Gdansk Poland & the Stutthoff Concentration Camp

 May 22, 2025

Gloomy day in Gdansk unfortunately.  90 % of the city was destroyed in WWII and was then rebuilt in the same style so it does have some charm,  reminiscent of Amsterdam. 

Front porches were highly decorated:

We were only there for a few hours before heading to the Stutthoff Concentration Camp.  Very little remains of the original camp but there is a museum and we were fortunate to have had a very knowledgeable tour guide.  The entire camp was built by the prisoners including the quarters for the officers and guards with the entire camp being surrounded by woods.

In this camp, no one was tattooed but prisoners were given numbers to be worn on their clothes. Below is a man’s outfit - thin cloth and wooden shoes.

Below is a woman’s garb - nothing to cover the legs it would appear.

Shoes were removed and stripped of their valuable leather to be used for the Germans.  Below are scads of soles.

Typical sleeping quarters - sometimes 4 to a bed.

Meager rations led to many starving to death as they were forced to work all day without sufficient calories. An estimated 65,000 people died here by various means including starvation, disease and murder by injection or in the gas chamber. Roughly a third were Jewish, the remainder were political prisoners or Polish elites.  Dining hall below:

The doctor’s examining room.

The gas chamber:

An original cyanide canister used in the gas chamber:

Cattle cars used to transport prisoners :

The crematorium - the Nazis burned the original building down to destroy evidence but of course the ovens were designed to withstand high heat so remained.

Pretty sobering experience. A reminder of what can go wrong in a society that loses its way.