The evacuation of the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig and its satellite sub-camps in January 1945 produced one of the worst single death tolls of the death marches, partly because the SS chose to move a substantial portion of the prisoners by sea. Around 50,000 prisoners were evacuated from the Stutthof complex. Around half died.
The land marches
Stutthof itself held around 25,000 prisoners at the start of the evacuation, mostly Jewish women who had been transferred there from Auschwitz and from labour sites in the Baltic states. The land columns set off westward along the Baltic coast in January 1945 in conditions comparable to the Auschwitz march: deep snow, temperatures well below freezing, prisoners in camp clothing with no adequate footwear, no food, and guards who shot anyone who could not keep pace. The route ran along the Baltic coast through Pomerania, crowded with German military units retreating westward and civilian refugees fleeing the Soviet advance. The prisoners were the lowest priority on the road.
Some columns reached camps in Pomerania and were absorbed into already overcrowded facilities. Many columns never arrived anywhere identifiable. Prisoners were shot at the roadside, died of cold and exhaustion in ditches, or were driven into the Baltic Sea. Around 17,000 prisoners died on the land marches from Stutthof.
The sea evacuations
For a portion of the Stutthof prisoners the SS attempted evacuation by barge along the Baltic coast. The barges were overcrowded, unheated, and provided with no food or water. Several barges were driven aground by winter storms; in some cases SS guards shot prisoners who tried to escape the stricken vessels or prevented local people from bringing food and water to those aboard. The death rate on the sea evacuations was extremely high.
In late April 1945, as Soviet forces reached the coast and the remaining Stutthof prisoners were being evacuated by whatever means were available, several hundred prisoners were driven into the sea near Palmnicken (now Yantarny in the Russian Kaliningrad enclave). Guards fired into the crowd. The Palmnicken massacre of late January 1945 killed approximately 3,000 prisoners; it is one of the single largest killings of the death march period.
Liberation
The surviving prisoners of the Stutthof evacuations who remained in the camp or in nearby areas were liberated by Soviet forces on 9 May 1945, the last day of the war in Europe. Of the estimated 110,000 prisoners who had passed through the Stutthof complex over its six-year existence, approximately 65,000 had died there or on its evacuation routes. The commandant of Stutthof, Paul Werner Hoppe, was tried by a West German court in 1955 and sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment.
See also
Sources
- Daniel Blatman, The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide, Harvard University Press, 2011
- Yad Vashem, The Death Marches, encyclopedia.ushmm.org
- Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Little, Brown, 2015
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Stutthof, encyclopedia.ushmm.org
- Testimony of Stutthof survivors, Yad Vashem Archives