Mielec Forced Labor Camp
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Mielec was a
forced labor camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...
on the outskirts of
Mielec Mielec () is the largest city and County seat, seat of Mielec County. Mielec is located in south-eastern Poland (Lesser Poland), in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship (Województwo Podkarpackie). The population of Mielec in December 2021 was 59,509. ...
, Poland, established by the
Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
-Germany occupation authorities in 1941 at the site of the former Polish airplane factory known as the ''Mielec Flugzeugwerke''. This was a forced labor camp for Polish Jews during the war which eventually turned into an SS
Concentration Camp A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...
until it was liquidated in 1944. There is no Nazi documentation that says the exact number of prisoners that were at the camp throughout the war or when it switched from a labor camp to a concentration camp, and testimonies of Jews in the camps are conflicting.


Before the war

Before the war, Mielec was a draw for economic activity because it was included in one of the biggest industrial regions in Poland called C.O.P (
Central Industrial Region (Poland) The Central Industrial District (, abbreviated COP), is an industrial region in Poland. It was one of the biggest economic projects of the Second Polish Republic. The 5-year-long project was initiated by a famous Polish economist, deputy Prime Minis ...
). This brought a lot of people to the area, many of which were non-Jews. This created a competitive economic atmosphere which increased tensions between Jews and non-Jewish Poles, and Jews would often have their homes looted or the windows of their businesses or homes broken, creating an
antisemitic Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...
attitude even before the war started.


German invasion

On September 1, 1939, Germany
invaded Poland The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak Republic, and the Soviet ...
. By September 13 they had taken over Mielec, especially attracted to the aircraft factory, and by October 5 the conquest of Poland was complete. Once German leaders replaced the Polish authorities, the anti-Jewish discrimination in Mielec expanded, with more looting of Jewish stores and Jews being recruited to perform menial labor tasks like sweeping sidewalks and washing cars. In 1939, 30–40 Jews in Mielec were killed on the eve of
Rosh Hashanah Rosh Hashanah (, , ) is the New Year in Judaism. The Hebrew Bible, biblical name for this holiday is Yom Teruah (, , ). It is the first of the High Holy Days (, , 'Days of Awe"), as specified by Leviticus 23:23–25, that occur in the late summe ...
, after the Germans surrounded the
Mikveh A mikveh or mikvah (,  ''mikva'ot'', ''mikvot'', or (Ashkenazi Hebrew, Ashkenazic) ''mikves'', lit., "a collection") is a bath used for ritual washing in Judaism#Full-body immersion, ritual immersion in Judaism to achieve Tumah and taharah, ...
in which they were gathered and set it on fire. Those who tried to escape were shot and those who remained inside perished in the fire. By January 1940, there were labor camps all over Poland. On March 9, 1942, the Jews in Mielec who had not already been transported to other labor camps were marched at gunpoint to the aircraft factory on the outskirts of the city where they were then impounded. Any sick, elderly, injured, weak or prominent figures were shot and buried in a
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 ...
.


Life in the camp

Jews in the Mielec labor camp faced brutal conditions. The camp was about two and a half acres of land surrounded by electrically charged barbed wire with a few wooden barracks to house the 1500 to 2000 prisoners that would be there at one time.Kowalski, Tadeusz. Obozy hitlerowskie w Polsce południowo-wschodniej azi camps in southeastern Poland Warszawa: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1973. The labor camp was originally run by the '' Werkschutz,'' the Factory protection police, and their leader Gotthold Stein, but was later taken over by the Schutzstaffeln (SS) and supervised by their leader at the time,
Gottlieb Hering __NOTOC__ Gottlieb Hering (2 June 1887 – 9 October 1945) was an SS commander of Nazi Germany. He served in Action T4 and later as the second and last commandant of Bełżec extermination camp during Operation Reinhard. Hering directly perpetra ...
. In the camp, prisoners would be woken up at 5 AM, and then work from 6 AM to 6 PM doing things like producing airplane parts, cleaning the factory, and loading and unloading cargo. For breakfast the prisoners got black coffee and seven ounces of bread, and for lunch and dinner they got a soup made of cabbage leaves and grub. This led to many dying from starvation or collapsing due to weakness and then being shot because of it. Another large cause of death in the camp was disease. There was a
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 ...
epidemic in 1942 that affected hundreds of prisoners, and rather than being treated they were brought to the woods and shot by Germans.


