NKVD special camp Nr. 2

Last updated

NKVD special camp Nr. 2 was an NKVD special camp located at the site of the former Nazi Buchenwald concentration camp.

Between 1945 and February 10, 1950, the camp was administered by the Soviet Union and served as Special Camp No. 2 of the NKVD. [1] It was part of a "special camps" network operating since 1945, formally integrated into the Gulag in 1948. [2] [3] Another "special camp" in Soviet occupied Germany was NKVD special camp Nr. 7 at the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp. [4]

Between August 1945 and the camp's dissolution on March 1, 1950, 28,455 prisoners, including 1,000 women, were held by the Soviet Union at Buchenwald. [5] The 22-year-old American-born John H. Noble and his father were amongst the inmates. A total of 7,113 people died in Special Camp Number 2, according to Soviet records, including Joachim Ernst, Duke of Anhalt. [5] They were buried in mass graves in the woods surrounding the camp. Their relatives did not receive any notification of their deaths. Prisoners included alleged opponents of Stalinism and alleged members of the Nazi Party or Nazi organizations; others were imprisoned due to identity confusion and arbitrary arrests. [6] [7] The NKVD did not allow the prisoners to have any contact with the outside world. [8] Unlike the prisoners held at the former Sachsenhausen and Bautzen camps, no prisoners at Special camp Nr. 2 were put on trial before a Soviet military tribunal. [7]

On January 6, 1950, Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs Sergei Nikiforovich Kruglov ordered all special camps, including Buchenwald, to be handed over to the East German Ministry of Internal Affairs. [3] There is an account of the Soviet NKVD camp by former inmate Maria Linke. Born in tsarist-era Russia as the daughter of a German foundry manager, she was taken into custody due to her fluent Russian. [9]

Well known prisoners

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Buchenwald concentration camp</span> Nazi concentration camp in Germany

Buchenwald was a Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or suspected communists were among the first internees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nazi concentration camp badge</span> Cloth emblems; part of the system of identification in Nazi camps

Nazi concentration camp badges, primarily triangles, were part of the system of identification in German camps. They were used in the concentration camps in the German-occupied countries to identify the reason the prisoners had been placed there. The triangles were made of fabric and were sewn on jackets and trousers of the prisoners. These mandatory badges of shame had specific meanings indicated by their colour and shape. Such emblems helped guards assign tasks to the detainees. For example, a guard at a glance could see if someone were a convicted criminal and thus likely of a tough temperament suitable for kapo duty.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gross-Rosen concentration camp</span> Concentration camp in Poland

Gross-Rosen was a network of Nazi concentration camps built and operated by Nazi Germany during World War II. The main camp was located in the German village of Gross-Rosen, now the modern-day Rogoźnica in Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Poland; directly on the rail-line between the towns of Jawor (Jauer) and Strzegom (Striegau). Its prisoners were mostly Jews, Poles and Soviet citizens.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp</span> Nazi concentration camp

Mittelbau-Dora was a Nazi concentration camp located near Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany. It was established in late summer 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, supplying slave labour from many Eastern countries occupied by Germany, for extending the nearby tunnels in the Kohnstein and for manufacturing the V-2 rocket and the V-1 flying bomb. In the summer of 1944, Mittelbau became an independent concentration camp with numerous subcamps of its own. In 1945, most of the surviving inmates were sent on death marches or crammed in trains of box-cars by the SS. On 11 April 1945, US troops freed the remaining prisoners.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sachsenhausen concentration camp</span> Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany

Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until the defeat of Nazism in May 1945. It mainly held political prisoners throughout World War II. Prominent prisoners included Joseph Stalin's oldest son, Yakov Dzhugashvili; assassin Herschel Grynszpan; Paul Reynaud, the penultimate Prime Minister of France; Francisco Largo Caballero, Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War; the wife and children of the Crown Prince of Bavaria; Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera; and several enemy soldiers and political dissidents.

