Stutthof Concentration Camp

We went to Stuffhof concentration camp. We only had a couple hours after a disastrous attempt to get on a Polish bus. But we could have used more time, two hours wasn't enough to do it justice. We thought it left at 10:15am so we show up at the bus station at 10. And wait. And wait. And wait. It's 10:30 and no bus. I start shamelessly asking everyone around me where the bus is.
No one speaks english. No one.
I'm literally running around the bus station waving my arms and saying "TEN FIFTEEN. WHERE IS BUS 740. 740. 7-4-0. WHERE IS IT?" Like talking louder and slower will help.
The best part actually, was when I started speaking in spanish when people answered in polish. I mean, anything that isn't english is spanish right? It was a pathetic game of charades.
The bus came at 11. We were actually pretty lucky it was late because we had time to change money otherwise we wouldn't have been able to go anyway! My adventures are never ending.

Anyway, Stutthof camp is about 34 km outside Gdansk, and was the first concentration camp built outside Germany and the very last one liberated by the Allies. There were 127,000 registered prisoners, 85,000 of whom were estimated to have been executed. It started as a camp for "undesirable polish elements" and prisoners of war, but turned into one of the most atrocious death camps.

At the front of the museum/camp.

This is how long the drive way is. Prisoners had to walk down this just to get to the gates of the camp.

This is where the camp dogs were kept. There were 20 purebred dogs kept on the camp, German Shepards, Schnauzers, and Boxers. They got special food and care, and most weighed more than some camp prisoners: 26 kg (60 pounds).

Dog building.

This was one of the first buildings built. The camp administration was housed here. Newcomers were registered here upon arrival, which was preceded by many hours or days of standing in front of the barrack, regardless of weather conditions. One way of "welcoming" the prisoners to the camp was whipping them 25 times or beating them.

Walking up to Death Gate.

Inmates called this Death Gate. This is where prisoners waited to be admitted to the camp. After registration the next stage of the "welcome ceremony" came: usually, one of the SS officers would give a speech, to give a picture to the inmates of where they were living and what was expected of them. Afterwards, all of their possessions were taken from them, men and women were completely shaved, there was a body search for valuables, and a humiliating medical examination took place.  Also a bath combined with disinfection was obligatory. Then they were issued camp clothing and a number, and their personal information was taken down.

One prisoner recounted their welcome speech by an officer, "From now on you are no longer a person, just a number. All your rights have been left outside the gate- you are left with only one and that you are free to do- leave through that chimney."

This is Death Gate. Prisoners were sorted after walking through. We couldn't walk through the main gates, we walked through the side.

This is one of the first barracks built on the camp. It's where the newcomers lived at first while they were quarantined. For a period of two to four weeks they learned the conditions and rules of the camp. Isolated, they learned the camp drills: counting out, marching in rows of five, lining up for roll-calls, putting their caps on and taking them off, and pronouncing their camp numbers and commands in German. After quarantine, they were assigned a block and work.

6 rooms in this barrack were turned into bunkers or special cells reserved for people who broke the camp laws, like trying to break out, smuggling food, smoking at work, and general laziness. The punishment was keeping the inmate in a tiny room for quite a few days with only bread and water. For many, this ended in death.

The buildings that are still in tact were turned into mini museums. This one shows what happened when prisoners got to the camp, and some of the tactics used to get them there.

The bunkers.

Hundreds of thousands of shoes from prisoners.

These are shoes. Thousands of shoes the were taken from prisoners.

I am so horrified. People wore these! Real people. People with families, who were taken from their homes and dropped off in the middle of a freezing camp and had all of their possessions taken.

Bodies

Hitler propaganda.

This is where many buildings were. One was the kitchen. Here's a quote from a prisoner about dinner time:
"...on one side there is the entrance, on the other - the exit, in the middle the kettles with the food. At the entrance door we line up in a queue, somebody gives us dirty, damaged bowls, with no spoons... Once you get your soup, you must immediately run out through the exit door, quickly drink what you have in the bowl and give the bowl back, because the others are already waiting for it".

The laundry was also stationed here, which was one of the hardest work stations for women.

These were buildings.

This building shows the daily life- food, clothes, sleeping quarters.

Prisoners 

These are the uniforms given to prisoners. These are real ones, people actually wore these.

Prisoners in the bunk beds. They were 3 bunks high and there was about 8 inches of space for the top one between the bed and the ceiling.

The bunk beds- 3 beds high.

These are the blankets prisoners used. And this is the area on the floor where some slept. Again, actual blankets.
The red thing is red tape so people don't walk in there.

The bathroom. 

You've heard about the eating situation already, but here's more details.

Actual bowls and cups used.

They had a break down of how much food each prisoner received per week:

Meat: 200 grams

Margarine: 182.5 g

Cheese: 50 g

Marmolade: 100 g

Bread: 525 g

Spices: 165 g

Flour for soup: 135 g

Sugar: 80 g

Wheat coffee: 63 g

Potatoes: 3500 g

Vegetables: 3900 g

Swedes: 2000 g (Like a rutabaga)

Milk: 1/4 liter

Oats: 30 g

Additions for those performing hard labor per week:

Meat: 230 grams

Margarine: 100 g

Bread: 1400 g

Additions for those with longer working hours per week:

Meat: 140 grams

Margarine: 20 g

Bread: 600 g

It averages out to about 1000 calories a day. Just to put this in perspective, 30 grams is 1 ounce. So the average prisoner got 7 ounces of meat per week. I've eaten a steak bigger than that at one time!!

