After the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the Central Labour Camp in Potulice () became a detention centre for

Germans Germans (, ) are the natives or inhabitants of Germany, or sometimes more broadly any people who are of German descent or native speakers of the German language. The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, constitution of Germany, imple ...

and anti-communist

Poles Pole or poles may refer to: People *Poles (people), another term for Polish people, from the country of Poland * Pole (surname), including a list of people with the name * Pole (musician) (Stefan Betke, born 1967), German electronic music artist ...

. It was set up by the Soviet and Polish

Communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

authorities in

Potulice Potulice is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Nakło nad Notecią, within Nakło County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, in north-central Poland. It lies approximately south-east of Nakło nad Notecią and west of Bydgoszcz. I ...

in place of the former Nazi German

Potulice concentration camp Potulice concentration camp () was a concentration camp established and operated by Nazi Germany during World War II in Potulice near Nakło in the territory of occupied Poland. Until the spring of 1941 it was a subcamp of the Stutthof concentra ...

(known as the ''Ostjugendbewahrlager Potulitz'' or ''Lebrechtsdorf'' camp), the subcamp of

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 German-an ...

built in 1941. Following liberation by the Red Army, the camp was controlled by the Soviet

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

Department of Prisoners and Internees until June 1945. Repopulated, it remained in operation until 1949 under the management of the Stalinist

Ministry of Public Security Ministry of Public Security can refer to: * Ministry of Justice and Public Security (Brazil) * Ministry of Public Security of Burundi * Ministry of Public Security (Chile) * Ministry of Public Security (China) * Ministry of Public Security of Co ...

of Poland.

Camp operation

A total of 34,932 people were imprisoned in the camp between 1945 and 1949. At first, the inmates were mainly "ethnic Germans" from the ''

Volksliste The Deutsche Volksliste (German People's List) was a Nazi Party institution that aimed to classify inhabitants of Nazi-occupied territories (1939–1945) into categories of desirability according to criteria systematised by ''Reichsführer-SS'' ...

'' (DVL) including some prisoners-of-war, but also women, and 1,285 children – most of them orphaned. The prisoners worked in several workshops on premises as well as in nearby farms owned by the camp administration (with the total area of 1,174.60 ha), between 6.30 a.m. and 17.30 p.m., with one hour break. Over time, they included fighters from the Armia Krajowa (

Home Army The Home Army (, ; abbreviated AK) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) established in the ...

) and prisoners of war from the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania. Reported 2,915 inmates died from

typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposu ...

and

dysentery Dysentery ( , ), historically known as the bloody flux, is a type of gastroenteritis that results in bloody diarrhea. Other symptoms may include fever, abdominal pain, and a feeling of incomplete defecation. Complications may include dehyd ...

. It was the result of epidemic conditions prevailing in the camp, and the lack of medical care. The dead were buried in the

mass grave A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may Unidentified decedent, not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of exec ...

s. Other sources emphasize the total number of prisoners who died there since the inception of the camp in 1941 under the German administration, amounting roughly to 5,000 victims including Poles, Belarusians, Jews and Germans. In 1950/1951, during the darkest years of

Stalinist terror The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the assassination of Sergei Kirov by Leonid Nikolaev ...

the camp was transformed into a

prison A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where Prisoner, people are Imprisonment, imprisoned under the authority of the State (polity), state ...

for Polish

political Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

prisoners. Following the 1961 renovations and the subsequent replacement of barracks with cement structures, it became a prison mainly for criminal offenders. In 1974 a wall was erected around the

perimeter A perimeter is the length of a closed boundary that encompasses, surrounds, or outlines either a two-dimensional shape or a one-dimensional line. The perimeter of a circle or an ellipse is called its circumference. Calculating the perimet ...

. Today, the Penal Unit in Potulice is a state prison with space for 1,446 inmates (underaged, and first-time offenders, as well as criminally insane) featuring a medical clinic.

Remembrance

During the communist rule in the

People's Republic of Poland The Polish People's Republic (1952–1989), formerly the Republic of Poland (1947–1952), and also often simply known as Poland, was a country in Central Europe that existed as the predecessor of the modern-day democratic Republic of Poland. ...

, the memory of post-war events and the human rights abuses in the camp, was censored. Only after the

Revolutions of 1989 The revolutions of 1989, also known as the Fall of Communism, were a revolutionary wave of liberal democracy movements that resulted in the collapse of most Communist state, Marxist–Leninist governments in the Eastern Bloc and other parts ...

could this issue be brought into the public debate. Nowadays, close to the memorial to the Nazi camp of Potulice, another memorial was built in 2000 to the post-war labour camp for Germans in Stalinist Poland. The remembrance to both camps brings both German and Polish historical perceptions closer.

Notes and references

Information about documentary film "Casus Potulice"

Information about Potulice prison.
Miesięcznik ''Forum Penitencjarne'' monthly (ibidem).
Polski Gułag (Polish Gulag).

Wprost ''Wprost'' (, meaning "Directly") is a Polish weekly news magazine published in Poznań, Poland.newsmagazine A news magazine is a typed, printed, and published magazine, radio, or television program, usually published weekly, consisting of articles about current events. News magazines generally discuss stories in greater depth than newspapers or new ...

, issue 12/2002 (1008), March 24, 2002
One place - two memories. Double remembrance in Potulice
(ibidem). {{Authority control Forced migrations in Europe Aftermath of World War II in Poland Internment camps in Poland Soviet World War II crimes in Poland Stalinism in Poland Post–World War II forced migrations Nakło County History of Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship

Camp operation

Remembrance

See also

Notes and references