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Przemysłowa
Concentration Camp
The Camp,
the Children, the Trials
Katarzyna Person
Johannes-Dieter Steinert
The Holocaust and its Contexts
Series Editors
Ben Barkow
The Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association
Huddersfield, UK
Suzanne Bardgett
Imperial War Museum
London, UK
More than sixty years on, the Holocaust remains a subject of intense
debate with ever-widening ramifications. This series aims to demonstrate
the continuing relevance of the Holocaust and related issues in contempo-
rary society, politics and culture; studying the Holocaust and its history
broadens our understanding not only of the events themselves but also of
their present-day significance. The series acknowledges and responds to
the continuing gaps in our knowledge about the events that constituted
the Holocaust, the various forms in which the Holocaust has been remem-
bered, interpreted and discussed, and the increasing importance of the
Holocaust today to many individuals and communities.
Katarzyna Person
Johannes-Dieter Steinert
Przemysłowa
Concentration Camp
The Camp, the Children, the Trials
Katarzyna Person Johannes-Dieter Steinert
Jewish Historical Institute University of Wolverhampton
Warsaw, Poland Wolverhampton, UK
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Acknowledgements
It is a long time since our first discussion about working on a joint project
to produce a co-authored manuscript and finally a book. Over the course
of our journey, we have received a great deal of support, and we know that
we would have never succeeded without the help of family members,
friends, colleagues, and the patient and helpful members of staff at many
archives. These have included the IPN Archive in Warsaw, the City Archive
in Łódź, the University Archive in Bremen, the State Archives of the Free
and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, the ITS in Bad Arolsen, the US Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington DC, the Marek Edelman Dialogue
Center in Łódź, and the Hebrew University’s Kestenberg Archive in
Jerusalem.
We have to thank Sharon Kangisser Cohen (Yad Vashem) who helped
us enormously with the testimonies from the Kestenberg Archive, Ewa
Wiatr and Adam Sitarek (University of Łódź) who advised us on particular
aspects of wartime Łódź, and Artur Ossowski (IPN Łódź) who shared
with us his profound knowledge of the camp staff and the post-war trials.
Waldemar Spallek created a map of the camp. John Benson, Mike Dennis,
and Metka Potočnik (all University of Wolverhampton) encouraged us
during the course of many discussions.
We also have to thank our academic institutions, the Jewish Historical
Institute in Warsaw and the Institute for Historical Research in
Wolverhampton, for all their support, and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute
for Holocaust Studies for the award of a Research Fellowship.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Last but not least, we thank our publisher Palgrave Macmillan and—in
particular—the editors of the series “The Holocaust and its Contexts”,
Suzanne Bardgett and Ben Barkow, first for accepting our manuscript and
subsequently for providing a range of invaluable academic and linguis-
tic advice.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 The Camp 13
3 The Children 75
4 The Trials163
5 Conclusion225
Bibliography235
Name Index243
Place Index249
vii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
In the early 1970s, more than one hundred men and women relayed their
wartime memories to a court in the Polish city of Łódź. They talked about
months and years of suffering they had endured in a camp next to the
ghetto in Łódź, then re-named Litzmannstadt, the only purpose-built
camp for children under the age of 16 years in German occupied Europe.
The camp, which was at the centre of the former prisoners’ narratives, had
up until then hardly existed in public consciousness. It was only decades
after the war that public awareness and knowledge about this unique camp
grew. It took decades before the first article was published about it, and
before the West German government officially recognized it as a
concentration camp.1 This book is about the camp at Przemysłowa or the
Polen-Jugendverwahrlager der Sicherheitspolizei in Litzmannstadt. It is
1
In 1969 the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen included the camp in its pre-
liminary register of concentration camps and detention centres. In 1977 the West German
government officially recognized the Polen-Jugendverwahrlager as a concentration camp.
Vorläufiges Verzeichnis der Konzentratioonslager und deren Außenkommandos sowie anderer
Haftstätten unter dem Reichsführer-SS in Deutschland und deutsche besetzten Gebieten
(1933–1945) (Arolsen: Internationaler Suchdienst, 1969), 513. See also: Joseph Robert
White, “Polish youth custody camp of the Security Police Litzmannstadt,” in: Encyclopedia
of camps and ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. I, part B (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2009), 1527; Bundesgesetzblatt, Teil I, 24.09.1977, 1814.
about the establishment of the camp, about the experience of the child
prisoners, and about the post-war investigations and trials.
As a “camp for young criminals” Przemysłowa was for many years not
considered to be worthy of recognition and memorialization. There was
no physical trace of it in the bustling post-war industrial city of Łódź, and
little memory among its over 750,000 inhabitants. The Polen-
Jugendverwahrlager der Sicherheitspolizei in Litzmannstadt did not fit any
official narrative of wartime heroism and most of the witnesses testifying
in court were by this point very sick. The torture and malnourishment,
which they had endured in childhood, had left clear traces on their bodies
and minds. Many of them had their education truncated by their impris-
onment in the camp and had never returned to school once freed from it.
Some were brought to testify in the court from prisons, some from hospi-
tals. Even those who had homes to return to and managed to re-build
their lives never spoke publicly about what had happened to them during
the war. Nobody asked and they did not volunteer. The camp had broken
them, just as it was intended to.
The camp at Przemysłowa existed for just over two years, from
December 1942 until January 1945. During that time, an unknown num-
ber of children, mainly Polish nationals, were imprisoned there and sub-
jected to extreme physical and emotional abuse. On leaving the camp they
received hardly any help. While some were able to return home, many
ended up enduring a difficult life in post-war orphanages or simply
attempting to make it alone, sometimes together with fellow former camp
inmates, navigating the chaos of early post-war Poland. For almost all, the
consequences of what they had endured in the camp remained with them
for the rest of their lives.
It is unknown what happened to the camp files at the end of the war.
