Obóz koncentracyjny

• Stutthof

 Concentration Camp                

                                                   

                                                     

                        Watchtower and gas chamber at Stutthof  November 2016
                                                               

Dedicated to my Grandfather's cousin-Josez Podsiadłowski-Prisoner #6783. The Stutthof Archives verified that he was amongst the first to  arrive at the camp on September 2, 1939. They were unable to verify 'why' he was arrested by the Gestapo  or when he 'left' the camp...it remains a mystery...The registrations of prisoners arriving in Stuttof began with the number 6600

On July 22, 1940 Jozef was admitted to the camp's hospital with a cellulitic infection of his foot.

The following are excerpts taken from various web sites.

"...Endlessly caught in a tug-of-war between Germany and Poland, the end of WWI saw the League of Nations come up with a hare-brained solution to the ceaseless bickering – it matched the city to neither suitor, instead assigning it the title of Free City of Danzig. Despite the large German speaking population, the country was in no condition to look after the population...giving it to the newly reformed Polish state was a gamble; would the Poles side with their Slavic brothers to the east and turn red? Anything was possible in this volatile post-war Europe, and the thought of Danzig/Gdansk – then a hugely important international trading route – falling into the hands of the communists was all too much. And so it was that Danzig/Gdansk became a semi-independent state, an answer that pleased neither Germans nor Poles...

On August 31, 1939, Nazi units dressed in Polish uniform infamously staged a mock attack on a radio tower in the German border town of Gleiwitz. Pictures of the victims (actually corpses of concentration camp inmates dressed in German uniforms) were flashed across the world, with Hitler claiming a provocative attack by the Polish army. The following dawn, Germany launched a strike on Westerplatte,.." 

https://www.inyourpocket.com/gdansk/World-War-II-in-Gdansk_73591f

• ...At the end of August 1939, the German pre-dreadnought battleship Schleswig-Holstein sailed to Danzig under the pretext of a courtesy visit and anchored in the channel 150 m from Westerplatte. The Germans had an SS-Heimwehr force of 1500 men led by Police General Friedrich-Georg Eberhardt and 225 Marines under Lieutenant Wilhelm Henningsen to attack the depot.

• The Battle of Westerplatte was the first battle in the Invasion of Poland and marked the start of the Second World War in Europe. Beginning on September 1, 1939, German naval forces, soldiers and the Danzig police assaulted the Polish Military Transit Depot on the peninsula of Westerplatte, in the harbour of the Free City of Danzig. The Poles held out for seven days in the face of a heavy attack that included dive bomber attacks.

• On the night of 3–4 September more German attacks were repelled. On September 4 a German torpedo boat T-196 (ex G196) made a surprise attack from the seaside...On September 5, a shell-shocked Sucharski held a war council and urged the surrender of Westerplatte, considering they were only supposed hold out for twelve hours..."

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Westerplatte

"...Both Germans and Soviets made every effort to place Polish people under their absolute command. To this end, they sought to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia and to deprive young Poles of educational opportunities. Universities and comprehensive schools were closed down, with only vocational schools’ being allowed to function. The enemy troops  arrested academic professors, pre-war social and political activists, artists, teachers, doctors and priests...

http://www.dublin.msz.gov.pl/resource/c965265f-f903-461b-a777-6256a0e7166e:JCR

The Nazi authorities of the Free City of Danzig were compiling material about known Jews and Polish intelligentsia as early as 1936 and were also reviewing suitable places to build concentration camps in their area... It was built in a secluded, wet, and wooded area near the small town of Sztutowo (German: Stutthof) 34 km east of the city of Gdańsk in the former territory of the Free City of Danzig. The camp was set up around already existing structures after the invasion of Poland in World War II, used for the imprisonment of Polish intelligentsia. The actual barracks were built in the following year by hundreds of prisoners enslaved in specialized commandos. Stutthof was the first camp outside German borders, in operation from 2 September 1939, and the last camp liberated by the Allies on 9 May 1945. More than 85,000 victims died in the camp out of as many as 110,000 inmates that were deported there".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stutthof_concentration_camp

• "...The first inmates imprisioned on September 2, 1929 were 1500 Polish citizens, arrested on the streets of Danziz right after the outbreak of the war...

