, known for = , location = , built by = , operated by = , commandant = , original use = , construction = , in operation = Summer of 1940 – 14 February 1945 , gas chambers = , prisoner type = mostly

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in ...

and

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

citizens , inmates = 125,000 (in estimated 100 subcamps) , killed = 40,000 , liberated by = , notable inmates = Boris Braun, Adam Dulęba, Franciszek Duszeńko,

Heda Margolius Kovály Heda Margolius Kovály (15 September 1919 – 5 December 2010 Grimes, William (9 December 2010). '' The New York Times''.) was a Czech writer and translator. She survived the Łódź ghetto and Auschwitz where her parents died. She later escap ...

, Władysław Ślebodziński,

Simon Wiesenthal Simon Wiesenthal (31 December 190820 September 2005) was a Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. He studied architecture and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Janowska concentration ...

, Rabbi

Shlomo Zev Zweigenhaft Rabbi Shlomo Zev Zweigenhaft (Hebrew: ) was a Rosh Hashochtim of Poland (overseeing the country's kosher slaughterers) before the Holocaust. After the Holocaust he was Chief Rabbi of Hanover and Lower Saxony. Later, after emigrating to the Unit ...

, notable books = , website = Gross-Rosen was a network of

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 con ...

built and operated by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

during

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 World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. The main camp was located in the German village of Gross-Rosen, now the modern-day Rogoźnica in Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Poland; directly on the rail-line between the towns of

Jawor Jawor (german: Jauer) is a town in south-western Poland with 22,890 inhabitants (2019). It is situated in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship (from 1975 to 1998 it was in the former Legnica Voivodeship). It is the seat of Jawor County, and lies appr ...

(Jauer) and

Strzegom Strzegom (german: Striegau) is a town in Świdnica County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. It is the seat of the Gmina Strzegom administrative district (gmina). It lies approximately north-west of Świdnica, and west of th ...

(Striegau).The Gross-Rosen Museum in Rogoźnica.
Homepage.Alfred Konieczny (pl), ''

Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust The ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust'' (1990) has been called "the most recognized reference book on the Holocaust". It was published in an English-language translated edition by Macmillan in tandem with the Hebrew language original edition pu ...

''. NY: Macmillan 1990, vol. 2, pp. 623–626. Its prisoners were mostly

and

citizens. At its peak activity in 1944, the Gross-Rosen complex had up to 100 subcamps located in eastern Germany and in German-occupied

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

and

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

. The population of all Gross-Rosen camps at that time accounted for 11% of the total number of inmates incarcerated in the Nazi concentration camp system.

The camp

KZ Gross-Rosen was set up in the summer of 1940 as a satellite camp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp from Oranienburg. Initially, the slave labour was carried out in a huge stone quarry owned by the ''SS-Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH'' (SS German Earth and Stone Works). In the fall of 1940 the use of labour in Upper Silesia was taken over by the new Organization Schmelt formed on the orders of Heinrich Himmler. It was named after its leader '' SS-Oberführer'' Albrecht Schmelt. The company was put in charge of employment from the camps with Jews intended to work for food only. The Gross-Rosen location close to occupied Poland was of considerable advantage.Dr Tomasz Andrzejewski, Dyrektor Muzeum Miejskiego w Nowej Soli (8 January 2010)
"Organizacja Schmelt"
Marsz śmierci z Neusalz. Skradziona pamięć! ''Tygodnik Krąg.'' Prisoners were put to work in the construction of a system of subcamps for expelees from the annexed territories. Gross Rosen became an independent camp on 1 May 1941. As the complex grew, the majority of inmates were put to work in the new Nazi enterprises attached to these subcamps. In October 1941 the SS transferred about 3,000 Soviet POWs to Gross-Rosen for execution by shooting. Gross-Rosen was known for its brutal treatment of the so-called '' Nacht und Nebel'' prisoners vanishing without a trace from targeted communities. Most died in the

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

quarry. The brutal treatment of the political and Jewish prisoners was not only in the hands of guards and German criminal prisoners brought in by the ''SS'', but to a lesser extent also fuelled by the German administration of the stone quarry responsible for starvation rations and denial of medical help. In 1942, for political prisoners, the average survival time-span was less than two months. WW2-Holocaust-Poland

Due to a change of policy in August 1942, prisoners were likely to survive longer because they were needed as slave workers in German war industries. Among the companies that benefited from the slave labour of the concentration camp inmates were German electronics manufacturers such as Blaupunkt, Siemens, as well as Krupp, IG Farben, and

Daimler-Benz The Mercedes-Benz Group AG (previously named Daimler-Benz, DaimlerChrysler and Daimler) is a German multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is one of the world's leading car manufactu ...

