The Mittelsteine concentration camp was a Nazi Arbeitslager or slave-labour camp functional on the territory of Nazi Germany during the latter part of the Second World War, now at Ścinawka Średnia in south-western Poland.
It was originally established in 1942, but was operated formally for 250 days (8 months and a week) between 23 August 1944 and 30 April 1945 (the latter being the date of its liquidation) as an all-female subcamp of Gross-Rosen.Edward Basałygo, 900 lat Jeleniej Góry: Tędy przeszła historia: Kalendarium wydarzeń w Kotlinie Jeleniogórskiej i jej okolicach, Jelenia Góra, 2010, p. 240. Basałygo cites the official records of the German Ministry of Justice for the dates of the camp's existence (23 August 194430 April 1945). (See Bibliography for online link.)Roman Mogilanski, comp. & ed., The Ghetto Anthology: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Extermination of Jewry in Nazi Death Camps and Ghettos in Poland, rev. B. Grey, Los Angeles, American Congress of Jews from Poland and Survivors of Concentration Camps, 1985, page 246. Mogilanski gives the dates April 194431 March 1945 for the camp's existence without citing any sources.
Overview
Inmates and staff The detainees at the camp included primarily women of Jewish background deported from Hungary and Poland. The number of inmates averaged at 300,Obozy hitlerowskie na ziemiach polskich 19391945: informator encyklopedyczny, ed. Cz. Pilichowski, et al. (for the Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce and the Rada Ochrony Pomników Walki i Męczeństwa), Warsaw, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1979, p. 509. . or 400,Andrzej Strzelecki, Deportacja Żydów z getta łódzkiego do KL Auschwitz i ich zagłada: opracowanie i wybór źródeł, ed. T. Świebocka, Oświęcim, Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2004, p. 93. . while towards the end of the War the total swelled to nearly 1,000.Jan Kosiński, Niemieckie obozy koncentracyjne i ich filie, ed. W. Sobczyk, Stephanskirchen, Drukania Polska Kontrast, 1999, p. 313. . The function of camp commandant or Lagerkommandant (a position sometimes denominated Zwischengeschalteter SS-Offizier or "SS liaison officer") was performed by SS-Hauptsturmführer Paul Radschun.Filie obozu koncentracyjnego Gross-Rosen: informator, Wałbrzych, Muzeum Gross-Rosen, 2008, p. 53. . Cf. The Library of Congress item No. LC 89138100 with a personal dedication to Adolf Hitler on the latter's 42nd birthday (April 1931). The Oberaufseherin or "senior overseer" (the highest female official) was Erna Rinke.Filie obozu koncentracyjnego Gross-Rosen: informator, Wałbrzych, Muzeum Gross-Rosen, 2008, p. 53. . On Erna Rinke, see also Ursula Pawel, My Child is Back!, London, Portland (Oregon), Vallentine Mitchell, 2000, pp. 91 & 96. . The staff included 1015 female guards.Filie obozu koncentracyjnego Gross-Rosen: informator, Wałbrzych, Muzeum Gross-Rosen, 2008, p. 53. . Among the most notorious of them are mentioned the names of the Aufseherinnen Philomena Locker (sentenced after the War to seven years' imprisonment), Charlotte Neugebauer, and (first name unknown) Schneider.Jan Kosiński, Niemieckie obozy koncentracyjne i ich filie, ed. W. Sobczyk, Stephanskirchen, Drukania Polska Kontrast, 1999, p. 313. . Kosiński states that Philomena Locker was tried and convicted after the War without providing further details. On Philomena Locker, cf. Der Ort des Terrors: Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, eds. W. Benz & B. Distel, et al., vol. 8 (RigaKaiserwald, Warschau, Vaivara, Kauen (Kaunas), Płaszów, Kulmhof/Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka), Munich, Beck, 2008, p. 342. .
Location The camp was situated in the locality called Mittelsteine (renamed Ścinawka Średnia in 1947) in what was then the territory of the Third Reich, about to the north-west of Kłodzko (), the nearest larger town, or to the south-west of the regional metropolis, Wrocław () in the territory of Lower Silesia.
Despite its picturesque geographical location in the so-called Ścinawka Depression (Obniżenie Ścinawki) between the Table Mountains and the Stone Mountains and its history reaching back to the 14th century, Mittelsteine/Ścinawka Średnia was before the Second World War a highly industrialized village. The hamlet was, for example, the site of a major power plant that supplied electricity to the electrified Silesian grid (the Elektrischer Bahnbetrieb in Schlesien) of the German railway system (see picture below) considered one of the most valuable assets of the Reich.Alfred C. Mierzejewski, The Most Valuable Asset of the Reich: A History of the German National Railway, vol. 1, Chapel Hill (North Carolina), University of North Carolina Press, 1999, p. 227. . It was a major railway junction already in the 19th century. Mittelsteine was thus a natural choice for the location of various industries.
Today, the border crossing between the Czech Republic and Poland at OtoviceTłumaczów is just away; while the nearest town in Germany, Zittau, is away.