A civilian internee is a civilian detained by a party to a war for security reasons. Internees are usually forced to reside in internment camps. Historical examples include Japanese American internment and internment of German Americans in the United States during World War II. Japan interned 130,000 Dutch, British, and American civilians in Asia during World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Camp Fünfeichen</span> World War II German prisoner-of-war camp

Camp Fünfeichen was a World War II German prisoner-of-war camp located in Fünfeichen, a former estate within the city limits of Neubrandenburg, Mecklenburg, northern Germany. Built as Stalag II-A Neubrandenburg in 1939, it was extended by the officer camp Oflag II-E in 1940. After the Soviet takeover in 1945 until 1949 it was used as special camp, NKVD-camp Nr. 9 of the Soviet secret service (NKVD). Today, the site of the camp is a memorial.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Identification of inmates in German concentration camps</span> Prisoners camp identification numbers, cloth emblems, and armbands

Identification of inmates in German concentration camps was performed mostly with identification numbers marked on clothing, or later, tattooed on the skin. More specialized identification in Nazi concentration camps was done with badges on clothing and armbands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John H. Noble</span> American writer

John H. Noble was an American survivor of the Soviet Gulag system, who wrote two books which described his experiences in it after he was permitted to leave the Soviet Union and return to the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joachim Ernst, Duke of Anhalt</span> Duke of Anhalt

Joachim Ernst, Duke of Anhalt was the last ruler of the Duchy of Anhalt.

Leopold Friedrich Franz Sieghard Hubertus Erdmann, Hereditary Prince of Anhalt was the head of the House of Ascania, the family which ruled the Duchy of Anhalt until 1918.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Niederhagen concentration camp</span>

Niederhagen was a Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Büren-Wewelsburg which existed from 1941 to 1943 when it was disbanded.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union</span> WWII prisoners of war

Approximately three million German prisoners of war were captured by the Soviet Union during World War II, most of them during the great advances of the Red Army in the last year of the war. The POWs were employed as forced labor in the Soviet wartime economy and post-war reconstruction. By 1950 almost all surviving POWs had been released, with the last prisoner returning from the USSR in 1956. According to Soviet records 381,067 German Wehrmacht POWs died in NKVD camps. A commission set up by the West German government found that 3,060,000 German military personnel were taken prisoner by the USSR and that 1,094,250 died in captivity. According to German historian Rüdiger Overmans ca. 3,000,000 POWs were taken by the USSR; he put the "maximum" number of German POW deaths in Soviet hands at 1.0 million. Based on his research, Overmans believes that the deaths of 363,000 POWs in Soviet captivity can be confirmed by the files of Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt), and additionally maintains that "It seems entirely plausible, while not provable, that 700,000 German military personnel listed as missing actually died in Soviet custody."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NKVD special camps in Germany 1945–1950</span> Post–World War II internment camps in the Soviet-occupied parts of Germany

NKVD special camps were NKVD-run late and post-World War II internment camps in the Soviet-occupied parts of Germany from May 1945 to January 6, 1950. They were set up by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) and run by the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs MVD. On 8 August 1948, the camps were made subordinate to the Gulag. Because the camp inmates were permitted no contact with the outside world, the special camps were also known as silence camps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NKVD special camp Nr. 7</span> NKVD special camp that operated in Weesow and Sachsenhausen

NKVD special camp Nr. 7 was a NKVD special camp that operated in Weesow until August 1945 and in Sachsenhausen from August 1945 until the spring of 1950. It was used by the Soviet occupying forces to detain those viewed as enemy of the people by the soviet regime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Action 14f13</span> Campaign of the Third Reich to murder Nazi concentration camp prisoners

