"Freiheit!" The Liberation of the Camps Part I Quiz

Answer: Majdanek

The Red Army reached the Majdanek camp long after the Germans had taken most of the remaining prisoners on a Death March towards the West on April 1, 1944, yet the speed of the Red Army's advance halted the Nazis' plans to cover their tracks, and only the buidlings housing the crematoria were destroyed.

The Soviets found around 500 prisoners who had managed to hide from the Nazis, as well as mounds upon mounds of bones and shoes. Located in the city of Lublin itself, around 300,000 people passed through the camp, and of these about 78,000 were murdered.

In October of 2005, four former prisoners took archaeologists to the site of the camp, where they found over 50 personal items that had been buried by inmates, including watches and wedding rings.

Answer: Sobibor

Sobibor, operational since May of 1942, was the second of the "Operation Reinhard" camps, named for Reinhard Heydrich and built for the sole purpose of exterminating the Jews. Over 250,000 Jews were gassed with carbon monoxide. On October 14, 1943, Jewish inmate Leon Feldhendler and Russian POW Alexander Pechersky led almost the entire population of 600 prisoners in what is probably the most successful inmate revolt of the Holocaust. Armed with stolen guns and ammunition, their objective was to kill the entire SS staff at the camp and walk out through the main gates, but they were discovered by a passing Ukrainian SS guard who sounded the alarm, and had to scatter in all directions. Several of the prisoners were cut down by gunfire, even more were killed passing through the vast minefield that blanketed the perimeter. (The possibility of these mines going off is still a real threat today, believe it or not.) The Nazis murdered the remaining prisoners, then within a few days had razed the camp to the ground and planted the area with trees. As with the other Operation Reinhard camps, there was no one left to liberate, nor anything left to commemorate the dead after the war. There is only a large memorial mound of ashes and a rough-hewn statue of a mother clinging to her child in one final embrace. Recent archaelogical research in the area, combined with the accounts of the few survivors still alive and the only known aerial photograph of Sobibor, have accurately pinpointed the layout of the camp. Bone fragments and garbage pits filled with the belongings of the dead still cover the area.

Of the 300 prisoners who escaped from Sobibor, only around 50 lived to see the end of the war. Alexander Pechersky was imprisoned in a Soviet gulag after his return to the Russian front ... for allowing himself to be captured by the enemy. (An international outcry led to his release). Another escapee, Shlomo Sjmazner, emigrated to Brazil and was instrumental in locating the whereabouts of former camp Commandant Gustav Wagner, who committed suicide before he could be brought to trial. Leon Feldhendler returned to his home in Lublin, Poland, but was murdered by anti-Semitic Polish nationalists in April 1945.

Answer: Bergen-Belsen

The camp of Bergen-Belsen was initially established as POW camp Stalag XI-C in 1940, where over 18,000 prisoners died of cold and starvation by the time the camp was re-established as a "collection camp" in 1943. Towards the end of the war, when the Red Army began pushing into Nazi territory, hundreds of thousands of inmates from the camps in Eastern Poland were evacuated and forced to march to camps further to the West. Bergen-Belsen was one of the camps that received many of the prisoners. When Josef Kramer took over as the Kommandant in December of 1944, the population stood at around 15,000. By the time the camp was liberated, it had reached over 60,000. The death toll is listed as being close to 50,000, with almost 2/3 of the deaths occurring during the typhus epidemic in the early months of 1945. When British troops entered the camp, there were 13,000 unburied corpses lying in piles. Flame throwers were used to destoy the barracks to control the spread of the disease.

Anne Frank and her sister Margot died only a few weeks before the liberation.

