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Concept
Warsaw concentration camp
Summary
The Warsaw concentration camp (Konzentrationslager Warschau, KL Warschau; see other names) was a German concentration camp in occupied Poland during World War II. It was formed on the base of the now-nonexistent Gęsiówka prison, in what is today the Warsaw neighbourhood of Muranów, on the order of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. The camp operated from July 1943 to August 1944.
Located in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto, () Warschau first functioned as a camp in its own right, but was demoted to a branch of the Majdanek concentration camp in May 1944. In late July that year, due to the Red Army approaching Warsaw, the Nazis started to evacuate the camp. Around 4,000 inmates were forced to march on foot to Kutno, away; those who survived were then transported to Dachau. On 5 August 1944, KL Warschau was captured by Battalion Zośka during the Warsaw Uprising, liberating 348 Jews who were still left on its premises. It was the only German camp in Poland to be liberated by anti-Nazi resistance forces, rather than by Allied troops. After the Red Army definitively expelled the Germans from Warsaw in January 1945, the new communist administration continued to run the buildings as a forced labour camp, and then as a prison, until it was closed in 1956. All the camp's premises were demolished in 1965.
The Encyclopedia on Camps and Ghettos says that a total of 8,000 to 9,000 inmates were held there, while Bogusław Kopka estimates the number at at least 7,250 prisoners, all but 300 of whom were Jews from various European countries, in particular from Hungary and Greece. They were used as forced labour to clean the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto, with the ultimate goal of creating a park in the former ghetto's area. The inmates also had to find and sort whatever precious items were still left on its territory. The camp and adjacent ruins were additionally used by the German administration as a place of execution, the victims being Polish political prisoners, Jews caught on the "Aryan side", and generally people rounded up on Warsaw streets.
Official source
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