Action 14f13, also called Sonderbehandlung14f13 and Aktion 14f13, was a campaign by Nazi Germany to murder Nazi concentration camp prisoners. Also called invalid or prisoner euthanasia, the sick, elderly and those deemed no longer fit for work were separated from the rest of the prisoners in a selection process, after which they were murdered. The Nazi campaign was in operation from 1941 to 1944 and later covered other groups of concentration camp prisoners.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ravensbrück concentration camp</span> Womens concentration camp in Nazi Germany

Ravensbrück was a German concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, 90 km (56 mi) north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück. The camp memorial's estimated figure of 132,000 women who were in the camp during the war includes about 48,500 from Poland, 28,000 from the Soviet Union, almost 24,000 from Germany and Austria, nearly 8,000 from France, and thousands from other countries including a few from the United Kingdom and the United States. More than 20,000 of the total were Jewish, approximately 15%. 85% were from other races and cultures. More than 80% were political prisoners. Many prisoners were employed as slave labor by Siemens & Halske. From 1942 to 1945, the Nazis undertook medical experiments to test the effectiveness of sulfonamides.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NKVD Special Camp No. 1</span>

The NKVD Special Camp No. 1 was a special camp operated by the NKVD from 1945 to 1948, during the Soviet occupation of parts of Germany. It was located 4 km to the east of Mühlberg, Brandenburg using the shacks of the former German run prisoners-of-war camp Stalag IV-B. The prisoners mainly consisted of members of the lower and medium ranks of the Nazi party, German military personnel, youth wrongly accused of belonging to the German Werwolf resistance, and other persons who were regarded by the Soviets as being potentially dangerous like journalists, teachers, policemen, farmers, factory owners and politicians in addition to a number of arbitrarily accused people. Conditions in the camp were characterized by bad sanitary conditions, malnutrition and lack of basic medical service. The camp had over 21,800 prisoners during its existence, including 1,490 women and over 1,300 teenagers. At most, it held 12,000 prisoners at a time. In 1946, around 3,000 prisoners were deported to the Gulag in the Soviet Union. On 8 February 1947, a further 1,000 prisoners, mostly youth, were also deported to an NKVD Gulag camp in Siberia, the NKVD Camp No. 7503/11 in Anschero-Sudschensk. In summer 1948, two thirds of the prisoners were released. On 17 September 1948, the remaining 3,000 prisoners were transferred to another NKVD camp, Special Camp No. 2 in Buchenwald. From there, a part was released in 1950, the remaining prisoners were handed over from the Soviets to the East German Communist government and brought to Waldheim on 9 and 13 February 1950, only to be "convicted" in the infamous Waldheim Processes. The camp in Mühlberg ceased operations in 1948.

Helmut Bischoff was a German SS-Obersturmbannführer and Nazi official. During World War II he was the leader of Einsatzkommando 1/IV in Poland and later headed the Gestapo offices in Poznań (Posen) and Magdeburg.

References

  1. "WWII: Behind Closed Doors", Episode 6 of 6. BBC. Broadcast on BBC 2, on Monday 15 December 2008.
  2. Butler, Desmond (2001-12-17). "Ex-Death Camp Tells Story Of Nazi and Soviet Horrors". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-04-27.
  3. 1 2 Cornelius, Kai Vom spurlosen Verschwindenlassen zur Benachrichtigungspflicht bei Festnahmen, BWV Verlag, 2004, p. 131, ISBN   3-8305-1165-5.
  4. Kinzer, Stephen (24 September 1992). "Germans Find Mass Graves at an Ex-Soviet Camp". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  5. 1 2 Petra Weber, Justiz und Diktatur: Justizverwaltung und politische Strafjustiz in Thüringen 1945–1961: Veröffentlichungen zur SBZ-/DDR -Forschung im Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2000, p. 99, ISBN   3-486-56463-3.
  6. Cornelius, p. 128.
  7. 1 2 Weber, p. 100.
  8. Cornelius, pp. 126, 133–134
  9. Hunt, Ruth; Linke, Maria Zeitner (1977). East Wind. Oxford: Lion Hudson. ISBN   0-85648-080-0.