Stutthof was a Nazi concentration camp established by Nazi Germany in a secluded, marshy, and wooded area near the village of Stutthof 34 km (21 mi) east of the city of Danzig (Gdańsk) in the territory of the German-annexed Free City of Danzig. The camp was set up around existing structures after the invasion of Poland in World War II and initially used for the imprisonment of Polish leaders and intelligentsia. The actual barracks were built the following year by prisoners. Most of the infrastructure of the concentration camp was either destroyed or dismantled shortly after the war. In 1962, the former concentration camp with its remaining structures, was turned into a memorial museum.
The German camps in occupied Poland during World War II were built by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945 throughout the territory of the Polish Republic, both in the areas annexed in 1939, and in the General Government formed by Nazi Germany in the central part of the country (see map). After the 1941 German attack on the Soviet Union, a much greater system of camps was established, including the world's only industrial extermination camps constructed specifically to carry out the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question".
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe.
Herta Bothe was a German concentration camp guard during World War II. She was imprisoned for war crimes after the defeat of Nazi Germany, and was subsequently released early from prison on 22 December 1951 as an act of leniency by the British government.
Balys Sruoga was a Lithuanian poet, playwright, critic, and literary theorist.
Klooga concentration camp was a Nazi forced labor subcamp of the Vaivara concentration camp complex established in September 1943 in Harju County, during World War II, in German-occupied Estonia near the village of Klooga. The Vaivara camp complex was commanded by German officers Hans Aumeier, Otto Brennais and Franz von Bodmann and consisted of 20 field camps, some of which existed only for short periods.
The Kovno Ghetto was a ghetto established by Nazi Germany to hold the Lithuanian Jews of Kaunas during the Holocaust. At its peak, the Ghetto held 29,000 people, most of whom were later sent to concentration and extermination camps, or were shot at the Ninth Fort. About 500 Jews escaped from work details and directly from the Ghetto, and joined Soviet partisan forces in the distant forests of southeast Lithuania and Belarus.
A kapo or prisoner functionary was a prisoner in a Nazi camp who was assigned by the Schutzstaffel (SS) guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks.
Lithuanian literature concerns the art of written works created by Lithuanians throughout their history.
Muselmann was a slang term used amongst Jewish prisoners of German Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust to refer to those suffering from a combination of starvation and exhaustion, as well as those who were resigned to their impending death. The Muselmann prisoners exhibited severe emaciation and physical weakness, an apathetic listlessness regarding their own fate, and unresponsiveness to their surroundings owing to their barbaric treatment.
The Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force or LTDF was a short-lived, Lithuanian, volunteer armed force created and disbanded in 1944 during the German occupation of Lithuania. LTDF was subordinate to the authorities of Nazi Germany and Its goal was to fight the approaching Red Army, provide security and conduct Nazi security warfare within the territory, claimed by Lithuanians. LTDF had some autonomy and was staffed by Lithuanian officers, their most notable commander being Lithuanian General Povilas Plechavičius. LTDF quickly reached the size of about 10,000 men. After brief engagements against the Soviet and Polish partisans, the force self-disbanded, its leaders were arrested and sent to concentration camps, and numerous of its members were executed by the Nazis. Many others were either drafted into other Nazi auxiliary services or started forming an armed anti-Soviet resistance, also known as Forest Brothers. The Union of Soldiers of the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, a veterans organization, was founded in 1997.
Stutthof trials were a series of war crime tribunals held in postwar Poland for the prosecution of Stutthof concentration camp staff and officials, responsible for the murder of up to 85,000 prisoners during the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in World War II. None of the Stutthof commandants were ever tried in Poland. SS-Sturmbannführer Max Pauly was put on trial by a British military court in Germany but not for the crimes committed at Stutthof; only as the commandant of the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg. Nevertheless, Pauly was executed in 1946.
During the Holocaust, death marches were massive forced transfers of prisoners from one Nazi camp to other locations, which involved walking long distances resulting in numerous deaths of weakened people. Most death marches took place toward the end of World War II, mostly after the summer/autumn of 1944. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, from Nazi camps near the Eastern Front were moved to camps inside Germany away from the Allied forces. Their purpose was to continue the use of prisoners' slave labour, to remove evidence of crimes against humanity, and to keep the prisoners for bargaining with the Allies.
Amon Leopold Göth was an Austrian SS functionary and war criminal. He served as the commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp in Płaszów in German-occupied Poland for most of the camp's existence during World War II.
Schoschana Rabinovici was a Holocaust survivor and the author of the memoir Dank meiner Mutter (1994) which was published in the United States in 1998 under the title Thanks to My Mother. Of Lithuanian-Jewish heritage, she survived Vilnius Ghetto and the Kaiserwald and Stutthof Nazi concentration camps as a young girl.
The Šiauliai or Shavli Ghetto was a Jewish ghetto established in July 1941 by Nazi Germany in the city of Šiauliai in Nazi-occupied Lithuania during the Holocaust. The ghetto comprised two areas – one in the Kaukazas suburb and one on Trakai Street. Both were liquidated by July 1944, and their inhabitants were killed or transferred to Nazi concentration camps. In 1939, one quarter of the population of Šiauliai was Jewish, about 8,000 persons. By the end of World War II, only about 500 Jews of the city had survived.
Erna Beilhardt was a German female guard at several Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. A member of the SS-Aufseherin, or overseer, Beilhardt was also a nurse affiliated with the German Red Cross during the last year of World War II. Beilhardt is notable for being one of the few Nazi camp personnel to voluntarily resign from their position. She had become increasingly disturbed by the extreme cruelty of the staff.
Macha Rolnikas, also Maria Rolnikaite and Masha Rolnik was a Lithuanian writer and Holocaust survivor. Rolnikas' family were Jewish and prominent in the local community, and when the Wehrmacht took control of Lithuania in 1941, her father joined the underground resistance. Rolnikas and the remainder of her family were sent to the Vilna Ghetto, and subsequently moved to Stutthof concentration camp for employment as an undertaker. As a result of her "employment", she survived in the camp until the Red Army liberated Stutthof in 1944. She was reunited in Vilnius with her older sister and father; her younger siblings and mother were most probably killed in Paneriai after the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto. Following the end of the war, Rolnikas moved to the Soviet Union, first to study at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute, and later to Leningrad after she was married. Her concentration camp diary was later adapted into a book, I Must Tell, that was published in the USSR in 1964 in Yiddish, Hebrew and Lithuanian, and in Paris in French in 1966. Translated into English by Daniel H. Shubin.
Jonas Noreika, also known by his post-war nom de guerre Generolas Vėtra, was a Lithuanian anti-Soviet partisan, military officer, and Nazi collaborator.
Forest of the Gods is a memoir of the Lithuanian poet and writer Balys Sruoga about his experiences in the Nazi Stutthof concentration camp. It was one of the first memoirs in Europe about Nazi camps. According to the author, the title is the local name of the marshy wooded area in which the camp was establisted.