Some were undoubtedly destroyed by the retreating Germans, some were
randomly taken away by former prisoners, Soviet soldiers, Polish citizens,
and the post-war inhabitants of the former camp area. We know for exam-
ple that a female prisoner, then 14, on leaving the camp took with her
both her own and her brother’s complete camp files and about 200 pho-
tographs as well as a name index of the girl prisoners.2 The surviving docu-
ments are today available in the archives of the Institute of National
Remembrance in Warsaw (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, IPN), which also
holds camp-related documents collected by the Chief Commission for the
Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation in Warsaw. Most, but by
far not all, contemporary camp documents are likewise researchable in the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (which also holds a rich col-
lection of microfilmed files from the German city administration of occu-
pied Łódź). The University Archive Bremen (Stiftung für Sozialgeschichte
des 20. Jahrhunderts, SfS) keeps photocopied documents collected by the
late Michael Hepp, a historian who also gave parts of his collection to the
ITS in Bad Arolsen. The Staatsarchiv Hamburg holds the German inves-
tigation files, which include photocopies of the key documents from the
IPN archives. In addition to the remaining contemporary camp docu-
ments, the City Archives in Łódź holds a number of files from the German
wartime city administration and the German ghetto administration. The
latter are also available online.
The documents in the IPN archives include some correspondence
about the origins and the building of the camp in occupied Łódź and its
sub-camp in Dzierża ̨zna near Zgierz, a series of medical reports
(Sanitätsberichte), a camp ledger (Lagerbuch) from Dzierża ̨zna, some gen-
eral correspondence between the main camp and the sub-camp, a collec-
tion of death certificates, financial and agricultural production statistics
from Dzierża ̨zna and a collection of personal files from camp guards and
camp staff. Among the documents collected by the Chief Commission for
the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a series of applica-
tions (Anträge auf Einweisung) from the Katowice area (mainly from
criminal police and welfare offices) which provide the alleged reasons for
deporting children to the camp. Additionally, the IPN archives include
files from the post-war trials of members of the camp staff and guards as
2
Józef Witkowski, Hitlerowski obóz koncentracyjny dla małoletnich w Łodzi (Wrocław,
Warszawa, Kraków, Gdańsk: Zakład Narodowy Im. Ossolińskich, 1975), 275.
4 K. PERSON AND J.-D. STEINERT
3
The first results were published in Maria Niemyska-Hessenowa, “Dzieci w „lagru” w
Łodzi,” Służba Społeczna no 1 (1946): 79–85.
1 INTRODUCTION 5
their past. Of particular interest are the alleged reasons why children were
deported to the camp and how they experienced their deportation, their
living and working conditions in the camp, their relationships with other
prisoners, their perceptions of the guards and the camp staff, as well as
forms of non-conformant behaviour and resistance. A part of the book will
be dedicated to their experiences of liberation and their attempts to find a
place in the post-war world. In order to contextualize these individual
experiences, it was important to describe the historical background,
including the changing role of the criminal police in National Socialist
Germany and German occupied Poland, the German occupation policy,
the situation of Polish minors in general and in the so-called annexed ter-
ritories and in occupied Łódź in particular.
While central parts of the study are based on post-war accounts—mainly
from former child prisoners but also from guards and camp staff, includ-
ing some of the leaders—other parts are based on contemporary German
documents as well on Polish and German documents produced in the
course of post-war trials and legal investigations, the vast majority of them
in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These sources complement each other
and allow us to research and portray the camp in a way which would have
been impossible using only official documentation. Thus, this study analy-
ses personal accounts as historical sources by using the tools of qualitative
historical interpretation. By doing so, the study is located in the context of
our own most recent research on Polish, Soviet, and Jewish forced child
labour4 and the history of the post-war search for retribution,5 but also in
the tradition of historians like Yehuda Bauer,6 Omer Bartov,7 and
4
Johannes-Dieter Steinert, Deportation und Zwangsarbeit. Polnische und sowjetische Kinder
im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland und im besetzten Osteuropa 1939–1945 (Essen:
Klartext Verlag, 2013); Johannes-Dieter Steinert, Holocaust und Zwangsarbeit. Erinnerungen
jüdischer Kinder 1938–1945 (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2018).
5
Katarzyna Person, “Jews denouncing Jews. Denunciations of putative collaborators and
reactions to them in the postwar Jewish Courts of Honor,” in: Jewish Honor Courts: Revenge,
Retribution, and Reconciliation in Europe and Israel after the Holocaust eds. G. Finder,
L. Jockusch (Detroit. Wayne State University Press, 2015), 225–246; Katarzyna Person,
“Building a Community of Survivors in Post-War Jewish Honor Courts: the case of Regina
Kupiec,” in: Shoah: Ereignis und Erinnerung ed. A. Bothe, M. Schärtl, S. Schüler-Springorum
(Berlin: Hentrich&Hentrich, 2018), 171–184.
6
Yehuda Bauer, The Death of the Shtetl (New Heaven: Yale University Press, 2009).
7
Omer Bartov, Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (New
York: Simon and Shuster, 2018).
6 K. PERSON AND J.-D. STEINERT
Christopher Browning,8 to name just a few, who in their work have impres-
sively demonstrated the advantages of using both contemporary docu-
ments and personal accounts, including those submitted many years after
the described events.
In 1999 Ulrike Jureit presented a ground-breaking study regarding the
interpretation of personal accounts and the importance of comparing data
found in a range of sources in order to establish a critical mass that justifies
broad deductions and an integration of the research results into broader
social and societal contexts.9 However, the possibilities of such deduc-
tions—as much as they belong to the daily life of historians—are limited
by the boundaries in which the sources have been created. Individual
memories do not always confirm and complement each other. Instead,
they represent the diversity of human experience and provide a multidi-
mensional and multifaceted picture of the past.10 Accounts in short are not
impartial and objective but individual and subjective. They manifest reflec-
tions about memories and are often problematic for establishing “hard
facts”, a problem lawyers had to face during the post-war investigations
and trials. Witnesses approach and view the past in a different way to his-
torians, who often read sources against the grain and compare data gleaned
from different sources.
