SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager
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''SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager'' was a
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 opposing ...
SS military complex and
Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
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 simpl ...
in Pustków and Pustków Osiedle,
Occupied Poland ' ( Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. Season 2 premiered on 10 Octobe ...
. The Nazi facility was built to train collaborationist military units, including the Ukrainian 14th Waffen SS Division "Galician", and units from
Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...
. This training included killing operations inside the concentration camps – most notably at the nearby Pustków and Szebnie camps – and Jewish ghettos in the vicinity of the 'Heidelager'. The military area was situated in the triangle of the
Wisła Wisła (; german: Weichsel; cs, Visla) is a town in Cieszyn County, Silesian Voivodeship, southern Poland, with a population of about 11,132 (2019), near the border with Czech Republic. It is situated in the Silesian Beskids mountain range in t ...
and San rivers, dominated by large forest areas. The centre of the Heidelager was at
Blizna :''See also Blizna, Podlaskie Voivodeship. For the Polish film of this name see The Scar (1976 film).'' Blizna is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Ostrów, within Ropczyce-Sędziszów County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south- ...
, the location of the secret
Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
V-2 missile launch site, which was built and staffed by prisoners from the concentration camp at Pustków.


History

The Nazis originally planned to erect a large SStraining camp near Pustków with barracks, warehouses, and buildings for the intelligence services. The facility was built by order of ''
Reichsführer-SS (, ) was a special title and rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945 for the commander of the (SS). ''Reichsführer-SS'' was a title from 1925 to 1933, and from 1934 to 1945 it was the highest rank of the SS. The longest-servi ...
''
Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
under provision OKW No. 3032 of 21 December 1939, which allowed for construction of an SS military training centre in the area eastward of Dębica in Generalgouvernement Polen. The training site was to be built as a barrack camp with four ring roads (called: ''Lager Flandern''). It was planned to be completed on 1 October 1940 for two reinforced infantry regiments. To accomplish this, about a dozen villages near Pustków were evacuated and then razed. In order to provide sufficient labor to build this project, the Nazis initially set up a workers' camp. The camp opened on 26 June 1940 with the arrival the first forced labourers, 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 ...
and Belgian prisoners. Most of the Jewish prisoners were relocated from the Krakow, Rzeszow, and Tarnow ghettos and brought to the camp. The Jewish camp comprised two barracks, which, at the camp's height, were filled with around 465 prisoners. The conditions were so terrible that most prisoners did not survive the first few months. Over its four-year history, the name of the SSmilitary training centre changed several times. During the planning stages, it was named "Ostpolen" (between 21 December 1939 and 26 June 1940.) When construction of the site started on 26 June 1940, it was renamed SS"Dębica". From 15 March 1943, the site was designated as SS "Heidelager". The camp had been in use since the autumn of 1941 under the command of '' Oberführer-SS'' Werner vonSchele. The location was expanded into a prisoner of war camp for Red Army soldiers captured in the Soviet zone of occupied Poland after the implementation of
Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...
. The first of them arrived in October 1941. In the beginning, the
POW camp A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured by a belligerent power in time of war. There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, and military prisons. ...
was no more than an enclosed area. The prisoners received minimal or no food, and were reduced to eating grass and roots. There were no barracks, so prisoners had to sleep out in the open. This lack of shelter killed many prisoners during the severe winter of 1941–42. Many were tortured and mistreated, or were executed en masse at the foot of what became known as the ('Hill of death'), its real name being . On this hill the dead inmates were cremated in specially built funeral pyres. A third camp for Polish forced labourers was established in September 1942. The conditions were no better than those at the first two camps. The forced labourers were involved in the development and production of the V-1 and
V-2 The V-2 (german: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit=Retaliation Weapon 2), with the technical name ''Aggregat 4'' (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was develope ...
rockets in the nearby missile launch site in
Blizna :''See also Blizna, Podlaskie Voivodeship. For the Polish film of this name see The Scar (1976 film).'' Blizna is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Ostrów, within Ropczyce-Sędziszów County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south- ...
. From 1943 the camp was guarded by units of the 204th Schutzmannschafts Battalion, a battalion consisting of ethnic Ukrainians from the area of
Lviv Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukrain ...
. In addition to working on the development of the V-1 and
V-2 The V-2 (german: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit=Retaliation Weapon 2), with the technical name ''Aggregat 4'' (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was develope ...
rockets, the AEG used labor from Jews in the Pustków camp for electrical installations in the
Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...
Dębica training areas beginning in 1941. The total number of victims in the Pustków camp is unknown. In 1944, with the Soviet army advancing, the camp was disbanded. All surviving prisoners were sent to nearby camps, such as the Kraków-Płaszów camp. It is estimated that at least 15,000 people died or were killed, including approximately 5,000 Russian prisoner of war, 7,500 Jews, and 2,500 Poles. The last commandant of the training base was '' Totenkopfverbände- Oberführer-SS'' Bernhardt Voss, until the summer of 1944. The facility resembled a small city with its own narrow-gauge railway line, some 3,600 men of different nationalities, cinemas, dining halls, dozens of villas, a newsletter, a large camp brothel staffed by female prisoners from the slave labour camp nearby, and regular hunting parties for the high-ranking officers. This is where the Galizien Division came into existence. The range was visited by ''
Reichsführer-SS (, ) was a special title and rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945 for the commander of the (SS). ''Reichsführer-SS'' was a title from 1925 to 1933, and from 1934 to 1945 it was the highest rank of the SS. The longest-servi ...
''
Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
on 28 September 1943, and abandoned in the summer of 1944 ahead of the Soviet advance. After the camp was abandoned, the area was still defended by a combat group of the
Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...
, under the leadership of a SS storm-troopers. The camp was largely destroyed by fire during the evacuation of the military training centre. Because of the crimes committed on the military training ground, criminal charges were filed by Polish individuals with the
Nazi war crimes The governments of the German Empire and Nazi Germany (under Adolf Hitler) ordered, organized and condoned a substantial number of war crimes, first in the Herero and Namaqua genocide and then in the First and Second World Wars. The most notabl ...
commission. From 1959 onwards, extensive investigations were made in Germany to uncover the crimes.


