba Barkan and their children Yasha (Ya'akov) and Raphaela, and Loyba's mother - Mrs. Dinerman. With time the priest concluded that their conversion would not guarantee their survival, and they were moved to the home of the Kizlo family at Szemelki, on the Belarussian (Polish) side of the Dvina river. Later Anna Kantor-Zelikman joined them from Braslav. Michael Kizlo and his family hid the Jews from 1941 till liberation in 1944. The Barkan's and a few Jews who survived in the Daugavpils Ghetto were the only remnants of the Kraslava Jewish community.

Stalag 340​

Though not the subject of this website is essential to note that the Dinaberg fortress also housed a prisoner of war camp known as Stalag 340 for Red Army soldiers captured by the Nazis. This awful prison camp was located in the former powder stores, warehouses and stables of the fortress on the northern bank of the Dvina. Conditions in Stalag 340 were no better than in the Ghetto on the opposite bank. Prisoners suffered poor physical conditions, torture, starvation and summary execution. Due to the dismal sanitary state of the prison epidemic typhus led to a mortality rate of up to 900 inmates a day in the winter of 1942-1943.

In flagrant violation of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, that guarantee basic rights for prisoners of war, the Nazis were directly responsible for the deaths of many thousands of Red Army soldiers in Stalag 340. At session 58 of the Nuremburg trials on February 13th 1945, it was stated that in the three years of the camp's existence, over 124,000 Soviet prisoners of war perished in Daugavpils from starvation, torture and shooting.

As a parting act of barbarism in the summer of 1944, the Nazis blew up the fortress Cathedral, over the surviving prisoners of the camp, killing many people and destroying an outstanding monument that was the centre piece of the fortress.

Covering Up the Crime

By the spring of 1944 the Germans were in retreat and now tried to conceal their crime in the Pogulanka Forest. They reopening the death pits and removed the remains of some sixteen-thousand bodies of the Jews of Dvinsk, Griva, Preili, Vishki, Livani, Dagda, Kraslava and other shtetls. For two weeks they burnt the bodies in the forest and reburied the ash. The site was fenced and signs were posted warning that trespassers would be shot.

​

Stalag 340 Memorials at the Dinaburg Fortress
Musa Calil Memorial
Tatar Poet & Stalag 340 Inmate in 1942​

​

After the War

On the 23rd July 1944 the Red Army liberated Kraslava. In the years after the war 40 families who had fled to the USSR or had hidden in Latvia returned to Kraslava. They brought some of the victims to burial and built a memorial for the Jews of Kraslava on Udrishi Street. The Monument was renovated in 1989. A small synagogue was opened in one of the houses. In the fifties most of the Jewish moved to Riga and later most emigrated to Israel. A tiny community of mostly elderly Jews still exists in Kraslava today.

​

Memorial to Victims of Fascism Opened at the Pogulanka Massace Site in 1960
The Jewish nationality of the victims is not noted in the original Soviet period plaque.
The raised areas behind the unidentified gentleman are the death pits.​

Memorial to Jewish Victims of Daugavpils and the surrounding Towns at the Pogulanka Forest - dedicated in 1991​

The Sad Conclusion

During July and August of 1941 around 1400 Jews of Kraslava were murdered in the Pogulana Forest near Daugavpils (Dvinsk) and in the Augustovka Forest near Kraslava, thus effectively ending three centuries of Jewish life in the town. From the 26th November to 1st December 1944 the Soviets established a commission to identify and investigate the atrocities of the Nazis invaders and their accomplices.

​

Memorial to Jewish Victims of Kraslava in Udrishi Street in Kraslava and Photographs of the Dedication Ceremony​

Justice?

There is no justice system that can cope with murder on this scale. The results of the Holocaust are beyond retribution and they resulted in the physical annihilation of a third of the Jewish nation and of the destruction of historic centres of learning, Yiddish culture and language.

Still, it is worth noting briefly the ineffectual system of justice applied to the brutes of the Einsatzgruppen and to the Latvian collaborators. Mass murder was often punished with amazing leniency - if at all.

