It has been 85 years since the first transport of prisoners arrived at the German concentration and extermination camp Gross-Rosen. On August 2, 1940, nearly 100 Poles were brought there and began grueling work in the “stone hell.” This marked the beginning of the tragic history of the camp, where Poles and Jews constituted the largest groups of victims. Their shared suffering is an important chapter in the memory of World War II.
Gross-Rosen: Stone Hell
The Gross-Rosen camp, established as a branch of KL Sachsenhausen, was built near the present-day village of Rogoznica in Lower Silesia to exploit the local granite quarry. On August 2, 1940, the first transport arrived there: 98 Poles and 2 Germans. From May 1941, the camp became independent, and in 1944 it grew to over 100 subcamps. It is estimated that around 125,000 prisoners passed through Gross-Rosen, of whom 40,000 died of exhaustion, starvation, and executions. The total number of Jewish prisoners is estimated at around 57,000.
Poles: The first prisoners in hell on earth
Poles, especially in the early days, dominated among the prisoners of Gross-Rosen. The first transport consisted mainly of residents of Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Piotrków Trybunalski, Radom, and Skarżysko-Kamienna. They worked in inhumane conditions on the construction of the camp and the extraction of granite. The high mortality rate was due to 12-hour workdays, starvation rations, and SS terror. Among the Polish prisoners at Gross-Rosen were well-known figures such as Kazimierz Prószyński, a pioneer of cinematography, and Florian Marciniak, the first commander of the Grey Ranks, who died in the camp. Several German companies, including Siemens and Blaupunkt, also benefited from the prisoners' labor.
"Hell on earth began. Amidst constant screaming and beatings, we dug the ground and broke rocks, and we had to do it in constant motion and running /Laufschritt/, without a moment's rest or respite. (...) we fell, dug into the rock, loaded wheelbarrows and ran, ran, carried them to the places indicated to us, returned to our positions and back again, and loaded them again, chipped away at the granite, beaten, bleeding, hunted down," recalled Stanisław Wądołowski about his first day in Gross-Rosen.
Jews: Extermination and slave labor
In 1942, an operation was carried out to “cleanse” the camp of Jewish prisoners, who were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on October 17, 1942. The largest groups of Jewish prisoners began to arrive at the camp after the major expansion of Gross-Rosen in 1944. At that time, its character changed; numerous branches (over 100) were established alongside the headquarters in Gross-Rosen, located mainly in Lower Silesia. The largest camps included: AL Fünfteichen, four camps in Wrocław (Breslau), Dyhernfurth, Landeshut, and the Riese camp complex located in the Owl Mountains. Over 13,000 Jews (mainly Polish and Hungarian) were imprisoned in AL Riese, and about 5,000 people died there.
As of January 1, 1945, there were almost 77,000 prisoners in the camp, including over 25,500 women, mainly Jewish. Szymon Wiesenthal, one of the most famous Nazi trackers, also passed through KL Gross-Rosen.
Shared suffering
One of the most tragic periods in the history of this camp was its evacuation. During the transports (which lasted up to several weeks), many thousands of prisoners died. In February 1945, most of the prisoners were evacuated from the overcrowded Gross-Rosen main camp to other camps deeper inside the Reich. Not all of them lived to see freedom and the end of World War II. According to rough estimates, out of more than 77,000 prisoners who were in Gross-Rosen in the main camp and all its branches at the beginning of January 1945, only 44,000 prisoners survived the evacuation.
Memorial
A museum established in 1983 is dedicated to preserving the memory of the victims of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Gross-Rosen. The facility covers an area of over 44 hectares, which consists of the prisoner sector and the so-called Auschwitz sector, the SS sector, and the historic quarry—a place of slave labor and death for prisoners.
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