Furthermore, there is the “problem of the incommunicable”, as the
psychologist Henry Greenspan termed it. Even if survivors feel free to tell
their story in the way they want to tell it, they still have to decide what and
what not to tell. The context of an account is therefore characterized by
what the narrators regard as “tellable” and what they judge to be “hear-
able” on the recipients’ side. To quote Greenspan: “It constitutes a double
transaction comprising an inner dialogue, always embattled, between sur-
vivors’ speech and survivors’ memories, and outer dialogue, equally con-
tested, between survivors and their listeners”.11 As a consequence, most
survivors choose a series of short episodes, representing both good and
8
Christopher Browning, Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp (New
York: W.W. Norton, 2010).
9
Ulrike Jureit, Erinnerungsmuster. Zur Methodik lebensgeschichtlicher Interviews mit
Überlebenden der Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager (Hamburg: Ergebnisse-Verlag,
1999), 386, 393f.
10
Omer Bartov, “Wartime Lies and Other Testimonies: Jewish-Christian Relations in
Buczacz, 1939–1944,” East European Politics and Societies vol. 25, no. 3 (2011), 506.
11
Henry Greenspan, “Survivors’ Accounts,” in: The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies,
eds. Peter Hayes; John K. Roth (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 417.
1 INTRODUCTION 7
12
Greenspan, “Survivors’ Accounts,” 420 and 422.
13
Carolyn J. Dean, The Moral Witness. Trials and Testimony after Genocide (Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 2019), 8.
14
Jon A. Shaw, “Children, adolescents and trauma,” Psychiatric Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 3
(2000), 230.
8 K. PERSON AND J.-D. STEINERT
trauma, and after the war they recovered faster than older prisoners.15
Such greater resilience can be explained by the fact that children were able
to adapt more quickly than adults to the realities of a camp; they could
“prove” themselves and present themselves as “model workers”.16 The
study will show that such general statements were only partially applicable
to the survivors of the Przemysłowa concentration camp. A key factor in
their adaptation to camp life, just as important as age, were previous expe-
riences: whether children had come to Przemysłowa having endured other
prisons or if they had come straight from home; whether they had come
from a stable, caring family background or if they had spent the early war-
time years surviving on their own or with other children, living on the
streets, or on the move through German occupied territory. All of these
affected the way in which they experienced their imprisonment at
Przemysłowa.
“Children experienced the camps not only in a different way, they also
remember them differently”, noted psychologist Andrea Reiter.17 Barbara
Bauer and Waltraud Strickhausen made a similar argument: “Children
experience differently, they do not have an interpretation system to classify
their experience; they are still developing it. They keep in their memory
what has impressed, astonished, delighted and worried them in a different
way. They memorize cruel scenes more sustainably than adults”.18 As will
be shown in this study, the same applies to the experience of friendship
and camaraderie.19
It should also be underlined that the testimonies quoted in this book
were significantly shaped by the post-war experiences of their authors.
Some were still young when the war ended and so these included aban-
donment, lack of recognition of their experiences, difficulties with
15
Shamai Davidson, Holding on to humanity: the message of Holocaust survivors: the Shamai
Davidson papers, ed. Israel W. Charny (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 145f.
16
Sara Ghitis and Ruth Weinberger, “Jüdische Sklavenarbeit. Lebensgeschichten aus den
USA,” in: Hitlers Sklaven. Lebensgeschichtliche Analysen zur Zwangsarbeit im internationalen
Vergleich, eds. Alexander von Plato, Almut Leh and Christoph Thonfeld (Wien, Köln,
Weimar: Böhlau 2008), 324–335.
17
Andrea Reiter, “Die Funktion der Kinderperspektive in der Darstellung des Holocausts,”
in: ‘Für ein Kind war das anders’.Traumatische Erfahrungen jüdischer Kinder und
Jugendlicher im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, ed. Barbara Bauer, Waltraut Strickhausen
(Berlin: Metropol-Verlag, 1999), 216f.
18
Barbara Bauer, Waltraut Strickhausen, “Einleitung und Tagungsprotokoll,” in: ‘Für ein
Kind war das anders’.., 15.
19
Ghitis and Weinberger, “Jüdische Sklavenarbeit,” 334.
1 INTRODUCTION 9
1.3 Historiographic Context
Our study is integrated into several different areas of historiography. First,
it is part of the emerging research on German occupation policy in Eastern
Europe, in particular in Poland, which will be analysed in the first chapter
of the book. Secondly, it is rooted in research on German and Polish com-
memoration of the atrocities carried out by German civil and military
authorities in occupied Poland—including the public and academic inter-
est the history of Przemysłowa concentration camp has raised internation-
ally. The chapter “Memory of the Camp” will analyse the main aspects of
these developments.
Furthermore, our analysis contributes to the history of children and
childhood which has become a vital field since Philippe Ariès’s ground-
breaking 1960 book L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien regime.20
Ariès’s work has inspired generations of historians, and it is safe to say that
the amount of research conducted on children in the Second World War
and its aftermath would have been hardly possible without it. Research in
this area has focussed on a variety of aspects; yet the majority of books and
articles have concentrated on German, Jewish, and Eastern European chil-
dren. Among the early monographs were Dorothy Macardle’s Children of
Europe. A Study of the children of liberated countries: Their wartime experi-
ence, their reactions, and their need, with a note on Germany from 1949,21
and Kiryl Sosnowski’s The Tragedy of Children under Nazi Rule, pub-
lished in 1962 in a Polish and English edition.22 The latter focussed in
particular on Polish, Jewish, and German children during and after the
war and mentioned briefly the children’s camp in occupied Łódź.23
20
Philippe Ariès, L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien regime (Paris: Plon 1960).
21
Dorothy Macardle, Children of Europe. A Study of the children of liberated countries:
Their war-time experience, their reactions, and their need, with a note on Germany (London:
Victor Gollancz 1949).
22
Kiryl Sosnowski, The Tragedy of Children under Nazi Rule (Warsaw: Zachodnia Agencja
Prasowa 1962).
23
Sosnowski, The Tragedy of Children, pp. 98f.