, among others.Holocaust Encyclopedia (2014)
Gross-Rosen.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Some prisoners who were not able to work but not yet dying were sent to the Dachau concentration camp in so-called ''invalid'' transports. The largest population of inmates, however, were

, initially from the Dachau and Sachsenhausen camps, and later from Buchenwald. During the camp's existence, the Jewish inmate population came mainly from Poland and

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Cr ...

; others were from

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders wi ...

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label= Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavij ...

Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the ...

, and

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. Following the unsuccessful Polish Warsaw Uprising of 1944, the Germans deported 3,000 Poles from the Dulag 121 camp in Pruszków, where they were initially imprisoned, to Gross-Rosen. Those Poles were mainly people of 20 to 40 years of age. Gross Rosen 6

Subcamps

At its peak activity in 1944, the Gross-Rosen complex had up to 100 subcamps, located in eastern Germany and German-occupied Czechoslovakia and Poland. In its final stage, the population of the Gross-Rosen camps accounted for 11% of the total inmates in Nazi concentration camps at that time. A total of 125,000 inmates of various nationalities passed through the complex during its existence, of whom an estimated 40,000 died on site, on death marches and in evacuation transports. The camp was liberated on 14 February 1945 by the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...

. A total of over 500 female camp guards were trained and served in the Gross-Rosen complex. Female SS staffed the women's subcamps of Brünnlitz, Graeben, Gruenberg, Gruschwitz Neusalz, Hundsfeld, Kratzau II, Oberaltstadt, Reichenbach, and Schlesiersee Schanzenbau. The Gabersdorf labour camp had been part of a network of forced labor camps for Jewish prisoners that had operated under Organization Schmelt since 1941. The spinning mill where the female Jewish prisoners worked had been " Aryanized" in 1939 by a

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-based company called Vereinigte Textilwerke K. H. Barthel & Co. The prisoners also worked in factories operated by the companies Aloys Haase and J. A. Kluge und Etrich. By 18 March 1944 Gabersdorf had become a subcamp of Gross-Rosen. One subcamp of Gross-Rosen was the

Brünnlitz labor camp The Brünnlitz labor camp () was a forced labor camp of Nazi Germany which was established in 1944 just outside the town of Brněnec ( in German), Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. It operated solely as a site for an armaments factory run by ...

, situated in the

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

n town of

Brněnec Brněnec (german: Brünnlitz) is a municipality and village in Svitavy District in the Pardubice Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 1,300 inhabitants. Administrative parts Villages of Chrastová Lhota, Moravská Chrastová and Podlesí ar ...

, where

rescued by

Oskar Schindler Oskar Schindler (; 28 April 1908 – 9 October 1974) was a German industrialist, humanitarian and a member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ...

were interned. The Brieg subcamp, located near the village of Pampitz, had originally been the location of a Jewish forced labor camp until August 1944, when the Jewish prisoners were replaced by the first transport of prisoners from the Gross-Rosen main camp. The camp was mostly staffed by soldiers from the ''

Luftwaffe The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German '' Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the '' Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabt ...

'' and a few SS members. Most of the prisoners were Polish, with smaller numbers of Russian and Czech prisoners. Most of the Poles had been evacuated from the

Pawiak prison Pawiak () was a prison built in 1835 in Warsaw, Congress Poland. During the January 1863 Uprising, it served as a transfer camp for Poles sentenced by Imperial Russia to deportation to Siberia. During the World War II German occupation o ...

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officiall ...

; others had been arrested within the territory controlled by the Reich or had been transported from

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula, Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland un ...

and Radom. Brieg's camp kitchen was run by Czech prisoners. The three daily meals included 1 pint of ''mehlzupa'' (a soup made from water and meal), 150 grams of bread, 1 quart of soup made with rutabaga, beets,

cabbage Cabbage, comprising several cultivars of ''Brassica oleracea'', is a leafy green, red (purple), or white (pale green) biennial plant grown as an annual vegetable crop for its dense-leaved heads. It is descended from the wild cabbage ( ''B.&n ...

, kale or sometimes nettles, 1 pint of black "coffee" and a spoonful of molasses. Sometimes "hard workers" called ''zulaga'' would be rewarded with a piece of

blood sausage A blood sausage is a sausage filled with blood that is cooked or dried and mixed with a filler until it is thick enough to solidify when cooled. Most commonly, the blood of pigs, sheep, lamb, cow, chicken, or goose is used. In Europe and the ...

or raw horsemeat sausage, jam and margarine. Prisoners also received 1 cup of Knorr soup per week.

