Trawniki Concentration Camp
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The Trawniki was 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 ...
set up by
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
in the village of
Trawniki Trawniki is a village in Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Trawniki. It lies approximately south-east of Świdnik and south-east of the regional capital Lu ...
about southeast of
Lublin Lublin is List of cities and towns in Poland, the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the centre of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin i ...
during the occupation of Poland in World War II. Throughout its existence the camp served a dual function. It was organized on the grounds of the former Polish sugar refinery of the Central Industrial Region, and subdivided into at least three distinct zones. The Trawniki camp first opened after the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union, intended to hold Soviet POWs, with rail lines in all major directions in the
General Government The General Government (, ; ; ), formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovak Republic (1939–1945), Slovakia and the Soviet ...
territory. Between 1941 and 1944, the camp expanded into an SS training camp for collaborationist auxiliary police, mainly Ukrainian. In 1942, it became the forced-labor camp for thousands of Jews within the Majdanek concentration camp system as well. The Jewish inmates of Trawniki provided slave labour for the makeshift industrial plants of '' SS-Ostindustrie'', working in appalling conditions with little food. There were 12,000 Jews imprisoned at Trawniki as of 1943 sorting through trainsets of clothing delivered from Holocaust locations. They were all massacred during Operation Harvest Festival of November 3, 1943, by the auxiliary units of Trawniki men stationed at the same location, helped by the travelling Reserve Police Battalion 101 from Orpo. The first camp commandant was Hermann Hoefle, replaced by Karl Streibel.


Concentration camp operation

The Nazi camp at Trawniki was first established in July 1941 to hold prisoners of war captured in
Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along ...
, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The new barracks behind the barbed-wire fence were erected by the prisoners themselves. In 1942 the camp was enlarged to include the ''SS- Arbeitslager'' meant for the Polish Jews from across General Government. Within a year, under the management of ''
Gauleiter A ''Gauleiter'' () was a regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as the head of a ''Administrative divisions of Nazi Germany, Gau'' or ''Reichsgau''. ''Gauleiter'' was the third-highest Ranks and insignia of the Nazi Party, rank in ...
'' Odilo Globocnik, the camp included a number of forced labour workshops such as the fur processing plant (''Pelzverarbeitungswerk''), the brush factory (''Bürstenfabrik''), the bristles finishing (''Borstenzurichterei''), and the new branch of ''Das Torfwerk'' in Dorohucza. The Jews who worked there from June 1942 to May 1944 as slave labour for the German war effort were brought in from the
Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (, officially , ; ) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the Nazi Germany, German authorities within the new General Government territory of Occupat ...
as well as selected transit ghettos across Europe (Germany, Austria, Slovakia) under
Operation Reinhard Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt ( or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret Nazi Germany, German plan in World War II to exterminate History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied ...
, and from September 1943 as part of the Majdanek concentration camp system of subcamps such as the Poniatowa concentration camp and several others.


Trawniki training camp

From September 1941 until July 1944, the facility served as the full-fledged training base with dining rooms and sleeping quarters for the new '' Schutzmannschaften'' recruited from POW camps for service with Nazi Germany in the
General Government The General Government (, ; ; ), formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovak Republic (1939–1945), Slovakia and the Soviet ...
territory. Karl Streibel, the camp commander, and his officers used to induce Ukrainian, Latvian and Lithuanian men already familiar with firearms to take the initiative of their own free will. The total of 5,082 men were prepared at Trawniki for duty in German '' Sonderdienst'' battalions before the end of 1944 – across from the forlorn Jewish camp separated by an inner fence. Although the majority of Trawniki men (or '' Hiwis'') came from among the willing prisoners of war of Ukrainian ethnicity, there were also '' Volksdeutsche'' from Eastern Europe among them, valued because of their ability to speak Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and other languages of the occupied territories.Gregory Procknow
''Recruiting and Training Genocidal Soldiers''
Francis & Bernard Publishing, 2011, (page 35).
They became the only squad commanders. Trawniki men took major part in
Operation Reinhard Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt ( or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret Nazi Germany, German plan in World War II to exterminate History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied ...
, the Nazi plan to exterminate Polish and foreign Jews. They served at extermination camps, and played an important role in the annihilation of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (see the Stroop Report) and the Białystok Ghetto Uprising among other ghetto insurgencies.Sergei Kudryashov, "Ordinary Collaborators: The Case of the Travniki Guards" (in) ''Russia War, Peace and Diplomacy Essays in Honour of John Erickson'' edited by Mark and Ljubica Erickson, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004; pages 226–227 & 234-235.