1) Heydrich was assassinated by Czech resistance in Prague on May 27th 1942.
2) Stahlecker died in 1942 from wounds sustained in battle with Soviet partisans near Krasnogvardeysk, Russia.
3) Jaeger assumed a false identity and worked as an agriculturalist. He was only exposed when his report came to light in March 1959. He committed suicide in prison awaiting trial in June 1959.
4) After the war Erich Ehrlinger hid, eventually becoming the Volkswagen representative in Karlsruhe in 1954. Arrested in 1959 he was sentenced by the district court in Karlsruhe in December 1961 to twelve years imprisonment, but was released in 1964. He died peacefully in 1990 in Karlsruhe.
5) Joachim Hamman died in April 1945 in unclear circumstances.
6) No evidence for any proceedings against the local collaborators from Kraslava & Daugavpils has been forthcoming. There is no trail data for Breidis, Eduards Zaube or Roberts Bluzmanis. A long list of Lithuanian and Latvian collaborationist assassins to Einsatzkommando 3 and of the Arajs Kommando that operated together with Jaeger and Hamman is available. A small number were tried, some only the past decade. Most continued their lives without any legal proceedings being conducted against them.

The following are trial reports for cases brought against Einsatzkomando 1b and for Gunter Hugo Freidrich for mass extermination crimes in Daugavpils and other places. All the defendants were acquitted or released due to technicalities:

Case no: Nr.526
Crime Category: Other Mass Extermination Crimes, Mass Extermination Crimes by Einsatzgruppen
Accused:
E., Erich - Judgment annulled by the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court), subsequent proceeding suspended
H., Ludwig - Acquittal
Kl., Werner - Acquittal
K., Hans - Acquittal + Proceeding suspended
Ku., Siegfried - Acquittal
P., Erich - Acquittal
Court: Landgericht (District Court) Karlsruhe 20 December 1961; Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court) 28 May 1963
Country where the crime was committed: Latvia, Lithuania, Soviet Union
Crime Location: Kovno, Dunaburg, Rositten, Kiev, Uman, Gut Michalowka (near Kiev)
Crime Date: June 1941 - July 1941, January 1942 to September 1943
Victims: Prisoners, Jews, Civilians
Nationality: Lithuanian, Latvian, Soviet
Office: Einsatzgruppen EK1b, Polizei Sipo Kiev, Polizei Sipo Uman
Subject of the proceeding: Mass shootings of Lithuanian and Latvian Jews at the beginning of the military campaign against the Soviet Union, by Einsatzkommando 1b. Mass and individual killings of Jewish and non-Jewish Soviet civilians by means of gassings in 'gas vans' and shootings by the Sipo Kiev
Published in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen Vol. XVIII

Case Nr. 708
Crime Category: Other Mass Extermination Crimes
Accused: Tab., Gunter Hugo Friedrich - Acquittal
Court: Landgericht (District Court) Dortmund 19 June 1969
Country where the crime was committed: Latvia
Crime Location: Dunaburg
Crime Date: 1941 - 1942
Victims: Jews
Nationality: Latvian
Office: Polizei Sipo (Security Police) Dunaburg
Subject of the proceeding: Mass and single shootings of at least 3500 Jews within the jurisdiction of the Sipo branch office Dunaburg
Published in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen Vol. XXXII

From which we learn that It is possible to commit Genocide and get away with it!​

​

Copyright © 2008-9 Jon Seligman. All Rights Reserved.​

Sources

This is not an article researched from primary sources. Much of the bibliographical material available is written in Russian, Polish and Latvian and is thus not accessible to me. Please feel welcome to contact if you wish to correct or augment the information.

1 - Kraslava. In. Dov Levin. 1988. Ed. Pinkas Hakehilot: Latvia ve Estonia. Yad Vashem. Jerusalem Pp. 226-233.(Hebrew).
2 - Daugavpils. In. Dov Levin. 1988. Ed. Pinkas Hakehilot: Latvia ve Estonia. Yad Vashem. Jerusalem Pp. 83-106.(Hebrew).
3 - Latvia's Jewish Community: History, Tragedy, Revival; Leo Dribins, Armands Gutmanis, Margers Vestermani at the Latvian Foreign Ministry website.
4 - The Internet sites linked throughout the text.

​

 

I've done a fair amount of research into concentration camps and I have to admit I've not come across so thorough a list. Thanks for the information.

Dan Wetherell

 

There was recently an article in the Finnish newspapers on the Estonian concentration camps. It seems the Estonian Jews had been killed by January 1942 ( 1,000 people ), and after that some 10,000 to 20,000 were brought from other places in Europe to be killed there.

The article claims that the sub-camp Klooga was the first concentration camp that was freed by the Red Army. Wonder if that has been verified elsewhere?

Klooga concentration camp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I'll see if there are any files/info on the camp, kai..

 

Hi everyone,
I notice the thread to this was last dated December 2010, so not sure if it is active as such.........

I am looking for further information on a particular camp - Stalag IVB. My father in laws dad was there following his capture on D Day when he parachuted into Normandy.

Can anyone help?

Dan