10 K. PERSON AND J.-D. STEINERT
24
Debóra Dwork, Children with a Star. Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press 1991).
25
Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World. The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web (New York:
A. A. Knopf 2005).
26
Nicholas Stargardt, Witnesses of War. Children’s Lives Under the Nazis (London:
J. Cape 2005).
27
Kindheiten im Zweiten Weltkrieg, eds. Francesca Weil, André Postert, Alfons Kenkmann
(Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag 2018).
28
The Young Victims of the Nazi Regime. Migration, the Holocaust and Postwar
Displacement, eds. Simone Gigliotti and Monica Tempian (London: Bloomsbury 2016).
1 INTRODUCTION 11
29
Freilegungen. Rebuilding Lives–Child Survivors and DP Children in the Aftermath of the
Holocaust and Forced Labor, eds. Henning Borggräfe et al. (Göttingen: Wallstein
Verlag 2017).
30
Jewish Families in Europe, 1939-Present: History, Representation, and Memory, ed. Joanna
Beata Michlic (Waltham: Brandeis University Press 2017).
31
Starting Anew. The Rehabilitation of Child Survivors of the Holocaust in the Early Postwar
Years, eds. Sharon Kangisser Cohen and Dalia Ofer (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem 2019).
32
Johannes-Dieter Steinert, Deportation und Zwangsarbeit. Polnische und Sowjetische
Kinder im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland und im besetzten Osteuropa (Essen: Klartext
Verlag 2013).
33
Johannes-Dieter Steinert, Holocaust und Zwangsarbeit. Erinnerungen jüdischer Kinder
1938–1945 (Essen: Klartext Verlag 2018).
34
Roman Hrabar, Zofia Tokarz, Jacek E. Wilczur, Kinder im Krieg–Krieg gegen Kinder:
Die Geschichte der polnischen Kinder 1939–1945 (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt 1981).
CHAPTER 2
The Camp
1
Petra Götte, Jugendstrafvollzug im “Dritten Reich”: diskutiert und realisiert–erlebt und
erinnert (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 2003), 74.
2
Thomas Roth, “Von den „Antisozialen” zu den „Asozialen”. Ideologie und Struktur
kriminalpolizeilicher „Verbrechensbekämpfung” im Nationalsozialismus,” in: „Minderwertig”
und „asozial”. Stationen der Verfolgung gesellschaftlicher Außenseiter, ed. Dietmar Sedlaczek
et al. (Zürich: Chronos, 2005), 69.
3
Roth, “Von den „Antisozialen” zu den „Asozialen”,” 66.
4
Roth, “Von den „Antisozialen“zu den „Asozialen”,” 71f.
5
Götte, Jugendstrafvollzug im “Dritten Reich”, 69; Patrick Wagner, Hitlers Kriminalisten.
Die deutsche Kriminalpolizei und der Nationalsozialismus zwischen 1920 und 1960 (München:
C.H. Beck Verlag, 2002), 75.
2 THE CAMP 15
1933 and his career took off in September of that year with his appoint-
ment as the first head of the new State Criminal Police in Baden. Supported
by Arthur Nebe, in May 1937 Paul Werner was promoted as his deputy in
Berlin and tasked with the internal organization of the Reich Criminal
Police Office. At the end of 1937 he held the rank of SS Sturmbannführer.6
Paul Werner’s National Socialist vision for the new Criminal Police
became apparent in two articles published in 1941 and 1944. In his 1941
article, he focussed on criminal and verwahrloste minors. The German
word verwahrlost has different meanings, depending on the context: dis-
solute, neglect, self-neglect, unkempt, decadent. In the following “disso-
lute” and “youth dissolution” will be used as the general terms if the
context is not unambiguous (as it is in most of the documents). Werner
emphasized that in the area of crime prevention the work of the Criminal
Police was not to follow existing law but rather the will of the govern-
ment, as expressed by the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection
of the People and the State (Verordnung des Reichspäsidenten zum Schutz
von Volk und Staat), issued on 28 February 1933.7 Three years later, in his
1944 article, he justified the work of the police outside existing laws as
“institutional authorization”: the Führer had empowered the police by
published and unpublished orders, which covered both the tasks and the
methods. These orders had not been communicated to the police in gen-
eral but to the police leadership only and authorized the police leadership
to establish the necessary regulations. They were designed to fall in line
with the National Socialist concept of life within the people’s community
and were closely monitored by the Führer and his representatives.8
One of the first tasks Paul Werner took over in Berlin was to compile a
decree on police crime prevention, which was published by the Reich
Minister of the Interior on 14 December 1937.9 It standardized the prac-
tice of taking the so-called Berufsverbrecher and Gewohnheitsverbrecher
(professional criminals and habitual offenders) into preventive detention
6
Wagner, Hitlers Kriminalisten, 89.
7
Paul Werner, “Die Maßnahmen der Kriminalpolizei gegen verwahrloste und kriminelle
Minderjährige. Polizeiliche Jugendschutzlager,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Wohlfahrtspflege,
vol. 16, no. 11/12, Feb/March 1941, 274f.
8
Paul Werner, “Die Einweisung in die polizeilichen Jugendschutzlager,” in: Zum neuen
Jugendstrafrecht. Vorträge auf der Reichsarbeitstagung der Jugendrichter, Jugendstaatsanwälte
und Gebietsrechtsreferenten der Hitler-Jugend anläßlich der Verkündung des neuen
Reichsjugendgerichtsgesetzes, Berlin 1944, 96.
9
Wagner, Hitlers Kriminalisten, 89.
16 K. PERSON AND J.-D. STEINERT
14
Werner, “Die Maßnahmen der Kriminalpolizei gegen verwahrloste und kriminelle
Minderjährige,” 277.
15
Werner, “Die Maßnahmen der Kriminalpolizei gegen verwahrloste und kriminelle
Minderjährige,” 278.
16
Jürgen Harder, “Introduction to youth camps,” in: Encyclopedia of camps and ghettos,
1933–1945, 1525.