The soup pots and ladles.

The next building held the infirmary. There are two parts to this, the infirmary and the hospital.

Heading into the infirmary, these are the bodies of the sick after they died.

The infirmary was placed nearby the crematorium, which was a clear message to the prisoners. The lack of medicine, diseases carried by inmates, ruthless treatment by the SS and some of the hospital staff, caused a large death rate amongst inmates; reaching 50% and during the typhoid epidemic, 90%. Inmates that stayed too long in the infirmary were sentenced to death by the SS doctor, who gave them injections of phenol or sent them to the gas chambers. All these factors led the prisoners to believe that the infirmary was a place of death.

Many times the SS officers played games, where they would dress up as doctors. While acting like they were taking prisoners information, like measuring their height, they would shoot them, wipe up the blood, and ask for the next patient.

In the infirmary, the beds and trays.

For heavy injuries and diseases, only iodine and paper bandages were applied. No anesthetic was applied to the patients when serious medical operations took place.

This is part 2 of the infirmary, where more "advanced" operations were done.

With the help of primitive medical tools, the SS doctors conducted complicated medical operations, which in most cases resulted in the death of the patient. The seriously ill that presented no signs of getting better were killed with lethal injections to the heart.

Not only did camp inmates work on the camp to cover camp requirements, they also worked in the nearby town to support various German expectations. The average work day began at 6 or 7 in the morning and finished between 5 and 7 pm.

One of the most disgusting men in the history of these work camps was Rudolf Spanner. He discovered a way to use the fat of murdered prisoners to make soap. Hundreds of prisoners used in this process, and hundreds more were sent to work in his factory making "Reines Judische Fett" or "Pure Jewish Fat". 

He escaped arrest after the war.

This is the barbed wire that ran around the camp.

This is the gas chamber. At first, this is where clothing was disinfected, later it became a place of execution.

"A group of 300 was gathered in front of the canteen after supper and loaded on a normal wooden cart. It often happened in front of the family members, and the father, standing near, couldn't save his son or one brother the other one. The victims, loaded on the cart, were so weak that they did not protest against brining them to the slaughterhouse. But if there really was somebody who couldn't agree with being passively sent to the executioner, someone would just lay him on the ground with one strike and then grab him by the legs and hands and throw him on the ones already sitting on the cart. On the same day, the Jews taken from the block were during the roll-call referred to as <commanded away>."

The gas chamber.  

The inside.

Very characteristic traits of the Stutthof concentration camp were the wagons of the narrow-gauge railway. They were used for transporting the camp's inmates, but also the building materials and other resources used in the camp's workshops. Two wagons were rebuilt as the "moving gas chambers". Sick and old Jewish women were executed there.
"The appointed wagon was attached to the engine, sometimes even to a goods train, and actually went away with its sad load. The station was close to the crematory, combined with narrow-gauge tracks with the main track. When the train of the dead went one or two stations further, it turned back and came directly to the crematory."

The train cars that moved prisoners. Some were turned into gas chambers also.

This whole part of the camp was turned into a memorial. There was a huge Jewish star right next to the cross.

The crematory. At the beginning it was one metal oven under a wooden roof, with oil as fuel. Later two more brick ovens were installed, in which coke was used as fuel. Areound them a wooden barrack was built. The ashes from the crematory oven were put into a hole, dug close to the crematory.

The main crematorium building. The two furnaces are on the left side.

The crematorium building was turned into a walk through with pretty graphic photos.

We finished the tour by walking by the final guard towers.

All of the original guard towers were still there.

The guarding system of the camp consisted of many elements. The whole camp area was surrounded with a double fence of barbed wire; the outer fence was attached to a source of high voltage. Between the fence, about a dozen meters from each other, there were the guard towers. There were 25 total on the whole camp. Two soldiers with machine guns were stationed at each one. The whole camp area and the area surrounding it were patrolled by SS guards with specially trained dogs. The guard system of the Stutthof camp and its geographical location significantly decreased the chances of breaking out from the camp. Most attempts of breaking out were unsuccessful; only 6 people successfully escaped on their own.

The end of the camp was finished with a guard tower and more barbed wire.

What a powerful experience! I have been hoping to see a concentration camp since I got here. I can't believe it actually happened. This is such a horrible history but one that I hope we never forget.
There are two things that really stand out to me: I think I'm most intrigued by how we choose to follow
these people, and how we can treat other human beings like this.

How do we choose our leaders? Why do we choose them? What makes us want to follow them? What do they have in common? I mean, you look at the most awful men in history- Hitler, Stalin, Franco, Mao- and compare them with men like- FDR or Kennedy, Gandi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Lincoln. What do they have in common?
I don't have the answer, this is just what's going through my head.
What qualifies a person as a great leader? Hitler did terrible things, but look at the following he had! He inspired thousands to kill their neighbors. Our last few presidents can hardly inspire people to vote.

There have been so many studies done on psychological reasoning behind abusing other people, in relation to a prejudicial reason. I don't understand it. Why do we so easily fall into group think?

I hope this wasn't too graphic. I tried to be selective, but I wanted to make sure you saw what I saw. This was such a moving experience.