Gdansk -3/3 - stutthoff concentration camp

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to B to Battlefield. We're on day one, well day two, of my European tour. I've taken a month off work and I'm gonna travel around all different parts of Europe and we've started off in Gdansk where the first shots of the Second World War would be fired. And the previous episode we were at Westerplatz where those shots landed. We also were in Gdansk where the post office on the 1st of September 1939 would fight off. The Poles have always been a fighting nation, always defending themselves against all invaders they've had throughout the centuries. And one of the first concentration camps, the Second World War, would open its doors on the 2nd of September 1939, and many of those who resisted against the Germans from the Free State of Danzig and Gdynya would be sent to the Strutov concentration camp. And for those who have isn't Gdansk, if you want to add an extra day, this is a whole day's tour. It's only located about 40 minutes from Gdansk, and you can get a bus there. But I'd highly recommend spending the whole day here. Not just for the concentration camp, but for the beauty of the local area. We're on the Baltic coast, and there is amazing beach and walks that you can do from this site. So there are tour companies offering tours to this site, and for a group of four, it'll cost you nearly £100. However, if you take the bus, it will cost you £4 each way, and you can visit the site completely free. The bus times vary, so I'm not going to put them down here and set them in stone because Poles, though their transport systems are some of the best in Europe, sometimes they change the timing. So if you go to Gdansk main station and just check on Google Earth, pop in, you want to go to the Studov concentration camp, and it'll give you the bus times from there. And this is what I hope that these tours and these talks give you, they give you an insight in how to visit. I do apologize if sometimes for the next month or so the sound is a little bit ropey as I'm doing these podcasts everywhere and anywhere. But please, if you can do, buy us a coffee, it will really really help keep this podcast going. Though currently here at Struthof, there's a tram system which can take you into the many of the different holiday resorts. And having been round here, I would quite fancy just coming here for a long weekend, it will probably be a lot cheaper than centre parks, but there are loads of cabins here. Not the concentration camp ones, but little wooden huts which you can visit, and it has a lot of environmental sites, and the beaches are absolutely gorgeous. But let us move on to the Struttoff concentration camp. The first thing you come to is the sign and the gate where we have the commandant's house. The first commandant was Max Pauley, who would be here from September 1939 until August 1942, and then be taken over by Paul Werner Hope up until January 1945. By that time the site started to close up, and this would be one of the first to be opened in Poland. The Bosnan garrison would also be taken over, but this would be the last to be liberated. It was liberated on the 9th of May 1945, and over its time it had 110,000 inmates, of which it's estimated that 63 to 65,000, including 28,000 Jews, would be killed. The site was used as more of an ethnic cleansing of members of the intelligentsia, the religious and political leaders of Danzig and Western Prussia, who would be sent there in its early days. As the war progressed, the site would be extended more and more. But as you walk up to the main part of the site, you're greeted by the gate. To the left hand side is a memorial and remembrance room to those of the clergy who'd be sent here. What a lot of people don't know, well, many people know, but when I do my videos on TikTok and I mention about the monks and the Catholic priests who were murdered at Auschwitz, we do get a lot of backlash, and many people don't believe that what they ask the question why were Catholics sent to the concentration camps? And through my through the trying to educate people, I try to show them how the expansion of how the Holocaust touched every single different nation who were against nation and type of people who were against Nazism. So if you do follow us on TikTok, please do the best you can. So in November 1941, the camp became a labour, an education camp, a lot like Dachau. Dachau would be one of the first concentration camps opened within weeks of the Nazis coming to power in 1933. And many of these camps would be opened to try and re-educate people, those who are Volksdeutsch to try and work for them. However, it would eventually have a gas chamber. Their gas chamber is quite small and it could only kill about 150 at a time compared to the mashed machines of Auschwitz, but it also had a mobile gas wagon, not a vehicle, but a train carriage, which you can see in the site today, but I digress. Before you go through the gates on the left hand side, you also have the huge piles of shoes. Now, when you visit concentration camps, quite often you will be greeted by these huge piles of shoes, which many of us will think back to those that were found at Auschwitz. However, in the summer of 1944, the German work were looking for raw materials, so people all over Germany were informed to provide leather for the war work. Many of them donated their shoes, and these would be taken to concentration camps to be cut down for their raw materials. So not necessarily all these shoes we see at concentration camps are those of the victims. You'll then walk through the site and you'll go to the main building. This is a museum, this is where the SS guards lived. There were nearly 300 female guards working on the complex at any one time. It was also looked after by Ukrainian auxiliaries the staff were made up of people from all different nations, and it does go to show that with this we have a different diversity to concentration camps. It was also looked after by the several Norwegian and parts of the Nordic countries of the different countries that were taken over by the Nazis. The first inmates came there on the 2nd of September 1939. There were 150 