Kaiserwald (Ķeizarmežs) was a
Nazi concentration camp near the
Riga suburb of
Mežaparks in modern-day
Latvia.
Kaiserwald was built in March 1943, during the period that the
German army occupied Latvia.
The first inmates of the camp were several hundred convicts from Germany.
Following the
liquidation of the
Riga,
Liepāja
Liepāja (; liv, Līepõ; see other names) is a state city in western Latvia, located on the Baltic Sea. It is the largest-city in the Kurzeme Region and the third-largest city in the country after Riga and Daugavpils. It is an important ice-f ...
and
Daugavpils (Dvinsk) ghetto
A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...
s in June 1943, the remainder of the Jews of Latvia, along with most of the survivors of the liquidation of the
Vilna Ghetto, were
deported
Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The term ''expulsion'' is often used as a synonym for deportation, though expulsion is more often used in the context of international law, while deportation ...
to Kaiserwald.
In early 1944, a number of smaller camps around Riga were brought under the jurisdiction of the Kaiserwald camp.
Following the occupation of Hungary by the Germans, Hungarian Jews were sent to Kaiserwald, as were a number of Jews from
Łódź
Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of cant ...
, in Poland. By March 1944, there were 11,878 inmates in the camp and its subsidiaries, 6,182 males and 5,696 females, of whom only 95 were
gentile
Gentile () is a word that usually means "someone who is not a Jew". Other groups that claim Israelite heritage, notably Mormons, sometimes use the term ''gentile'' to describe outsiders. More rarely, the term is generally used as a synonym fo ...
s.
Use of the inmates
Unlike
Auschwitz or
Treblinka
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...
, Kaiserwald was not an
extermination camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
, and the inmates were put to work by large German companies, notably
Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft, which used a large number of female
slaves from Kaiserwald in the production of
electrical
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described ...
goods, such as batteries.
Evacuation
On 5 August 1944, as the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...
advanced westwards and entered Latvia, the Germans began to evacuate the inmates of Kaiserwald to
Stutthof
Stutthof was a Nazi concentration camp established by Nazi Germany in a secluded, marshy, and wooded area near the village of Stutthof (now Sztutowo) 34 km (21 mi) east of the city of Danzig ( Gdańsk) in the territory of the Germ ...
, in Poland. All Jews under 18 or over 30 were murdered along with anyone who had been convicted of any offence or anyone who it was thought would be unable to survive the trip from Latvia to Poland. The remaining inmates who did not die during the journey arrived at Stutthof in September 1944.
The Red Army took over the camp on 15 October 1944 and later used the camp to house Axis prisoners of war.
See also
*
List of Nazi concentration camps
According to the ''Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos'', there were 23 main concentration camps (german: Stammlager), of which most had a system of satellite camps. Including the satellite camps, the total number of Nazi concentration camps that ...
Bibliography
*
References
External links
Helen Rodak-Izso - "The Last Chance to Remember"
{{Authority control
Nazi concentration camps in Latvia
Generalbezirk Lettland