Camp commandants

During the Gross-Rosen initial period of operation as a formal subcamp of

Sachsenhausen Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...

, the following two ''SS'' ''Lagerführer'' officers served as the camp commandants, the '' SS-Untersturmführer''

Anton Thumann Anton Thumann (31 October 1912 – 8 October 1946) was a member of the SS of Nazi Germany who served in various Nazi concentration camps during World War II. After the war, Thumann was arrested by British occupation forces and charged with ...

, and ''SS-Untersturmführer'' Georg Güßregen. From May 1941 until liberation, the following officials served as commandants of a fully independent concentration camp at Gross-Rosen: # '' SS-Obersturmbannführer''

Arthur Rödl Arthur Rödl (13 June 1898 – 5 April 1945) was a German ''Standartenführer'' (Colonel) in the Waffen-SS and a Nazi concentration camp commandant. Rödl was born into a Catholic family. His father worked as a messenger and his mother ran a ne ...

, May 1941 – September 1942 # '' SS-Hauptsturmführer''

Wilhelm Gideon Wilhelm Gideon (15 November 1898, in Oldenburg – 23 February 1977) was a Schutzstaffel officer and Nazi concentration camp commandant. A native of Oldenburg in the state of Lower Saxony, Gideon began work as a trainee engineer but had his stu ...

, September 1942 – October 1943 # '' SS-Sturmbannführer''

Johannes Hassebroek Johannes Hassebroek (11 July 1910, in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt – 17 April 1977, in Westerstede) was a German SS commander during the Nazi era. He served as a commandant of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp and its sub-camps from October 1943 until t ...

, October 1943 until evacuation

War crimes trial

On 12 August 1948 the trial of three Gross Rosen camp officials, Johannes Hassebroek, Helmut Eschner and Eduard Drazdauskas, began before a Soviet Military Court. On 7 October 1948 all were found guilty of war crimes. Eschner and Drazdauskas were sentenced to life imprisonment and Hassebroek was sentenced to death, but this was later commuted also to life imprisonment.

List of Gross-Rosen camps with location

The most far-reaching expansion of the Gross-Rosen system of labour camps took place in 1944 due to accelerated demand for support behind the advancing front. The character and purpose of new camps shifted toward defense infrastructure. In some cities, as in

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, r ...

(Breslau) camps were established in every other district. It is estimated that their total number reached 100 at that point according to list of their official destinations. The biggest sub-camps included ''AL Fünfteichen'' in Jelcz-Laskowice, four camps in Wrocław, ''Dyhernfurth'' in Brzeg Dolny, ''Landeshut'' in Kamienna Góra, and the entire

Project Riese Riese (; German for "giant") was the code name for a construction project of Nazi Germany between 1943 and 1945. It consisted of seven underground structures in the Owl Mountains and Książ Castle in Lower Silesia, which was then Nazi Germany ...

along the Owl Mountains.

Notable inmates

* Boris Braun, Croatian university professor *

, Nazi hunter. He provides the following information about the camp in his 1967 book ''The Murderers Among Us'': :: "... healthy looking prisoners were selected to break in new shoes for soldiers on daily twenty mile marches. Few prisoners survived this ordeal for more than two weeks." * Władysław Ślebodziński, mathematician who taught prisoners *

, Rosh Hashochtim of Poland and Chief Rabbi of

Hannover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

and

Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...

* Franciszek Duszeńko, sculptor, maker of the Treblinka Monument * Adam Dulęba, Polish Army photographer *

, Czech writer and translator * Lucian Ludwig Kozminski, convicted in the United States of swindling Holocaust survivors of their restitution money and alleged collaborator * Henri Story, Belgian business man, politician and resistance member * Paul Löbe, former president of the German Reichstag * Gertruda Sekaninová-Čakrtová, Czechoslovak politician (imprisoned at Kurzbach subcamp)

Notes

References

* * Willem Lodewijk Harthoorn (nl), an inmate from the end of April to mid-August 1942: ''Verboden te sterven'' (in Dutch: ''Forbidden to Die''), Pegasus, Amsterdam. *
Druhasvetovavalka.cz
collection of photographs from the KZ Gross-Rosen World War II field trip.

External links

Concentration camps of Nazi Germany: illustrated history
on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

* The Death Marchbr>through Schlesiersee to Volary
at

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

website
Collection of testimonies concerning Gross-Rosen camp in 'Chronicles of Terror' database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp 1940 establishments in Germany 1945 disestablishments in Poland Museums in Lower Silesian Voivodeship Registered museums in Poland Reich Security Main Office World War II museums in Poland World War II sites in Poland