Forgotten Horrors: The Nazi sub-camp system

  Aerial photograph of Auschwitz III (Monowitz-Buna) The site of Auschwitz III Monowitz-Buna as it is now Monowitz subcamp was also known as Monowitz-Buna and Auschwitz III. It was established in October 1942 and evacuated in 1945. From 1943, the subcamp was commanded by SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Heinrich Schwarz. The subcamp held around 12,000 prisoners, most of whom were Jews, although there were also some criminals and political prisoners. They were used as skilled and unskilled labour at the nearby I G Farben chemical plant (which produced rubber and synthetic fuels), for which the SS charged the company three Reichsmarks per day for unskilled workers and four RM per day skilled workers. Where children were used as labour, the SS charged one and a half RM per day. Jewish workers at Monowitz had an average life expectancy of three to four months, reduced to just one month for those working at nearby mines. Those regarded as unfit for work were gassed at Birkenau. Prisoners at work on the

  The Baty shoe factory - towards the top of the picture, close to a stretch of woodland, there is visible what appears to be the trackbed of a railway, with two surviving buildings. This may be the surviving remnants of the engine house. Chelmek subcamp opened in October 1942 with around 150 prisoners held in a barracks near the engine house of a narrow gauge railway. Most of the prisoners were Jews from France, Belgium and The Netherlands who worked at cleaning the ponds used by the local Bata shoe factory as a water source. The prisoners were brutally treated, with hunger and hard labour along with persecution by the SS guards claiming the lives of 47 prisoners and requiring another 64 to be admitted to hospital in a severe condition. The final 34 prisoners in the camp were transferred to Auschwitz I in December 1942, where at least 28 of them died. Thus almost all the prisoners held in this subcamp died.  Further information and photos: Subcamps of Auschwitz

  The subcamp of Jawischowitz was located in the Polish village of Jawiszowice. Prisoners held there worked in the Brzeszcze coal mine, owned by Reichswerke Hermann Göring. The camp itself was established in August 1942 and was one of the largest Auschwitz subcamps. It held 2,500 prisoners in 1944, most of them Jews from Poland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Hungary, alongside non-Jewish Poles, Russians, and Germans. There were 70 SS guards in 1944. The subcamp was commanded initially by SS-Unterscharführer Wilhelm Kowol, subsequently SS-Hauptscharführer Josef Remmele . It was surrounded by electrified barbed wire and consisted of at least ten wooden barracks, of which seven held prisoners. Other barracks contained a kitchen, hospital, storage space, workshops, washrooms and toilets.  Every few weeks, SS doctors held a selection, during which those considered unfit for work were removed and sent to the gas chambers in Auschwitz. From 1942 to 1944, at least 1,800 prisoner

  Goleszów subcamp was located near  Cieszyn, in the vicinity of a quarry and cement factory, operated by an SS-owned company called  Golleschauer Portland-Zemment AG. The subcamp was established in July 1942 and was one of several early Auschwitz subcamps. The subcamp held around 400-500 prisoners, most of them Jews with some Poles. In spring 1944, these prisoners were joined by Polish, Czech and Hungarian Jews, bringing the total number of prisoners to over one thousand. The prisoners were held in a two-storey located next to the cement factory. There was a roll-call square and barracks for SS guards nearby. The prisoners were put to work laying railway tracks, breaking stones, sifting coal, packing cement and stoking kilns that burnt lime for cement production. Prisoners working in the quarry loaded rocks into wagons. Almost 130 prisoners died, out of a total of 2,348, according to the subcamp record book. Some of them were shot, while others committed suicide.  The camp was command