inmates, mainly Poles and Jews from Danzig, who'd been captured in the immediate breakout of the war. Within a couple of weeks, there were nearly 6,000 inmates on the 15th of September 1939. Until 1942, nearly all the prisoners were Polish, and then by 1944, as the war was being lost and numbers would be increased, there would be thousands sent to Struthof, from Auschwitz and other camps in the Baltic states, that of Neunegama, Dachau, and even those from Sachsenhausen brought back into the Oakle area. The registered inmates on the site come from nearly twenty-eight different occupied countries. Beside the Jews and Poles, we have Germans, Czechs, Dutch, Belgians, French, Norwegians, Finns, Danes, Lithuanians, Latvians, Belarusians, Russians, and many others. There are also a large numbers of Romy, Romani, Sintis who were sent here. It wasn't just about the large numbers of Jews to be sent here, it was Polish POWs, people from the Soviet Union, but for the majority it was those of the Polish nation, those who were seen as the intelligentsia, those who were seen as people in their local communities. By January 1945, Typhus had ripped through the site. There were some at this time there were nearly 50,000 prisoners, of which 5,000 prisoners were forced out of the camp. Some would be forced on death marches, but others would be executed. But we'll talk about this slightly after. However, on the 5th of May 1945, a barge full of starving prisoners was towed into a harbour in Denmark, of which many of them survived and were taken over, and then transferred to Sweden. These would be saved. Many would be marched into Germany and sent to the Neuengammer concentration camp near Hamburg. But in late April 1945, nearly five thousand prisoners were walked out of the site, and not too far away we have the Dunes and the Baltic coast, and they would be summary executed. Who remained on the site, those who were too unfit to walk or were stuck in the typhus ridden barricuts, would be liberated by the Red Army on the 9th of May. In the post-war years, many people will mention about the trials, and we obviously think about Nuremberg in 1946-1947, but there would be the Struthoff trials as well, as well as several other trials at different based around different concentration camps, and ten of the former guards would be sentenced to death, and they'd be executed in Danzig and also on the Struthof site. Today Struthof is a concentration campsite which not many people will visit, it's not on many people's radar, although it would be one of the most one of the largest and set in the memory and mind of the people of Poland. So if you can visit this, you'll get a different outlook on the on the Holocaust. One of the most gripping things when you visit this site is its memorial and also its crematorium. Now, when you're muddling through the dark and you walk into the crematoriums all over all over to different concentration camps, there'll obviously be marks of remembrance. But this one was quite shocking. To the right hand side you have a glass box, and there are the human remains of those who were murdered at the site, still in there. And then when you go to the main memorial on the site, there's another glass ossery which contains the remains. Not the ashes, the pure ashes that we sometimes see at Auschwitz. These are bone remains, because of course when you cremate someone, they don't just turn to dust, they need to be crushed up. And the remains of those who in the final days of the camp can still be seen to this day. The site is huge. The main part of the museum, once you walk out of it, you're going to see a lot of concrete blocks which show where the extension was and the where the main blocks were. You'll then come to the outside of the gates. So what I recommend you do is turn right and follow the fence along, and you'll see an extension of the camp and see even more of how immense this site was. You're then going to come out into a little little road which leads you into a housing estate. Carry on until you come to the end of the housing estate, then turn left, and then you can walk down to the Baltic coast. This is an amazing place. The beach is pure white sand, and you're surrounded by pine forests. You'll find little cafes and places you can have some lunch, perhaps have a beer, and decompress after the time you've spent at this concentration camp. Walk along the beach a little bit, and then just have a little play with your phone, book your uh book in your mind what bus you're gonna get. And then you can walk out through the woods, jump on the bus, and go back to Gdansk. Strudhov, like many of the other concentration camps all out in Europe, is one I'd highly recommend visiting. I know it can be quite depressing, and many people will try and visit Gdansk for its beauty. But sometimes you need to learn this history to see this beauty that we have today, and be thankful for what we have. So guys, you're visiting you you've you're following me on this tour. We're day two, and tomorrow morning I get a bus, sorry, get a train, and we're going to Katsion. And the next tour we'll be doing will be around the Eagles sorry, the Wolfs Lair in deepest darkest Poland, where there was a sadly a failed execution att execution attempt on Hitler in July 1944. So this is a s these are sites I've been to a couple of times before and hopefully be shared, but from now on we're going to be firing out blank, and you're going to be listening to me muddle through on histories I'm going to be learning on the spot. I've decided as I've got a 28-day tour, and although I do have travel days in between, the majority of the tour every day will be doing something. So instead of waiting week by week, and especially with this one, this has been three tours put into one, and we've got three episodes based around a Gdansk. I'm gonna try and do a podcast every other day, if not every four days. Just otherwise, the backlog you'll never you won't hear uh the full story of this tour until the end of 2027. I obviously don't want that. But I want you guys to enjoy these and hopefully you're listening, leavening, and appreciating. And if you do really appreciate, buy us a coffee, it'll help me away on this tour.