Forgotten Horrors: The Nazi sub-camp system

 Neustadt Neustadt was a subcamp established in late September 1944 in the Schlesische Feinweberei AG textile mill in Prudnik, near Nysa (Neustadt in German). Around 400 female prisoners were brought to the mill from the main camp in Auschwitz. They were housed on the second storey of a building previously accommodating conscript labourers. The windows had bars on them and a perimeter fence with barbed wire along the top of it was erected around the building. Most of the women were Jews from Hungary, put to work on spinning machines in the mill. The subcamp was commanded by SS-Oberscharführer Bernhard Becker who had a garrison of 20 SS men. The prisoners were evacuated to Gross-Rosen in January 1945.   The textile mill The building where the female prisoners lived

Charlottegrube Charlottegrube consisted of five camps, only two of them housing prisoners from Auschwitz. 200 prisoners arrived in September 1944 and by October this number had swelled to more than 600. Most of the prisoners were Jews from Hungary, Bohemia, and Slovakia. The prisoners slept on three-tier bunks in brick barracks surrounded by barbed wire fences. The camp was commanded by SS-Oberscharführer Alfred Tschiersky and subsequently by SS-Hauptscharführer Kurt Kirschner. The garrison consisted of 54 SS men. The prisoners worked in two groups, one of them at the Leon II and Leon III mine shafts at the Charlotte coal mine nearby and the other group above ground where they transported and sorted coal, worked in the colliery workshops and constructed the Charlotte electric power station. Extra guards were drawn from the police, Wehrmacht soldiers, and uniformed members of the SA.   The working conditions were hard, causing 50 percent of the prisoners to lose their abilit...