The ''Ordungsdienst''

One of the forces that controlled the camp was the ''Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst'' or Jewish Police Service. While some members of this force were sympathetic with their Jewish counterparts, others were violent towards the prisoners because they wanted to be in good graces of the Germans and spare their own lives. Two members, Doctor Birm and Jacob Keimann, voluntarily chose which Jews were going to be executed daily.Chiel, Löw. Innsbruck, August 12, 1946. YVA M.38/411 (original in Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichschen Widerstandes ocumentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance. — . Landsgericht Innsbruck, passed on by the Staatsanwaltschaft Kaiserslautern, 1963. YVA 068/811. “Die mörderische Aussiedlungsaktion” he murderous deportation operation Interrogation report. Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen, Ludwigsburg, date unknown. Another member, Buciu Gotinger who was a ''
kapo A kapo was a type of prisoner functionary () at a Nazi concentration or extermination camp. They were, whether voluntary or coerced, collaborators who worked under the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) to carry out administrative tasks or supervise th ...
'' (prisoner functionary) regularly tortured and beat the prisoners, making them perform hard labor tasks until they couldn’t anymore, and then he would beat them with a wooden floorboard until they became unconscious. However, not all members of the Jewish Police Service in Mielec were violent toward other Jews. The first leader of the ''Ordungsdienst'' at the camp was named Bitkower, and he and his wife were well liked and respected by the prisoners. According to a testimony from one of the prisoners, Ajzik Leibovicz, Bitkower asked about his family and where he was from, and when he saw that Leibovicz was sick one night, Bitkower told him to go see his wife (who was a doctor) in the morning and get treated. He listened to Bitkower and the next morning Mrs. Bitkower treated him and gave him injections which was not common practice in the labor camps.


Concentration camp

There is no Nazi documentation that says exactly when the camp changed from a labor camp to a
concentration camp A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...
, but it may have been after
Gottlieb Hering __NOTOC__ Gottlieb Hering (2 June 1887 – 9 October 1945) was an SS commander of Nazi Germany. He served in Action T4 and later as the second and last commandant of Bełżec extermination camp during Operation Reinhard. Hering directly perpetra ...
arrived in 1943 or when
Josef Schwammberger Josef Franz Leo Schwammberger (14 February 1912 – 3 December 2004) was a German SS (''Schutzstaffel'') Non-Commissioned Officer, Oberscharführer, war criminal, and commandant of the camps in Rozwadów, Przemyśl, and Mielec. Biography During t ...
arrived in February 1944. However, it is known that the camp had definitely transformed into a concentration camp by spring of 1944 because prisoners had started to have "KL" (''Konzentrationslager'') tattoos onto them.


Liquidation and liberation

There are conflicting testimonies from prisoners of when exactly the Mielec labor camp began to evacuate, but it is agreed upon that by August 1944, most of the Jews had been sent to other camps, mainly to
Płaszów Płaszów is a suburb of Kraków, Poland, now part of Podgórze district. Formerly a separate village, it became a part of the Greater Kraków in 1911 under the Austrian Partition of Poland as the 21st cadastral district of the city. During World ...
, either directly or by way of Wieliczka salt mine. There is also a Polish book that says the camp was evacuated in July after an order from
Amon Göth Amon Leopold Göth (; 11 December 1908 – 13 September 1946) was an Austrian SS functionary and war criminal. He served as the commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp in Płaszów in German-occupied Poland for most of th ...
when the
Red army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
had advanced within 50 miles of Mielec. The Jews were transported in overcrowded cargo wagons, many dying due to disease or hunger. In January 1945, when the Soviets were almost at Mielec, the remaining Jews at the camp were hastily evacuated to other camps, but because of the brutal winter conditions, many died on the way and those who survived were killed at their destination camps. By January 23, 1945, the Soviets had liberated Mielec.


References

{{Coord missing, Poland Nazi concentration camps in Poland