Camp liquidation, November 3, 1943

Towards the end of October, the entire slave-labour workforce of KL Lublin/Majdanek including Jewish prisoners of the Trawniki concentration camp were ordered to begin the construction of trenches that would become mass graves. Although the trenches were supposedly for defense against air raids, and their zigzag shape granted some plausibility to this lie, the prisoners guessed their true purpose.:232:403–404:285–286 The massacres, later assumed to have been revenge for German defeat at Stalingrad, were set by Christian Wirth for November 3, 1943, under the codename Operation Harvest Festival, simultaneously at Majdanek, Trawniki, Poniatowa, Budzyn,
Kraśnik Kraśnik is a town in southeastern Poland with 35,602 inhabitants (2012), situated in the Lublin Voivodeship, historic Lesser Poland. It is the seat of Kraśnik County. The town of Kraśnik as it is known today was created in 1975, after the mer ...
, Puławy and Lipowa subcamps. The bodies of Jews shot in the pits by Trawniki men aided by Battalion 101 were later incinerated by a '' Sonderkommando'' from Milejów, who were executed on site upon the completion of their task by the end of 1943. Operation Harvest Festival, with approximately 43,000 victims, was the single largest German massacre of Jews in the entire war. It surpassed the notorious massacre of more than 33,000 Jews at
Babi Yar Babi Yar () or Babyn Yar () is a ravine in the Ukraine, Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during Eastern Front (World War II), its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The first and ...
outside Kiev by 10,000 victims. The Trawniki training camp was dismantled in July 1944 because of the approaching front line. The last 1,000 ''Hiwis'' forming the ''SS Battalion Streibel'' led by Karl Streibel himself, were transported west to work at the still functioning death camps. The Soviets entered the completely empty facility on July 23, 1944. After the war, they captured and prosecuted hundreds, possibly as many as one thousand ''Hiwis'' who returned home to USSR. Most were sentenced to
Gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...
s, and released under the Khrushchev amnesty of 1955. The number of ''Hiwis'' tried in the West was very small by comparison. Six defendants were acquitted on all charges and set free by a West German court in
Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
in 1976 including commandant Streibel. The Trawniki men apprehended in Soviet Union were charged with treason (not the shootings) and therefore were ''guilty of enlistment'' from the start of judicial proceedings. In the U.S. some 16 former ''Hiwi'' guards were denaturalized, some of whom were very old.


Failed attempts at recruiting

In January 1943 the SS ''Germanische Leitstelle'' in occupied Zakopane in the heartland of the Tatra mountains embarked on a recruitment drive with an idea of forming a brand new Waffen-SS highlander division. Some 200 young '' Goralenvolk'' signed up, while offered unlimited supply of alcohol. They boarded a passenger train to Trawniki, but most left the train in Maków Podhalański once already sober. Only twelve men arrived in Trawniki. At the first opportunity they got into a major fistfight with the Ukrainians, causing havoc. They were arrested and sent away. The whole idea was abandoned as impossible by ''SS-Obergruppenführer'' Krüger in occupied
Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...
by an official letter of April 5, 1943. The failure probably contributed to his dismissal on November 9, 1943, by Governor General Hans Frank. Krüger committed suicide in upper Austria two years later.


Notes


References

* * Kudryashov, Sergei, "Ordinary Collaborators: The Case of the Travniki Guards," in Mark and Ljubica Erickson (eds), ''Russia War, Peace and Diplomacy Essays in Honour of John Erickson'' (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004), 226–239. *
Project MUSE 90 (abstract; paid access)
* Witold Mędykowski, "Obóz pracy dla Żydów w Trawnikach," ''Wojciech Lenarczyk, Dariusz Libionka (eds.), Erntefest 3–4 listopada 1943. Zapomniany epizod Zagłady" (Lublin: Państwowe Muzeum na Majdanku, 2009), 183–210. . * * * United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Trawniki
* In depth overview of the Trawniki Camp, Trawniki Staff, Photos.

* * * Aderet, Ofer. (''Haaretz'', Mar 23, 2012)
"Convicted Nazi criminal Demjanjuk deemed innocent in Germany over technicality."
* Semotiuk, Andrij A. (''Kyiv Post'', Mar 21, 2012)
"In Memory of John Demjanjuk."
Retrieved Apr 24, 2012.
BBC July 29, 2010

BBC November 22, 2010
*
Report on Palij (in Ukrainian)
"Яків Палій." Україна Молода, June 17, 2004. Retrieved May 1, 2013. {{DEFAULTSORT:Trawniki Concentration Camp 1941 establishments in Germany 1941 establishments in Poland 1942 in Poland 1943 disestablishments in Poland Reserve Police Battalion 101