Breslau-Dürrgoy concentration camp or ''KZ Dürrgoy'' was a short-lived
Nazi German concentration camp
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as con ...
set up in the southern part of
Wrocław
Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, rou ...
(german: Breslau), then in Germany, before World War II on the grounds of the old
fertilizer
A fertilizer (American English) or fertiliser (British English; see spelling differences) is any material of natural or synthetic origin that is applied to soil or to plant tissues to supply plant nutrients. Fertilizers may be distinct from ...
factory "Silesia".
It was located in what, since 1945, has become known as the Tarnogaj neighbourhood of Wrocław (german: Dürrgoy), at the Strehlener Chaussee or Strzeliński Street (today ul. Bardzka), opposite the cemetery of the Holy Ghost. The camp, intended for the opponents of Nazism, was established at a place of the former POW camp for French prisoners of World War I, converted and utilized by the fertilizer factory. The new camp was founded on the initiative of the commander of
SA in Silesia, ''
SA-Obergruppenführer''
Edmund Heines
Edmund Heines (21 July 1897 – 30 June 1934) was a German Nazi politician and Deputy to Ernst Röhm, the ''Stabschef'' of the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA). Heines was one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party and a leading member of the SA in Mu ...
, on 12 March 1933,
[Encyklopedia Wrocławia, Wrocław 2000, , p. 566.] and liquidated on 10 August 1933 with all prisoners transported to a larger
concentration camp
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
at
Osnabrück
Osnabrück (; wep, Ossenbrügge; archaic ''Osnaburg'') is a city in the German state of Lower Saxony. It is situated on the river Hase in a valley penned between the Wiehen Hills and the northern tip of the Teutoburg Forest. With a population ...
.
History
Initially, around 200 people were sent to the camp, followed by more arrests and confinement. Overall, between eight hundred and one thousand prisoners were kept in the camp, including Social Democrats, Communists ( KPD ) and Jews. Among the prisoners in Dürrgoy were
Hermann Lüdemann
Hermann Lüdemann (August 5, 1880 – May 27, 1959) was a German politician ( SPD). He was Minister-President of Schleswig-Holstein (1947–1949). He was born in Lübeck and died in Kiel
Kiel () is the capital and most populous city in ...
(president of Lower Silesia), Fritz Voigt (former president of the police in Wroclaw, SPD),
Karl Mache Karl Mache (9 December 1880 – 19 October 1944) was a German politician ( SPD). Between 1928 and 1930 he served as a member of the national parliament (Reichstag).
Life
Karl Mache was born in Deutsch Lissa, then a small industrial town a short ...
(Deputy Mayor of
Breslau, as the city was known at that time), Wilhelm Winzer (former city councilor Wroclaw, SPD), Paul Löbe (President of the Reichstag, SPD) and Ernst Eckstein (SPD activist). The prisoners worked in a nearby chemical plant "Silesia", which no longer exists.
The camp was one of the so-called "wild" concentration camps, one of many created at that time in Germany. They were organized mostly in temporary barracks or railway cars using low cost materials available on the site. Setting up the Dürrgoy camp only took two weeks. The existence of 'wild' camps, and the treatment of prisoners detained in them, became public relatively quickly, and under pressure from public opinion they were shut down. The result was a centralization of the system of repression and the transfer of prisoners to official camps.
KZ Dürrgoy closed on 10 August 1933, and the last 343 prisoners were transported by train to a special
camp Esterwegen, located near
Osnabrück
Osnabrück (; wep, Ossenbrügge; archaic ''Osnaburg'') is a city in the German state of Lower Saxony. It is situated on the river Hase in a valley penned between the Wiehen Hills and the northern tip of the Teutoburg Forest. With a population ...
. The barracks which remained in the camp furnished shelter for the homeless.
Today on the site of the camp and the factory "Silesia" is a landfill waste management site of Wzgórze Gajowe ("Gamekeeper Hill"), created after the Second World War.
See also
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Glossary of Nazi Germany
This is a list of words, terms, concepts and slogans of Nazi Germany used in the historiography covering the Nazi regime.
Some words were coined by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi Party members. Other words and concepts were borrowed and appropriated, ...
*
The Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
*
List of books about Nazi Germany
This is a list of books about Nazi Germany, the state that existed in Germany during the period from 1933 to 1945, when its government was controlled by Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP; Nazi Party). It also inc ...
*
List of concentration and internment camps
This is a list of internment and concentration camps, organized by country. In general, a camp or group of camps is designated to the country whose government was responsible for the establishment and/or operation of the camp regardless of the c ...
*
List of Nazi-German concentration camps
According to the ''Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos'', there were 23 main concentration camps (german: Stammlager), of which most had a system of satellite camps. Including the satellite camps, the total number of Nazi concentration camps that ...
*
Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...
*
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
*
Nazi songs
Nazi songs are songs and marches created by the Nazi Party. In modern Germany, the public singing or performing of songs exclusively associated with the Nazi Party is now illegal.
Background
There is often confusion between songs written specifica ...
*
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
Notes and references
{{Authority control
Nazi concentration camps in Poland