Kommandant Kramer and 44 guards and others were tried in September-November 1945 by a British military tribunal. Eleven (including three women) were sentenced to death and hanged on 13 December 1945. This was the first of the major trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Answer: Buchenwald

One of the oldest and largest camps in the Reich, Buchenwald became operational in July of 1937 near the city of Weimar. Documents left by the SS state that around 238,380 prisoners passed through the camp during its existence. The estimated death toll is 56,545. Forced labor, illness, hunger, and medical experimentation were the main causes of inmate mortality. A partial evacuation took place on April 8, 1945, after which some of the remaining Communist prisoners killed the watchtower guards and took control of the Camp. American troops of the US Third Army Division arrived at 3:15 P.M. on April 11, 1945. (I am proud to work with the son of one of the men who was part of this regiment.) There, they found Ilse Koch's notorious collection of shrunken human heads and lampshades, book covers, gloves and handbags made from the tattooed skin of prisoners. Author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel was among the liberated inmates.

There is an excellent book on life at Buchenwald (and the whole system of camps) by Eugen Kogon (1903-1987) entitled "Der SS-Staat". It has been translated into English under the title "The Theory and Practice of Hell". Eugen Kogon was a prisoner at the camp from 1939-1945.

Answer: Theresienstadt

Theresienstadt was established by the Gestapo as a "model camp" in the fortress city of Terezin, Czechoslovakia on June 10, 1940. It functioned as a prison, ghetto, and transit center for those on route to the extermination camps in Poland. Theresienstadt became a Jewish enclave for 50,000 people, with adequate space for only for around 7,000. Of the 80,000 Czech Jews who died during the Holocaust, most of them died here. Among the dead was Esther Adolphine, Sigmund Freud's sister. Men and women in the camp/ghetto were not allowed to intermingle, and speaking to a Gentile without permission was punishable by death. Nevertheless, Theresienstadt was known for its efforts to keep Jewish culture and the faith and hope of the people alive during their darkest days. The adult population took great care to provide the children with education, artistic endeavors, and writing materials. Four orchestras and even a newsletter were found in the ghetto. But of the 15,000 children who lived there, only 1,100 survived the War. Hunger, stress, typhus, and deportations to Auschwitz claimed the lives of all but 17,200 of the 144,000 people sent to Theresienstadt. In 1944 Hitler allowed the Danish Red Cross to examine the camp in order to dispel the rumors of the life prisoners were said to be leading. Several thousand inmates were deported to Auschwitz so as not to make the area look overcrowded. Fake street signs and cafes were set up, and even a few plays were staged. Many of those who took part in the sanitized presentation were sent to their deaths afterwards, but it was enough to fool the Red Cross, who left satisfied with their visit. On May 1, the camp was turned over to the Red Cross, and on May 8 it was liberated by the Russians. Auguste Van Pels, known as "Petronella Van Daan" in the Secret Annex, either died on her way to the camp, or just after her arrival.

From 1914-1918, the prison in Terezin housed Gavrilo Princip, the man who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his pregnant wife Sophie, precipitating World War I.

Answer: Natzweiler-Struthof

Although there were several French-run camps such as Drancy and Vittel, they were mainly transit camps used as collection points for transports to the death camps. Natzweiler was the only German-run concentration camp in France when it became operational on May 21, 1941.

It had close to 55 satellite camps, which were evacuated by the Nazis in March, 1945. (The inmates were sent on a Death March towards Dachau.) Many of the prisoners were Resistance members who were being held as prisoners under Hitler's Night and Fog decree, in which political enemies of the Reich would be kidnaped and simply "disappear into the Night and Fog".

The main usage of the camp was forced labour, where the prisoners worked in granite quarries. A gas chamber and a crematorium were set up in order to murder Jews and Gypsies, providing "anatomical specimens" to the Strasbourg University medical program.

The labor, poor nutrition and harsh treatment by the SS led to 25,000 deaths out of the 44,000 prisoners who had passed through the camp.

