Radostowitz

 


This was another small subcamp in Radostowice (Radostowitz in German), near the forest of Pszczyna. As with the Altdorf subcamp, it operated from autumn of 1942 to the spring of 1943, with a break in January and February.

The camp consisted of brick stables accommodating around 20 male prisoners, probably Jewish, sleeping on two-tiered bunk beds. The doors and windows were specially strengthened and there were around 8 SS guards.

As with Altdorf, the prisoners were employed for the forestry service, felling trees, thus providing fuel for the cremation pits at Birkenau.

A forest ranger by the name of Antoni Pastuszka recalls:

“During the German occupation I was working in the forest of Radostowice, Forestry Office Kobiór, about 500 metres away from the railway station. The tasks of the foresters were set by the head ranger, a German civilian named Gerlach. Probably at the end of 1941, (exact dates I cannot remember), Jan Kotas and I were instructed to prepare a room for the prisoners, who would be brought from the Auschwitz camp to work in the forest. As the ranger Gerlach had farms and farm buildings empty and available, he instructed us to use them. In brick stables (about 5 metres away from the office) two iron bunk beds were set up. I do not know who brought them, because at the time I was working in the forest, and they had been brought and placed in front of the stable.”

Another witness statement recalls the pattern of the prisoners working day:

“The work began around 07.00 hrs and went on until 19.00 hrs. They always walked more than 3 km on foot, armed with tools such as axes and saws. They worked in Szczyrk and Babczyna Dolina…The prisoners worked in cleaning up the forest, i.e. removing thickets of young trees of maximum 20 years old, which were dry, bent, or broken, or which had become fused together. Mostly deciduous trees were cut down, and birch, because they burned well in their newly cut state. The felled trees were tied into bundles and taken out onto the road. In the evenings after work there arrived in the woods in Radostowice heavy trucks, on which the felled trees were transported to the concentration camp at Birkenau.”

The working area in the forest was marked out by the SS guards. Prisoners could not leave this area. One prisoner was shot by a guard when he mistakenly wandered out of the marked area on his way to place a bundle of sticks beside the nearby road.

The prisoners also worked at the brickyard in Stara Wieś when there was no demand for wood fuel by Birkenau.



 


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