  Plawy was another agricultural subcamp. It was established at the end of 1944 close to fields that had been worked in spring 1944 by kommandos from Birkenau, located nearby. New barracks were erected in November 1944 alongside barns and two stables. In January 1945, 200 female prisoners, most of them Russians and Hungarians, were moved into one barrack and 140 male prisoners, consisting of Russians, Poles and Slovakian Jews, in another barrack. The barracks were separated from each other, and from other subcamp buildings, by barbed wire fences. There were 100 cows in the subcamp, fed and milked by the female prisoners, who also cleaned the farmyard, carried beets and potatoes for fodder and fertiliser. The male prisoners looked after 70 to 80 horses, transported crops and delivered milk to the dairy. The subcamp was evacuated on 18th January 1945, the prisoners walking on a death march to Wodzisław Śląski from where they were transported by train into January. Photographs of the site

  Aerial view of the main subcamp site (Google Earth) Raisko subcamp was established in the village of Rajsko, again after the inhabitants had been expelled, this expulsion occurring in Spring 1941. The buildings were then partly demolished. The camp was another agricultural unit, the first prisoners being male but with female prisoners subsequently arriving in 1942. Initially, the prisoners walked to the site from Auschwitz I and Birkenau, but from June 1943 female prisoners were housed permanently on site. The work at the subcamp involved gardening and plant growing, with vegetables grown in hothouses and flower beds. Some female prisoners worked in an experimental unit where they cultivated an Asian plant called kok saghyz which had roots containing a substance called caoutchouc, used in the production of rubber. In 1943 there were 250 prisoners in the subcamp, but this number had increased to 320 by June 1944. Most of the prisoners initially were Polish, with others being Jews, Rus

  Babice subcamp main area The full German name of this subcamp was Wirtschaftshof Babitz according to the website Subcamps of Auschwitz , which is operated by the research organisation Tiergarten 4 Association e.v. (a visit to their main website is highly recommended by the way). The website has a wealth of information about this particular camp, as follows: The subcamps three commanders were SS Oberscharfuhrer Rosenoff, SS Ausherin Erna Kuck and SS Auseherin Johanna Bormann. The number of guards remains unknown, but has been estimated at 30, drawn from the Landswritschaftskompanie of the SS, consisting primarily of Germans and Volksdeutsche from Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Czechoslovakia.  The main function of the camp was agricultural work on a farm owned by the SS. Female prisoners were held in an old school, while the male prisoners were held in specially built wooden barracks. The subcamp held 360 prisoners (male and female) in total. Of these, 200 were female - estimated to

Former Gustav Zwilling Villa According to the Auschwitz Museum Website , Harmeze subcamp actually consisted of two subcamps located in the village of  Harmęże - called 'Harmense' by the Germans - situated about 2 kilometres from Birkenau. The Polish residents of the village were expelled prior to construction of the subcamps, the first of which was established in December 1941 in a manor house known as the Gustav Zwilling villa  -  the owner having also been expelled. Around 50 Polish prisoners were held on the second floor in rooms that were separated from the rest of the house by a barred and padlocked door. The Polish prisoners were later supplemented by other male prisoners from Germany, the Soviet Union, Romania, France and Czechoslovakia. These prisoners were then put to work on agricultural tasks, specifically, raising poultry and rabbits and looking after some fishponds. In June 1942, the prisoners were moved into the village itself, where they were held in two building

This is why I had to start a blog in order to complete this project - the sheer numbers of subcamps in total is stupendous, and bear in mind that in addition to concentration camps, the Holocaust was carried out in all its grisly horror in hundreds of ghettoes and execution sites all over Europe and extending into Russia. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopaedia of Camps and Ghettoes project, due to be completed in 2021, has amassed a list of over 1,100 sites, and more are being added as and when they are located and identified. Here though, the blog is merely concerned with the subcamps, which is horrifying enough in itself.# Auschwitz sub-camps Brzezinka (Birkenau i.e. Auschwitz II) will not be covered in the blog because Birkenau is usually considered to be part of the main Auschwitz complex (i.e. Auschwitz I and II) and as such has already been covered extensively across many books, TV programmes and on the internet. I may add a brief history of the main Auschwitz complex at