Tschechowitz II

Tschechowitz II

Tschechowitz II or Tschechowitz-Vacuum was established on a farm in late September 1944 near a railroad station close to the Czechowice refinery. The first prisoners consisted of 300 Jews from the Litzmannstadt ghetto who were housed in a large brick stable building, sleeping on three-tier bunks. A washroom and storeroom were built nearby and there was a square near the stables, the entire site surrounded by a chain-link fence. In October 1944, 300 more Jews arrived from Theresienstadt ghetto.

The prisoners were put to work dismantling factory buildings hit by air raids, bricklaying, concreting, building roads and repairing railway tracks. The camp was commanded by an SS man named Knoblik. There were several SS guards and they were complemented by a number of factory guards, Organisation Todt workers and police.

At the time of its evacuation in January 1945, there were 561 prisoners in the camp. Most of them were marched to Wodzisław Śląski and then transported by rail to Buchenwald. Remaining prisoners in the infirmary were forced to dig a deep hole. The SS men then shot all the prisoners who couldn’t leave their beds and those who had dug the hole then had to carry the bodies and throw them into the pit, covering them with a layer of straw and mattresses. There, they too were shot. The SS men then poured gasoline over the corpses and mattresses and set it on fire. A small number of prisoners managed to escape this massacre by hiding in a nearby hen house.

 Stable block where the prisoners lived


House used as SS guards accommodation

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