Bobrek

 

Bobrek was a subcamp of Monowitz concentration camp located in or near Bobrek, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Poland, and was part of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. It was built by Siemens-Schuckert and held approximately 250-300 prisoners including 50 women who were used as slave labor to produce electrical parts for aircraft and U-boat submarines. The commandant of the camp was SS-Scharführer Hermann Buch.

Bobrek subcamp was evacuated along with the other camps in the Auschwitz complex on January 18, 1945. The prisoners were sent on a death march to a concentration camp in Gleiwitz, Poland. Many were then transported by rail to Buchenwald concentration camp. While in Buchenwald, the former Bobrek workers were sought out by Siemens-Schuckert executives, who had them transported to the Siemens-Schuckert factory in Siemensstadt, a suburb of Berlin.

A sub-camp located 3 km north of Oświęcim in fertilizer-factory buildings in Bobrek that belonged before the war to Anna Kuppermann and Ryfka Jakubowicz. In the late autumn of 1943, after the Allied bombing of the Berlin Siemens-Schukert-Werke, the company’s directors decided to relocate some of their production to Auschwitz.

Their representative, the engineer Kurt Bundzus, came to the camp at the beginning of November and chose 120 prisoners—precision mechanics and construction laborers. From January 1944, these prisoners marched each day to Bobrek, where they worked at demolishing some buildings and renovating others, and erecting barbed-wire fencing. In April, the prisoners were lodged permanently in Bobrek. They worked in the factory hall producing parts for electric motors and accessories. They were quartered in a nearby warehouse that was dark and crowded but had central heating and showers with hot water. Because they were experts and hard to replace, they were not beaten or mistreated.

At the end of 1944, the sub-camp held 220 prisoners, mostly Polish or Hungarian Jews along with a dozen or so non-Jewish Poles and 37 women prisoners assigned to auxiliary labor and growing vegetables in the factory garden. The commandant of the sub-camp was SS-Oberscharführer Anton Lukoschek, who was in charge of a dozen or so SS men from the Auschwitz III sentry battalion. In January 1945, the prisoners were evacuated on foot to Gliwice, and then to the Buchenwald camp.

The Bobrek factory building



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