17
Harder, “Introduction to youth camps,” 1525.
18
Patrick Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher. Konzeptionen und Praxis der
Kriminalpolizei in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik und des Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg:
Wallstein, 1996), 376; Guse, “Haftgrund „Gemeinschaftsfremder”,” 134.
18 K. PERSON AND J.-D. STEINERT
with a unit of the Freikorps in Upper Silesia, before fighting French occu-
pation in the Rhineland. In 1921 Ritter finally made his Abitur and began
his academic career. Nine years later, in 1930, he received his doctorate in
medicine from the University of Heidelberg. Afterwards he worked in
psychiatric clinics in Zürich and Tübingen. He was awarded his Habilitation
in 1936, and in the same year started to work in the Reich Health Office
(Reichsgesundheitsamt), where he took a zealous approach to the persecu-
tion of Sinti and Roma. By developing a registration and classification
system, he paved the way for their deportation to concentration and death
camps. Ritter had encountered Paul Werner when he collected data for his
Habilitation in Karlsruhe.19 A few years later, at the end of 1941, Werner
supported Ritter to become Head of the Criminal-Biological Institute of
the Security Police, which was incorporated into the Reich Criminal Police
Office. Soon after, Ritter established a department of his institute inside
the Moringen youth protection camp. He aimed to continue his research
and to develop a preventive “racial hygienic campaign against criminals”,
which amounted to experiments and selections conducted on the young
prisoners based on pseudoscientific criminal and hereditary theories.20 On
24 June 1942, Ritter defined the purpose of the youth camps in a letter to
the camps in Moringen, Uckermark, and the concentration camp in
Ravensbrück. It was, he wrote, to “examine the inmates for criminal-
biological traits, to support those who can still be members of the com-
munity so that they can take their place in the national community while
holding those who are uneducable until their final accommodation else-
where, making use of their labour”.21
The camps in Moringen and Uckermark remained operational almost
until the end of the war. Both were planned and constructed mainly for
German minors who were destined to stay there until either some form of
successful educational outcome had been attained or the prisoners had
reached the age limit for detainment in a concentration camp, a labour
camp, or a labour education camp for adults. The aims of these camps,
Paul Werner stated in 1941, were custody and education (Bewahrung und
Erziehung), by work and instructions, as well as by firm military
19
Wagner, Hitlers Kriminalisten, 95–97.
20
Jürgen Harder, Joseph Robert White, “Youth protection camp Moringen,” in:
Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1531.
21
Harder, White, “Youth protection camp Moringen,”1531.
2 THE CAMP 19
discipline.22 In this, the camps Moringen and Uckermark were very similar
to the camp at Przemysłowa, although the upper age limit was different.
Additionally, the children’s camp in occupied Łódź—the subject of this
book—served also the racist German occupation policies in Poland as well
as the Germanization of the annexed territories.
22
Werner, “Die Maßnahmen der Kriminalpolizei gegen verwahrloste und kriminelle
Minderjährige,” 279.
23
Lodz im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Deutsche Selbstzeugnisse über Alltag, Lebenswelten und
NS-Germanisierungspolitik in einer multiethnischen Stadt, eds. Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg,
Marlene Klatt (Osnabrück: Fiber Verlag, 2015), 46, 306.
24
Joseph Robert White, “Polish youth custody camp of the Security Police
Litzmannstadt,” 1527.
20 K. PERSON AND J.-D. STEINERT
under discussion at the same time. There was no evidence that it was
intended to serve a purpose other than these camps, let alone that it would
accommodate children under the age of 16. It seems that the lower age
limit was a later development based on the fact that non-German children
could legitimately be deported to one of the “regular” concentration
camps at the age of 16 or over.25 Additionally, there were local and regional
German ambitions to solve social problems caused by the occupation pol-
icy by brutal solutions, including the imprisonment of children in a special
concentration camp.
From the very beginning of German occupation of Łódź, German offi-
cials kept detailed records of complaints about criminal, dissolute, and
depraved Polish youth. The German occupation forces (including the city
administration and the police) were fully aware that most of the social
problems, in particular those affecting Polish children and juveniles, were
a direct result of decisions made at a local, regional, and national level.
These were analysed in some detail and included: the temporary break-
down of the local economy in September and October 1939, forced
migration caused by the invasion, the deportations of approximately
75,000 Jews and Poles into the General Government (1939–1941), the
deportation of more than 100,000 Polish forced workers to Germany, the
inward movement of Germans from the so-called Altreich and in particu-
lar of ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union following the 1939
Ribbentrop—Molotov agreement, the mass movement of Jews into the
ghetto and of non-Jews out of the designated ghetto area, the arrest of
1500 citizens and mass murder of 500 citizens regarded as the intelligen-
tsia and elite of the city, the billeting of German troops and National
Socialist organizations on a large scale in city premises, including school
buildings, and in this context—but also as a result of German occupation
policy—the permanent closure of Polish schools in December 1939.26
In September 1940, the Criminal Police Office in occupied Łódź stated
in a letter to the Inspector of the Security Police and SD in Poznań that
the office had repeatedly warned about the increase of youth criminality
caused by the deportation of Polish workers to Germany and the
25
ITS/1.1.22.0.O.Nr.3, Doc 78733350, RSHA, Behandlung jugendlicher Ostarbeiter,
29.1.1943.
26
Bömelburg and Klatt, Lodz im Zweiten Weltkrieg, 26, 43.
