Danzig-Matzkau was the prison camp of the SS and police in Danzig-Matzkau near Danzig, Poland. It was subordinate to the Waffen-SS.
Description
The prison camp was intended for members of the SS and police service who were accused of disciplinary offences.
While in the Wehrmacht Verband, offenses of a disciplinary and criminal nature were punished with sentences to imprisonment and imprisonment, in the most serious cases the death penalty, in the Waffen-SS every soldier who had been accused of defamatory and criminal behavior was expelled from the troops and sent to a concentration camp as a prisoner . The same happened to SS members who wanted to achieve the status of "unfit for military service" by deliberately delaying illnesses. The death penalty remained unaffected by this. In these cases, the convicted person was expelled from the SS without exception before execution.
While soldiers of the Wehrmacht who were sentenced to fortress or criminal detention could rehabilitate themselves in a so-called field punishment unit, this possibility was initially eliminated for members of the Waffen-SS. However, in September 1943, the SS Paratrooper Battalion 500 was formed from prisoners of the penal camp.Bruce Quarrie: German Airborne Divisions. Mediterranean Theatre 1942-45. Oxford 2005, S. 63–65; Romedio Graf von Thun-Hohenstein: Rösselsprung. In: ÖMZ 45:1 (2007), S. 23–30 (bmlv.gv.at (PDF; 8,3 MB)).
In addition, on September 20, 1944, a contingent of 1,500 prison camp inmates from Danzig-Matzkau was assigned to suppress the Warsaw Uprising. The inmates were assigned to the SS special unit Dirlewanger. Neither was the registration voluntary, nor could the occupants refuse.Hellmuth Auerbach: Die Einheit Dirlewanger (PDF-Datei; 749 kB). In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Jg. 10, Nr. 3 (Herbst 1962), S. 256.In the suppression of the uprising, the Dirlewanger unit displayed an extraordinary cruelty and brutality, even for SS units. Prisoners from the SS prison camp Danzig-Matzkau were also transferred to the SS probation regiment Kaltofen, which was formed at the beginning of 1945.Rudolf Absolon: Die Wehrmacht im Dritten Reich. Bd. VI: 19. Dezember 1941 bis 9. Mai 1945. (Schriften des Bundesarchivs. 16). Boppard am Rhein 1995, S. 165.
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