Zgoda labour camp

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Camp Zgoda, main gate - monument

The Zgoda labour camp was a concentration camp for Germans and Silesians in Communist Poland operated in 1945. It was formerly a labour subcamp (Arbeitslager Eintrachtshütte) of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, opened in Świętochłowice in 1943, in operation until January 1945.

The camp was reopened in February 1945 and continued to be used until November, under the jurisdiction of Ministry of Public Security of Poland. About 6,000 people (including children) were kept in the camp since it was opened. Many of its prisoners were political prisoners (fascists), but the majority consisted of Volksdeutsche and Germans, with some Poles and at least 38 inmates of other nationalities; often entire German villages were deported to the concentration camps. According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, after the World War II, "almost the entire local population (of Upper Silesia) became legally suspect of the crime of treason against the Polish state" ^[1]. At least 1,855 lost their lives in this camp from February until November 1945, many because of a typhus epidemic, over 600 in August alone. The inmates were systematically maltreated and tortured.

The camp was considered one of the most cruel Stalinist crimes against Silesian population. Its commander, Salomon Morel, fled to Israel in 1992, and was wanted by Polish authorities for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Poland requested his extradition twice. Morel died in February, 2007.