Answer: Mauthausen

186 steps lined the Staircase of Death at Austria's main concentration camp. Emaciated prisoners who had been working in the huge granite quarries were made to carry stones weighing up to 100 pounds up this staircase. If they dropped them, they were either killed on the spot or made to pick them up and start over again. Several prisoners who couldn't keep up either leapt to their deaths, or were thrown over the edge. Mauthausen began operations on August 8, 1938, when the first shipment of prisoners from Dachau arrived to work in the quarry. As time passed, the camp grew to several satellites including Gusen, Melk, and Ebensee. Mauthausen was the only camp in the entire Reich to be given "Grade III" status, meaning it was to give the harshest possible conditions to "enemies of the Reich". Because of this, its main population of workers were members of the intelligentsia, who were to be exterminated through labor. With the Allies approaching, the SS deserted the camp on May 3, leaving only a few Viennese firefighters and older soldiers behind to guard the 80,000 prisoners left behind, among them famed Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. The true death toll may never be known, as the Germans destroyed much of the paperwork and files related to the main camp and its' satellites. They would also give new prisoners the same camp numbers as those who had already died. Conservative estimates put the final death toll of the entire Mauthausen system at 37,411.

Peter van Pels, Anne Frank's burgeoning romantic interest in the Secret Annex, died here on May 2 after a death March from Auschwitz, only 3 days before the camp was liberated. He had been with Otto Frank at Auschwitz, and decided to take his chances on the march westward rather than stay in the camp.

Answer: Nordhausen

Also known as Dora or Mittlebau, Nordhausen was established on August 28, 1943. Prisoners from Buchenwald were initially brought in to begin work on the rockets. In time, the camp would come to house over 32,500 inmates of various nationalities, mainly Polish, Russian, and French. Conditions were extreme; the prisoners suffered daily beatings, physical and mental torture, starvation, and execution on a whim. Albert Speer and Werner von Braun both visited the camp to check on the progress of the rockets being made.

By the time the Americans arrived, most of the prisoners had already been sent on Death Marches to Bergen-Belsen and Sachsenhausen. Only those who were dying were left behind. A museum is now housed in the camp crematorium, one of only two buildings left intact.

At least 20,000 prisoners died there.

Answer: Chelmno

Beginning in 1941, Chelmno became the first extermination camp and the final resting place for over 320,000 residents of Lodz and the Warthegau region of Poland, as well as 88 children from the Czech village of Lidice. Gassing operations began on December 7, 1941 in which carbon monoxide fumes were pumped into 3 hermetically sealed vans.

A large manor house on the property was used as a reception area for the prisoners to undress and hand over their valuables. By June 1943, almost the entire Jewish population of the Warthegau was dead, so Chelmno was able to close down.

The manor house was blown up at this time. The camp was reestablished on June 23, 1944 when the Lodz Ghetto was liquidated. A further 20,000 Jews were gassed. In September, a group of Sonderkommando (special groups of Jewish men chosen to clean up after extermination operations) were dispatched as part of Aktion 1005, the orders to obliterate all traces of mass murder in the death camps.

They were made to dig up the mass graves at the camp site and burn the bodies.

Afterwards, they too were killed and burned. Their work done, the Germans simply left the camp as the Russians approached. As with the other death camps, there is nothing left other than memorials placed on the site where it once stood.

Answer: Dachau

The only camp to run through the entire Holocaust, Dachau was established on 22 March 1933, mainly to house political prisoners. It was the camp that all the others were modelled on, and the second one to be liberated by the Western Allies. When they arrived, the Americans found 30 cattle cars, each filled with over 100 bodies. In addition, there were 32,000 inmates crammed into barracks fit to house only around 250 people each. In a fit of rage, some of the troops opened fire. Twelve SS men were shot in the coal storage area and another four soldiers who had already surrendered were killed while descending from a watchtower. Only two soldiers were court-martialled, and General George Patton, who had been recently appointed the military governor of Bavaria, refused to press any charges. In the 12 years it was operational Dachau housed over 200,000 prisoners, of whom 32,000 died of disease, malnutrition, and the typhus epidemic that ravaged the camps in early 1945.

If anyone wants to hear a beautiful, haunting song about the camp (although it could be about any of the camps in general), I suggest searching out "Ghosts of Dachau" by The Style Council. The lyrics are amazing, and the melody is breathtaking.