                                                                                 

                                  Prisoner's sketch: the hanging of 2 young brothers in Stutthof

•  The inmate population rose to 6,000 in the following two weeks, ... Tens of thousands of people, perhaps as many as 100,000, were deported to the Stutthof camp including non-Jewish Poles and both communists and Jews from all of Europe..."

                                                                               

Prison log...Jozef Podsiadłowski,wheelright, born 6/7/1906 in Gross Lensk (present day Wiełki Lęck)

• In November 1941, it became a "labor education" camp, administered by the German Security Police. Finally, in January 1942, Stutthof became a regular concentration camp..."

• A crematorium and gas chamber were added in 1943, just in time to start mass executions when Stutthof was included in the Final Solution in June 1944. Mobile gas wagons were also used to complement the maximum capacity of the gas chamber (150 people per execution) when needed...

• Conditions in the camp were brutal. Many prisoners died in typhus epidemics that swept the camp in the winter of 1942 and again in 1944. Those whom the SS guards judged too weak or sick to work were gassed in the camp's small gas chamber. Gassing with Zyklon B began in June 1944. Camp doctors also killed sick or injured prisoners in the infirmary with lethal injections. More than 85,000 people died in the camp...

• When Russian forces moved into the areas close to Stutthof on 25 April 1945, those in control of the concentration camp forced the remaining prisoners to march to the coast and then commanded them to board river barges...On 5 May 1945, the day Denmark was liberated from German occupation during World War II, a barge with 370 starving prisoners from the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig  was brought into Klintholm Havn... "

• Stuttoff held a total of 60,000 political prisoners from twenty-five nations and twenty-eight ethnic groups,.

In 2006 a sample of  soap archived at the International Court of Justice in The Hague was given for analysis to Andrzej Stołyhwo, an expert in the chemistry of fats from the Gdansk University of Technology in Poland. He concluded that some of the fat in the sample tested was of human origin. The sample of soap had previously been used as evidence in the post-World War II Nuremberg trials, but at the time the technology was unavailable to determine whether the soap

had been produced from human fat. The human remains used to make the soap were believed to have been brought from Bydgoszcz and Stutthof concentration camp.

http://auschwitz.org/en/museum/news/human-fat-was-used-to-produce-soap-in-gdansk-during-the-war,55.html

Somehow, Josef did indeed survive the war...

He died in 1977 and is buried in Gdansk.

http://www.cmentarze-gdanskie.pl/cmentarze/chapter_77037.asp?smode=2&p1oid=F1C2576C2E99437AB795FDA70BC19881

ONLINE RESEARCH

• BMDs  birth, marriage, death records

Poczekalnia, or "waiting room," is a collection of BMDs that have been photographed and are awaiting indexing by Geneteka. You may access the site - first click on "wejscie" or "entrance".

  :http://poczekalnia.genealodzy.pl/

http://metryki.genealodzy.pl/metryka.php?ar=13&zs=0644bd&sy=1906b&kt=1&plik=008.jpg#zoom=1&x=2402&y=193

Above is Jozef's birth certificate, June 20,1906, Klein Lensk in East Prussia. (today is Mały Łęck – wieś w Polsce położona w województwie warmińsko-mazurskim, w powiecie działdowskim, w gminie Płośnica, Poland) ...the document is written in German. 

Along the side the page are notations. They were later made regarding the birth of his 4 children-all of whom were born in troubled times in 'Danzig' (Gdańsk): Antoni Jozef -June 1936, Rzyard Franz -September 28,1937.  Teofil Ludwig- February 19, 1939. Martha Marie-Feb 18, 1843.

At the bottom are details of Jozef's marrying on  March 14, 1944 -a year after the birth of his daughter.

These notations imply that he was released from Stutthof- mid year 1942.

• Indexed Records 

• Geneteka

http://www.geneteka.genealodzy.pl/index.php?lang=pol

This database created by volunteers of the Polish Genealogical Society contains over 10 million indexed records. They are often times linked to digital images. Records are included from parishes across many regions of Poland. Mazowieckie (452 parishes) is well represented.  Warmińsko-mazurski (77 parishes-Wielki Lęck: marriages with scans 1872-1906)). Pomorskie (90 parishes including Gdańsk-I require later dated records). Access is free.  It is updated on a regular basis. Many times the index alone gives you the parent's names of your searched individual.

