Potulice concentration camp

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The Potulice concentration camp was established during World War II by German state authorities in occupied Poland in Potulice near Nakło. It is notable as a detention centre for Polish children that underwent the Nazi experiment in forced Germanisation.

1 Beginnings
2 Slave work and punishment
3 Increased brutality in the camp
4 Assessment
5 The use of the camp after 1945
6 See also
7 References
8 Sources

[edit] Beginnings

Initially the Potulice camp was a transit point for Poles expelled by the German authorities from the area annexed as Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreussen.^[1]

The camp later served as place for detention of Polish children; of the 1,296 people who died there, 767 victims were from this group. In 1943 a special unit in the camp was created especially for children and the name „Ostjugendbewahrlager Potulitz” or „Lebrechtsdorf” started to appear in German documentation. Racist theories and a policy of Germanisation that sought to Germanise children who tested for racial purity of the supposed Aryan race traits led to organised kidnappings by German officials in occupied Poland. The children from the camp were placed there as a result of this policy. If the tests were positive and it was believed the child had lost emotional contact with their parents, then it could be sent to German families for Germanisation. This operation was organised by SS Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt RuSHA (SS Office of Race and Settlement).

Formally designated a labour camp, the camp was not controlled by concentration camp authorities. However, the conditions in it were comparable to those in the Stutthof concentration camp .

[edit] Slave work and punishment

As part of camp life the children were forced to perform slave work. Children who reached thirteen years old were sent to work outside the camp, even working night shifts. Under the supervision of kapo they usually were used to carry building materials or stones, or used to load coal, wood, and potatoes at the railway station. Children over six years old were forced to work inside the camp. Failure to work as ordered or even minor acts of disobedience were faced with brutal punishments. For example, when the under-fed children were sent to pick up berries, after work they had to show their mouths. If any child had signs of eating the berries, he would be quickly beaten by a heavy whip used for bulls. Other punishments, like standing in the rain or on pine cones, were also commonplace. Regardless of the season of the year, all the children were forced to stand for hours in role calls (appells) in their underwear and often without shoes.

One child recalled his ordeal in the camp: Out of hunger I together with my six year old friend decided to take two or three potatoes, which we wanted to roast in an oven. This was seen by some German out of the guardhouse, who ran after us. After taking the potatoes from us, we were taken to the guardhouse and there Germans had beaten us severely. We were hit by leather whips, and during this beating I fainted. I regained consciousness as a result of enormous pain I felt. I realized that Germans are holding me in place and one of them is burrowing a hole in my leg with a heated iron rod. I started to scream and fainted again

Children were also beaten in the face with canes, imprisoned in a bunker that was filled with water up to their knees, or denied food for days. The sight of dying prisoners who couldn’t fend off rats attacking them was also a traumatic experience for many. German guards also engaged in psychological torture; for example, the starving children were placed near tables on which bread, cabbage, cereals were put and the guards would take photographs of the scene, after which the food was taken away from the children. The camp was used also for involuntary blood donations from the young children. It should be noted that there were children born in the camp. These infants faced a harsh fate as their exhausted mothers weren’t able to feed them and the food rations were always in short supply. As a result, infants born in the camp usually weighed around 1 kilo and died after a few weeks.

[edit] Increased brutality in the camp

As the war went on, conditions in camp became even more brutal and harsh, and penalties such as standing on broken glass were introduced. In 1943 a transport of 543 children from the regions of Smolensk and Vitebsk arrived. Some of the children were treated as normal prisoners, even when they were as young as two years old. As the children were ill from Typhoid fever, the Germans placed them in separate, primitive-condition barracks that were separated by barbed wire. In 1944 the conditions in the camp reached their most brutal phase. Children were regularly called "children of bandits", were beaten and kicked by camp personnel, and were forced to dig trenches. Most of the children had fallen ill, and many died out of exhaustion, mistreatment, hunger or disease. Infants were cared for by the older children. There are also witness statements about the deliberate murder of children by camp personnel. One witness described in detail how he had seen three children approximately 7 years old being drowned by Germans near the camp. According to him, Germans first threw the children into a water canal and then threw bricks at them, looking satisfied.

[edit] Assessment

Out of acts listed as genocide by The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1948, almost all were implemented in Potulice camp; the sole exception was the act regarding preventing births along members of the group being genocided. The number of children kidnapped by German authorities during their occupation of Poland in World War II in order to be Germanised^[2] ranges from 20,000 to 200,000.^[3]^[4] It's estimated that at least 10,000 of them were murdered in the process, and only 10-15% returned to their families after the war.^[5] Although the camp was formally listed as transit camp after the war, at the request of its victims, in the 1990s it was classified as a concentration camp, with the Polish Institute of National Remembrance taking the position that conditions there didn't differ from those in regular concentration camps.^[6] The decision was important for the status of compensation paid by post-war Germany towards victims of German repression in World War II.

[edit] The use of the camp after 1945

The site of the camp was used as a detention centre (Central Labour Camp Potulice) by Polish Communist authorities after World War II.^[7] About 3500 ethnic Germans died in the camp in the years 1945 to 1950.^[8]^[9]