2 THE CAMP 21
enormous distress and material need among the remaining family mem-
bers.27 A year later, the office cited the lack of schools as the main reason
for the unruliness of Polish children which was resulting in black market
activities, smuggling, pickpocketing, and other thieving as well as in beg-
ging. However, for the Chief of the Police (Polizeipräsident), Dr. Wilhelm
Albert, it was also the “character predisposition of the Pole per se” that
contributed to this situation. “There are Polish parents”, stated Albert,
“who do not only neglect their children but also encourage them to com-
mit crimes”. According to Albert, Polish children often started their crimi-
nal career as early as seven. Additionally, he characterized the Polish
population as inferior and demanded that “asocial elements” should as far
as possible be kept separate from the German population.28
Although the consequences of German occupation policies were clearly
recognized in the internal German reports, the frequent references to
“race” aimed to minimize German responsibility. While the German
authorities recognized an increase in criminality and negligence among
German children, they responded to it by blaming the Polish children for
influencing their German peers.29 These reproaches were encouraged by
the housing conditions in occupied Łódź and the close cohabitation of
Polish and German families in most parts of the city.30 German statistics—
although of dubious quality, not at least due to ideological premises—
stated that in 1939/1940 in Łódź 400,000 Poles lived together with
60,000 “Germans” and 230,000 Jews. By 1943 the demographic situa-
tion had changed to 350,000 Poles, 80–100,000 Jews, and 107,000
Germans and ethnic Germans who had signed the ethnic German register
(Volksliste).31
The German response to the increased youth negligence and criminal-
ity was not to solve the social problems with social measures, such as re-
opening Polish schools. Instead, there was an increased demand for the
racial segregation of the Polish population, including the imprisonment of
27
IPN Ld 1/284, Kriminalpolizeistelle Litzmannstadt to Inspekteur der Sicherheitspolizei
und des SD in Posen, 10.9.1940.
28
IPN GK 310/197 t.22, Kriminalpolizeistelle Litzmannstadt, Albert, Vorschlag über die
Beschäftigung und Arbeitsverteilung der in das Jugendverwahrlager einzuweisenden pol-
nischen Jugendlichen, 30.8.1941.
29
ITS/1.1.22.0.O.Nr.3, Doc 78733309, Stadtrat Litzmannstadt, 16.6.1941.
30
Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi 31798, Protokoll über die Eröffnung der
Kreisarbeitsgemeinschaft für die Jugendbetreuung in Litzmannstadt am 23.11.42.
31
Bömelburg and Klatt, Lodz im Zweiten Weltkrieg, 15.
22 K. PERSON AND J.-D. STEINERT
32
IPN Ld 1/284, Kriminalpolizeistelle Litzmannstadt to Inspekteur der Sicherheitspolizei
und des SD in Posen, 9.10.1940
33
IPN Ld 1/284, Kriminalpolizeistelle Litzmannstadt to Inspekteur der Sicherheitspolizei
und des SD in Posen, 9.10.1940
34
IPN Ld 1/284, Kriminalpolizeistelle Litzmannstadt to Inspekteur der Sicherheitspolizei
und des SD in Posen, 27.7.1940. Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi 31820, Kriminalpolizeistelle
Litzmannstadt to Regierungspräsident Litzmannstadt, Verwahrlosung der polnischen
Jugend, 12.11.1940.
35
Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi 31820, Kriminalpolizei Leslau, Bericht. Zunahme der
Kriminalität bei den polnischen Jugendlichen, 14.3.1941.
Another random document with
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die vrugteboord het die bome die grond al bestrooi met die wit- en
rosesneeu van hul fyngeurende bloeisels, en glimlag nog uit al die
botsels aan hul takkies. Twee lindebome, in die hoek van die
agterplaas, versprei hul geur in die lug, en die kastaiingbome van die
laning versier hul donkergroen gebladerte met wit blomtrosse.
Hulle hoor hiervandaan die ewige lied van die weergeboorte; hulle
is getuie van die onophoudelike belofte van die vrugbare aarde aan
die werksame mens.
Voor hulle en om hulle heen is die jonkheid van die jaar—’n beeld
van die bestendige lewe self. Swyend kyk hulle alles so aan; aldrie
dink aan Marcel, en hierdie alte skone dag maak hul droefgeestig.
Gebuig en moeg, neergedruk deur haar herinneringe, laat mevrou
Kibert haar dogter met die kaptein meegaan na die hek. Sy sien hul
aanstap, dink in stilte aan wat miskien kan gebeur, vertrou die
toekoms van Paula toe aan God, en gaan na binne om in
eensaamheid die gebeurtenisse nogmaals voor haar gees te haal
waarvan Jan vertel het.
Paula en Jan groet mekaar aan die end van die laning. Die
jonkman draai nog ’n keer om en volg met sy oog die slank-
buigsame gestalte wat tussen die bome deurgly. Op dieselfde
oomblik kyk Paula ook om. Die toeval jaag ’n kleur in haar gesig. Om
hom nie te laat dink dat sy dit ekspres gedaan het nie, draai sy om
en stap dapper na hom terug.
—Jan, sê sy bewoë, ek dink net daaraan: ek het jou nie genoeg
bedank nie, vir my broer, wat ook min of meer ’n broer vir jou was, vir
my moeder wat jou briewe en jou besoek tog so aangenaam gevind
het in haar droefheid. Jy is baie vriendelik gewees vir ons. Ek het
gevoel dat ek jou dit nog moes sê, daarom het ek teruggekom na
jou.
Haar ontroering maak haar skoonheid meer menslik en treffend.
—Ag nee! antwoord die jonkman, moenie so danig bedank nie;
was ek dan nie Marcel se maat nie. En vóór ons was ons vaders ook
al maats.
Sonder nog meer woorde te kan kry, bly hulle mekaar so staan en
aankyk. Hulle voel ’n wonderlike verleëntheid, hulle wil daar ’n end
aan maak, maar wil ook nie. Jan sien op Paula se wange die
skaduwee van die lang ooghare, neergeslae oor haar vlammende
oë, wat na die grond kyk.
—Luister, sê hy eindelik. In Marcel se baadjie was net één brief:
die laaste een van jou ma. Maar hierdie portret was daarby. Ek het
gedink dat ek dit maar aan jou moes gee.
Hy gee haar ’n half-verweerde kaartjie waarop sy sien, tussen die
bome van Maupas, twee klein meisies van tien of twaalf jaar—die
één blond, die ander bruin, die één het ’n soet gesiggie en kyk alles
verwonderd aan, die ander lyk of sy in beweging was: dis Alida en
Paula self.