Eg-http://www.geneteka.genealodzy.pl/index.php?op=gt&lang=pol&bdm=S&w=14wm&rid=S&search_lastname=podsiadlowski&search_name=teofil&search_lastname2=&search_name2=&from_date=&to_date=

All of my blood relations are below underlined.

1884 Akt 10 Franciszek Podsiadłowski ,F-Frederich, M-Anna Gatacek (sic) Galązka. and  Rozalia Sobotka. F Jan. M-Anna Szczepanska,  Wielki Lęck

1887 Akt 6 Hipolit Tylicki, F-Kazmierz (sic) Antoni. M-Wiktorya Chodzińska (sic) Chadzyńska,  and Marianna Podsiadłowska, F-Jan  M-Anna Galązna (sic) Galąlzka,  Wielki Lęck

1887 Akt 3 Johann Karl Kozłoski. F-Jan. M-Gottlieba and Wilehelmine Podsiadłowska. F-Fredrich, M-Anna Galązka,  Wielki Lęck

1889 Akt 20  Teofil Podsiadlowski, F-Fredrich. M-Anna Galoska (sic) Galązka and Teofila Szinska. F-Mateusz. M- Maria Konopacka,  Lidzbark miasto

Marriages took place in the bride's parish.

Siblings- Franz, Marianna, Wilehelmine and Teofil Podsiadlowcy-Their father's name is actually-Johann Fredrich (Jan in Polish).

  

• IPN  Institute of National Remembrance

Institute of National Remembrance - Commission for Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish 

Nation... Division of the Institute archive collects, records, stores, develops, provides

and protects the documents from the years 1917 to 1990 crime and documents showing the facts and circumstances regarding the fate of the Polish nation in the years 1939-1990 and informing incurred victims and caused damage seems on the basis of their certified copies, extracts, extracts and reproductions of stored documents.

Wojewódzki Urząd Spraw Wewnętrznych w Gdańsku [1945] 1983-1990
Przyporządkowanie
Podzespół:	Wojewódzki Urząd Spraw Wewnętrznych w Gdańsku 1983-1990
Seria:	Materiały osobowe
Podseria:	Sygnatura V
Opis zawartości
Tytuł:	Akta osobowe funkcjonariusza UB/SB: Józef Podsiadłowski, imię ojca: Teofil, ur. 17-06-1906 r.
Daty wytworzenia dokumentów
Data początkowa:	1945
Data końcowa:	1968
Posteriora:	1975
Opis zewnętrzny
Forma fizyczna:	Dokumentacja aktowa Fotografia
Liczba tomów:	1
Liczba kart:	77
Informacje identyfikujące
Sygnatura IPN:	IPN Gd 214/1505
Sygnatura dawna (wytwórcy dokumentów):	5088/V, 5088/A
Sygnatura dawna (poprzednich archiwów):	591/g
Miejsce przechowywania
Nazwa archiwum:	Oddziałowe Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej w Gdańsku

http://inwentarz.ipn.gov.pl/showDetails?id=3234326&q=podsiad%C5%82owski&page=1&url=[|typ=0]

 Źródło: Muzeum Stutthof w Sztutowie 

nazwisko	Podsiadlowski
imię	Józef
data urodzenia	1906-06-17
miejsce urodzenia	Lemks

uwięziony
rodzaj uwięzienia	obóz koncentracyjny
okoliczności zatrzymania	placówka kierująca do obozu:Gestapo Danzig
miejsce osadzenia	Stutthof
data osadzenia	1939-09
numer	6783
dodatkowe informacje	pobyt w szpitalu1940-07-22

http://straty.pl/index.php/en/szukaj-w-bazie

• BOOKS and FILMS

• The battle at Danzig has been the subject of two Polish films: Westerplatte in 1967, and the 2013 film Tajemnica Westerplatte (The Secret of Westerplatte)

• Balys Sruoga - Diev miškas (The Forest of Gods) describing the everyday life of this camp.

• Olstyn ARCHIVES

Katholische Kirche
Gross Lensk index 1906-1917
Zepol 367
Sygnaturia 42/367/0/79
Sekretariat@olsztyn.ap.gov.pl



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