September 1, 1939, not only signalled the invasion of Poland, but also the beginning of a Saubersungsaktion (cleaning action) by the police force. Waves of mass arrests followed, with the first batch of prisoners arriving in Stutthof the following day. Stutthof, penned in by sea and forest, but also serviced by rail lines, was seen as an ideal location for a camp, and by February, 1940, it had emerged as the principal holding area in Pomerania for enemies of the Nazi state. At this stage, however, it was still classified as a civilian camp, and it wasn’t until an official visit from Himmler in November 1941 that it was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Concentration Camp Inspectorate. What had started off as a relatively small camp now welcomed transports from across conquered Europe; by the end of the war Stutthof had grown to include 26 sub-camps covering an area of 120 hectares, and holding an estimated 57,000 inmates.
Conditions were brutal with hard labour, epidemics and starvation all culling prisoner numbers. Furthermore, those who fell sick could expect to be murdered with a phenol injection to the heart delivered by one of the camp doctors. The second half of 1944 saw the decision to transport Jews to Stutthof, a move that led to the killing process being streamlined further with the addition of a gas chamber and crematorium; of the 50,000 Jews imprisoned in Stutthof only 3,000 are estimated to have survived.
With the Red Army approaching, and liberation in sight, the Nazis played the final card in their heinous game. An earlier decree issued by Himmler had insisted no prisoners be liberated, and as such tens of thousands were forced on arduous ‘death marches’ to camps further west. Scores perished on the way, with those unable to continue summarily shot and killed on the roadside. Soviet troops finally entered the camp on May 9, 1945, greeted by little more than 100 emaciated inmates who had managed to hide during the evacuation process. Latest research indicates that of the 100,000 prisoners incarcerated throughout Stutthof’s existence, only a third of that number survived.
The search for justice began immediately with the first Stutthof trial concluding in June, 1946. Eleven death sentences were passed, and these were carried out a month later in front of a baying crowd of over 200,000 on J-4 ul. Pohulanka in the Biskupia Góra district of Gdańsk. However, no commandant was ever brought to face a Polish court; Max Pauly was executed by the British for crimes in Neuengamme, while the second commandant, Paul Werner Hoppe, was only arrested years later in 1955. The man behind the Stutthof death marches was eventually tried in the west before receiving a sentence of nine years. Doctor Otto Heidl, involved in countless phenol injections, cheated justice by committing suicide in prison. The cases of over 1,900 SS men and women employed at Stutthof never came to court.