The camp
The camp consisted of three barracks located by the north-western side of the exit road leading out of the village towards Ratno Dolne (Ger., Niederrathen) the present-day Voivodeship Route (or DW) locally called the ulica Piłsudskiego about 600 metres from the bridge on the River Steine (present-day Ścinawka) in the direction away from the village centre on the right-hand side.Info on the Ścinawka Średnia official website. The prisoners were marched under armed guard back and forth along village streets between their places of forced labour and the camp.Ruth Minsky Sender, The Cage, New York, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1986, pp. 164165. . The forced labour involved primarily work for the armaments and munitions manufacturer Totex, a subsidiary of Metallwarenfabrik Spreewerk GmbH, itself owned by the Deutsche Industrie-Werke AG (DIWAG), and for other DIWAG munitions concerns located at Mittelsteine, and at the aviation-parts factory Fa. Albert Patin, Werkstätten für Fernsteuerungstechnik (whose location within the village is today uncertain). Contemporary German accounts suggest the Albert Patin factory was located within 15 minutes' walk of the railway station.Regina Maria Shelton, To Lose a War: Memories of a German Girl, Carbondale (Illinois), Southern Illinois University Press, 1982, p. 46. . The inmates' slave labour was specifically related to the manufacture of component parts of the V-1 and V-2 rockets components which were being secretly produced in the factory installed in the converted cotton mill (die Baumwollspinnerei) of Schiminsky & Co.Ścinawka Średnia: Położenie i charakterystyka. (The factory is said to have been connected by a tunnel with the Kłodzko Fortress where a similar factory manned by slave labour was in operation.)
Prisoners unable to work because of serious illness were removed from the camp to be executed off premises, as were those in advanced stages of pregnancy. In the latter stages of the camp's existence in 1945 a number of prisoners who fell ill were allowed to die without medical care in the camp's Revier or isolation ward.
With the defeat looming in the last months and weeks of the War the Nazis liquidated the camp and transferred the prisoners to two alternative slave-labour sites according to the following selection process: the Hungarian nationals were sent to the preexisting camp of Mährisch Weisswasser in Bílá Voda in the Sudetenland,Frauen-Arbeitslager Mährisch Weißwasser 1944/45: Zwangsarbeit für TELEFUNKEN; eine Überlebensstation auf dem Weg von Auschwitz nach Palästina mit der EXODUS; Erinnerungen, Daten, Bilder und Dokumente, ed. K. C. Kasper, Bonn-Oberkassel, Verlag Klaus Christian Kasper, 2002, pp. 6465. . while the Polish nationals were sent to the newly created camp at Grafenort in Germany (now Gorzanów in Poland) at a distance of 27 kilometres from Mittelsteine.Filie obozu koncentracyjnego Gross-Rosen: informator, Wałbrzych, Muzeum Gross-Rosen, 2008, p. 35. . As Bella Gutterman, the director of the International Institute for Holocaust Research, comments on these ultimate developments, by 1945 the decisions of the Nazis with regard to the Mittelsteine camp "followed no evident logic".Bella Gutterman, A Narrow Bridge to Life: Jewish Forced Labor and Survival in the Gross-Rosen Camp System, 19401945, tr. IBRT, New York, Berghahn Books, 2008, p. 206. , . However, the inexplicable dénouement may be linked to the fact that, with the advances of the Allied forces on the Eastern Front, the Nazis rapidly halted the secret production of the V-1 and V-2 rocket components at Mittelsteine, dismantled the specialized machinery used for the purpose and shipped it out of the region.
Post-war developments and testimonials
The victims Among the several memoirs published by former inmates during the post-War period, the most detailed description of the camp, according to experts, is that offered by Sara Selver-Urbach in her book Through the Window of My Home published in Israel in 1964.Sara Selver-Urbach, Through the Window of My Home: Recollections from the Lodz Ghetto, tr. (from Hebrew) S. Bodansky, Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 1964. Cf. Andrzej Strzelecki, Deportacja Żydów z getta łódzkiego do KL Auschwitz i ich zagłada: opracowanie i wybór źródeł, ed. T. Świebocka, Oświęcim, Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2004, p. 93. . Selver-Urbach writes, in part,...life in Mittelsteine was sheer hell, even if a lesser hell than elsewhere, and our portion of torments and suffering was undoubtedly an indivisible part of that total, comprehensive system I have labelled "A Different Planet"...Sara Selver-Urbach, Through the Window of My Home: Recollections from the Lodz Ghetto, tr. (from Hebrew) S. Bodansky, 3rd ed., Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 1986, p. 133.Another former inmate, Ruth Minsky Sender, who in her 1986 book The Cage vividly conveys the pervasive atmosphere of terror established at Mittelsteine by the random use of torture, speaks in the interviews of the suicides among the despairing inmates.Ruth Minsky Sender in the interview conducted by the students of the Cold Spring Harbor High School in Cold Spring Harbor (New York) on Long Island on 24 November 1997 (see online).
The perpetrators