Gęsiówka

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Prisoners of Gęsiówka and the Szare Szeregi fighters after the liberation of the camp in August 1944

Gęsiówka (Polish informal name for the prison on Gęsia Street), was a Nazi concentration camp in Warsaw, Poland.

[edit] History of Gęsiówka

Before the war, Gęsiówka was a military prison of the Polish Army on Gęsia Street (now Anielewicza Street). Since 1939, after the German occupation of Poland, it became a re-education camp of the German security police (Arbeitserziehungslager der Sicherheitspolizei Warschau).

In 1943 it was turned into a concentration camp for inmates from beyond Warsaw and Poland, equipped with a gas chambers and crematoriums. The camp was joined with a nearby Pawiak prison and formed the backbone of the Warsaw concentration camp complex. Prisoners included people from Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Hungary, Belgium and Germany, mostly Jews.

[edit] Attack on Gęsiówka

Destroyed bunker where the deputy camp commander was captured

Liberated Jewish women posing with a Zośka fighters

On August 5, 1944, during the early phase of Warsaw Uprising, Armia Krajowa-Szare Szeregi unit Zośka attacked the Gęsiówka camp which was being liquidated at the time. The insurgents' captured Panther tank (christened Magda) first destroyed the watch towers and the main gate, and then shelled the bunkers and buildings inside, greatly helping in the assault. In the ensuing one-and-half-hour battle most of the SS crew was killed or captured, although some of the Germans managed to flee in direction of Pawiak.

383 able-bodied prisoners (including 348 Jews), both men and women who were left in Gęsiówka to assist with the destruction of the evidence of mass murder, were rescued from certain death. Most of these survivors joined the Zośka unit and fought in the uprising.