Modern day

Today the site houses a reconstruction of huts in the camp. Inside the huts there is a museum, comprising original artefacts from the site, including a reconstruction of the camp commandant '' Oberführer-SS'' Bernhardt Voss' private office. There are memorials to the dead and the original crematorium on the adjoining Góra Śmierci.


See also

* SS-Truppenübungsplatz Böhmen *
The Holocaust in Poland The Holocaust in Poland was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in German-occupied Poland. During the genocide, three million Polish Jews were murdered, half of all Jews murdered during the Holocaust. ...
*
V-2 missile launch site, Blizna The V-2 missile launch site, Blizna was the site of a World War II German V-2 missile firing range.The modern museum is built on the exact site of the former V-2 launch site. PhaseII building of the museum was completed in 2011. Today there i ...


References


Notes


Sources

* The initial version of this article is based on a translation of article Kamp Pustków of the Dutch language edition of Wikipedia.


Bibliography

* Stanisław Zabierowski, „Pustków hitlerowskie obozy wyniszczenia w służbie SS” KAW, Rzeszów 1981.


Gallery

File:Góra Śmierci Rekonstrukcja (3).JPG, Reconstructed huts File:SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager 02.jpg, Site of camp File:SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager 03.jpg, Camp watchtower File:Wieża wartownicza (obóz Pustków).JPG, Camp watchtower File:Góra Śmierci - rekonstrukcja.JPG, Huts File:Góra Śmierci krzyż.JPG, Cross on Góra Śmierci File:SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager 018.jpg, Exhibits in SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager museum File:SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager 013.jpg, Reconstruction of the camp commandant Bernhardt Voss' private office File:SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager 07.jpg, Photographs of prisoners of SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager File:SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager 05.jpg, Photographs of prisoners of SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager File:Góra Śmierci 18.jpg, Crematorium on Góra Śmierci, Pustków File:Góra Śmierci 20.jpg, Memorial on Góra Śmierci to all who died at the concentration camp File:Góra Śmierci 20b.jpg, Memorial on Góra Śmierci File:Góra Śmierci 21.jpg, Peace Memorial at SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager


External links


Werkkamp Pustków

Pustków (Death Hill, V-missile base and SS military training ground)
op www.it.tarnow.pl

op www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org {{DEFAULTSORT:SS-Truppenubungsplatz Heidelager Holocaust locations in Poland Nazi concentration camps in Poland