—Ag! sê Paula. En met dowwe stem vra sy:
—Het hy nooit met jou gepraat oor haar nie?
—Nee, nooit.
Die kaartjie ontglip aan haar hand en val met ’n droë tikkie op die
sand van die pad. Sy hou haar nou nie meer in nie, sonder enige
trots in haar houding beween sy die onverbiddelike lotsbestemming
van haar broer—deur die liefde na sy dood gelei, en hy het dit
geweet.
Jan neem haar hand.
—Ja, daar vèr in Afrika het ek baiemaal gedink: hoe verkeerd en
dom gaan die noodlot tog te werk—waarom nie vir my geneem nie,
in plaas van Marcel? Oor my sal tog niemand getreur het nie.
Wat kan sy antwoord? Daar skiet net ’n vlam uit haar oë. Sy tel die
kaartjie self op, voordat Jan kan buk om dit te doen:
—Dankie, Jan; kom gou weer; jy bewys ons daar ’n weldaad mee.
Hy kyk haar ’n oomblik aan en stap dan weg. Sy gaan langsaam
die tuin deur, huis-toe. Sy hou van blomme, sy pluk ’n roos af, en, vir
die eerste keer vanjaar is dit vir haar ’n bietjie aangenaam om aan ’n
roos te ruik. Die dood van haar broer het vir haar ’n ander en
onverwagte aansien gekry; en by haarself herhaal sy die woorde van
Jan, terwyl sy die opwekkende les daarvan voel:
—Ons moet die dode eer, dog ook vertroue behou in die lewe.
Dié woorde, is hul nie die kort samevatting nie, die aansporing tot
ware lewe, wat die loopbaan van helde samevat as in ’n kosbare
kragaftreksel? Die is groot wat nie suinig is met die moeite wat hul
moet gebruik nie, en wat op hul kort of lang loopbaan ’n afdruksel
maak van hul siel—vry van alle vrees en swakheid. So put sy dan
bevrediging en vertroosting uit die aandoening self wat haar in
verwarring bring. En terwyl sy die fyn geur opruik, sweer sy by
haarself om van nou af dapper haar swaar te dra, sonder bitterheid
en sonder te murmureer. Haar afgeskeepte jonkheid sal nie
nutteloos wees nie as dit hom aan die wêreld gee soos ’n vrywillige
offerande. En as sy by haar moeder kom, wat die blomme van
Marcel water gee, omarm sy die arme ou vrou, asof sy die ouderdom
wil beskerm wat aan haar sorg toevertrou is, asof sy die belofte van
nuwe moed met ’n seël wil bekragtig en wil toon dat sy dit meen met
haar nuwe lewensopvatting.
VI.
ISABELLA.
Jan het ’n ope rytuig in die dorp gaan haal en help sy oom daarin.
Die oubaas is opgeskik in swart manel en keil, borshemp, hoë
boordjie en pêrelgrys handskoene, en in sy hand sy goudknop-
wandelstok.
—Ek voel bra ongemaklik in al die deftigheid, sê hy aan sy neef.
Hy het spyt dat hy sy tuinklere moes uittrek. En ’n mens sou sê hy
gaan weg op ’n lang reis, want Jan moet allerhande raadgewinge
aanhoor in verband met sy agterblywende roosboompies.
Jan stel hom gerus daaromtrent.
—Maar, oom, vergeet veral nie u boodskap nie.
—Verbeel jou! sê die ou mannetjie, opwippend. Ek sal jou
boodskap goed oorbring, al sou my beste rose ook verlep solank as
ek weg is.
Die oom gaan na Maupas om aan mevrou Kibert die hand van
Paula te vra vir sy neef Jan. Die rytuig verdwyn om die draai. Jan is
ongeduldig en opgewonde; in plaas van binne-toe te gaan, stap hy
langsaam die pad langs, agter die rytuig aan. Op dié manier sal hy
sy oom gouer ontmoet as hy terugkom; en miskien sal hy dan voor
die aand tyd hê om self nog na Maupas te gaan en te praat met
haar, wat dan sy verloofde sal wees. Hy kyk na die son, wat sonder
die minste haas na die berge daal, en hy verwens die vervelende
lang somerdae.
Ná die aand van die komedievoorstelling het die gevoel in die
jonkman se hart nog inniger geword. Hy het Paula lief om haar moed
en haar fierheid, en ook om die geheimsinnige onverklaarbare
aantreklikheid wat op ons uitgeoefen word deur die gelaatstrekke,
die kleur van die oë, die sware hoofhare, die gestalte, en al die
bekoorlikhede van die vrou in wie ons vooruit die versekering en die
blydskap van ons toekoms lees, of van ’n toekoms vol rampsalige
dog genotvolle kwelling. Die verstandige jongnooi, met haar
vlammende oogopslag, het sy hart vervul met tere liefde; bowenal
het sy hom daartoe gebring om die ware doel van ons menslike
bestaan na te streef—die doel wat nie daarin lê dat ons die begin en
die end van alles in onsself soek nie, maar daarin, dat ons
onbaatsugtige en werksame skakels uitmaak tussen voorgaande en
nakomende geslagte. Waar sou hy ooit ’n edeler metgesel kan vind,
dapperder, standvastiger, beradener? Sy het groot geword soos ’n
jong plantjie wat krag put uit vrugbare grond. Haar famielie is ’n
waarborg vir haar deugsaamheid. Net ’n bietjie son het haar
ontbreek om tot volle wasdom te kan kom. Sou liefde haar nie met
die warmte en lig kan bedeel nie? En wat ’n vreugde om te sien hoe
sy opegaan soos ’n blom, om te voel dat ’n mens daar ’n bietjie
oorsaak van is, om aan die alte swaar beproefde jonkheid weer
smaak te gee in die dag wat verbygaan, om haar te laat wens dat dit
nie so gou verdwyn nie!
Sy sal hom liefkry; miskien het sy hom reeds lief. Sou hy verkeerd
gesien het, of het hy haar nou en dan betrap op ’n klein verrassing
van haar geheime jongmeisies-gevoel, ondanks die waardigheid en
terughoudenheid wat al haar beweginge bestuur? Het sy oog nie
nou en dan ’n blossie gevang op haar wange nie, ’n alte snelle knip
van haar oë, en veral die manier van aankyk, die blik, so rein, so
trouhartig, so vas, so onwillekeurig vriendelik op hom gerig? En nou,
as hy terugdink, lyk dit dan nie vir hom of hy ook gedeel het in die
afkeer wat sy by alle geleenthede laat blyk het teen Isabella Orlandi
nie? Isabella Orlandi—hy het haar nog nie weer gesien nie; hy sal
haar ook nooit weer sien nie; hy voel nog ’n soort van bygelowige
vrees vir haar, en hy verban die alte skone beeld uit sy gedagte; dit
verneder hom en herinner hom wreed aan sy swakheid. Maar as
geliefde van Paula Kibert voel hy sterk genoeg om die gewig van die
hele wêreld te kan dra. Is dit nie ’n teken van ware liefde nie, as dit al
ons kragte verhoog en ons soveel selfvertroue gee?
Ander bedenkinge het nog by die gevoel van sy hart gekom. By ’n
huwelik skei ’n liefhebbende hart hom nie af van die stoflike en
maatskaplike lewe nie; en juis daardeur, deur die moeilikhede wat in
die weg kom, leer die liefde verstaan wat die menslike bestaan in die
algemeen beteken, en dat dit beskerm moet word; die hartstog,
daarenteen, probeer om dit te vergeet of te verniel. Die famielie
Kibert is nie ryk nie, en wat hy self moet erwe, is ook maar min.
Alhoewel hy die militêre diens liefhet en nie sonder hartseer daarvan
sal afskeid neem nie, voel hy nie die beroepsaansporing—soos
Marcel by voorbeeld—wat ’n mens as dit ware by die skouers gryp
en dwing om ’n pad te gaan waarbuite hom net ongemak en ongeluk
te wag is. En hy moet rekening hou met die stoflike behoeftes van sy
aanstaande huishoue.
Sonder moeite het hy sy lewensplan uitgewerk: hy gaan as kolonis
na Frans en Etienne Kibert in Asië. Hulle het al so dikwels aan hul
moeder geskrywe dat hulle hulp nodig het om hul werk behoorlik uit
te brei. Hy is ’n kind en kleinkind van landbouers, en daar is ’n
verlange in hom na die vrye, vreedsame buitelewe. Sy vroutjie sal
nie bang wees om met hom oor die see te gaan nie: sy sal hom sterk
maak vir ’n lewe van stryd en avontuur. Die bloed van ou dokter
Kibert—onverskillig vir gevaar—die bloed van die ou moeder—met
haar onoorwinlike geloof, wat alle beproewings vir haar draaglik
maak—dié bloed vloei ook in die are van die meisie wat hy bemin.
Met die selfsug wat ’n minnaar kenmerk, vergeet Jan net één
persoon, by al sy toekomsplanne; of liewer, sonder daaraan te dink,
maak hy nou ’n plan om dié één te beroof van haar enigste
soetigheid in ’n bitter bestaan. Die dapperheid van mevrou Kibert is
vir hom ’n sterk waarborg van Paula se moed, sy is so’n moeder
waardig; maar hy besef nie dat hy van die arme vrou haar grootste
opoffering gaan verlang nie: haar laaste kind, dié wat sy so angstig-
beminnend in haar arms druk, en wat God haar nog gespaar het.
Terwyl hy so op die pad van Maupas aanstap, sy geluk tegemoet,
in die skemer en die heerlike lug van die someraand, maak ou Marie
die deur oop vir sy oom. Sy laat hom in die voorkamer, en terwyl sy
haar nooi gaan roep, dink sy:
—Wat is die ou se planne—met sy swart manel en keil?
Die ou bly stilstaan voor ’n blompot met rose wat in die middel van
die tafel staan. Hy bekyk hulle so digteby dat dit lyk of hy hul wil
opruik, en meteens lig hy sy hande op in die grootste verbasing. So
kry mevrou Kibert hom daar staan. Hy groet haar nouliks, dog wys
dadelik na die blomme en roep uit:
—Daardie een! Sien u dit?
—Ja, sê sy, verwonderd.
—Waar het u dit gekry?
—Ag, ek weet nie meer nie, meneer.
—Onmoontlik! U moet weet. Antwoord!
En ’n bietjie minder brutaal sê die ou rosegek dan weer:
—Asseblief tog, mevrou. Dis baie belangryk.
Mevrou Kibert probeer nou om haar geheue te ondervra:
—My seun het die steggies uit Siena meegebring. Ons het dit hier
geplant en dit dra mooi.
—A! het ek nie geweet dis ’n Sinese roos nie! En die naam weet u
natuurlik nie. Niemand ken hier die name van blomme nie.
Mevrou Kibert beken glimlaggend dat sy die naam nie weet nie.
En daar begin die ou uit te vaar, wel ’n halfuur lank, oor die
skandelike verwaarlosing van die plantkunde by die onderwys.
Mevrou Kibert, dinkende aan iets anders, kan skaars ’n woordjie
hier en daar inbring. Sy verseker hom dat sy van name niks weet
nie, maar darem baie van blomme hou.
Maar die ou is nou heeltemal opgewonde, en nie meer in te hou
nie. Hy vertel haar die geskiedenis en name van rose in vreemde
lande. Mevrou Kibert voel wel wat die doel van sy onverwagte
besoek is: hy wat net vir sy plante lewe en sy medemense
veronagsaam, dit moet wel iets belangryks wees wat hom
uitgedrywe het, dit kan niks anders wees nie as ’n aanvraag ten
huwelik. Bewoë dink sy aan Paula, wat nie tuis is nie en so gelukkig
sal wees as sy terugkom. Die ou vrou probeer om sy woorde op ’n
ander koers te lei:
—Hoe gaan dit tog met Jan? Ons het hom al ’n paar dae nie
gesien nie, hy kom te min hier.