Salaspils concentration camp
Encyclopedia
Salaspils concentration camp was established at the end of 1941 at a point 18 km southeast of Riga
(Latvia
). The Nazi bureaucracy drew distinctions between different types of camps. Officially, Salaspils was a Police Prison and Work Education Camp (Polizeigegfängnis und Arbeitserziehungslager). It was also known as camp Kurtenhof after the German name for the city of Salaspils
. Planning for the development of the camp and its prisoner structure changed several times. In 1943, Heinrich Himmler
briefly considered converting the camp into an official concentration camp (Konzentrationslager), which would have formally subordinated the camp to the National Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA) , but nothing came of this.
-Sturmbannführer
Rudolf Lange
began planning a detention camp to be built at Salaspils to confine people arrested in Latvia by the police and also to house Jewish people deported from Germany and other countries to Latvia. Lange, who originally was the coordinator of Special Assignment Group A (Einsatzgruppe A)
, a mobile squad of killers, started a new job in December 1941 as commander of both the security police (Sicherheitspolizei) in Latvia and also of the Security Service (Sicherheitsdient
). The place selected, near the city of Salaspils, was readily accessible from the main railway connecting Riga and Daugavpils
, the two largest cities in Latvia. The plan was to work the prisoners harvesting peat
and also, as part of what soon became known as the Final Solution
, to separate Jewish men from Jewish women to prevent them from having children. In February 1942 Lange, probably because of his deeds in Latvia, became a participant in the Wannsee Conference
where the final plans for the murder of the Jews of Europe announced by the Nazi hierarchy.
The first rail transport of German Jews arrived unexpectedly in Latvia in October 1941 before the Salaspils camp was complete. The train had been rerouted from its original destination of Minsk
to Riga. The Jewish people on the train were housed temporarily in Jungfernhof concentration camp
("KZ Jungfernhof") or a little later in a Nazi-delineated part of Riga which later became known as the Riga Ghetto
.
The camp site was prepared in October 1941 by Soviet prisoners of war from the Salaspils branch camp Stalag 350/Z of the Riga of base camp 350 and by deported Czech Jews as well as few German Jews from KZ Jungfernhof. In the middle of January 1942 at least 1,000 Jews from the Riga Ghetto were forced to work building the camp. Insufficient accommodation and sanitary conditions, lack of nutrition and severe cold weather caused an extraordinarily high number of deaths.
The Nazis had planned to deport the last remaining Jews from Germany by the end of the summer of 1942. To support this, the plans for the Salaspils camp were revised in an effort to allow the camp to accommodate 15,000 Jews deported from Germany. The camp by then played three roles, general police prison, later the security police prisoner camp, and then a forced labor camp. However the last expansion plan was not carried out.
In the autumn of 1942 the camp comprised 15 barracks of the 45 that were planned, housing 1,800 prisoners. Although a police prison and work education camp, Salaspils became comparable to a German concentration camp in the way the work was organized, the types of prisoners, as well as their treatment, as they recounted later.
By the end of 1942 the Salaspils camp held mainly political prisoners (who had originally been incarcerated at the Riga central prison without due process
under "protective custody orders") and interned foreigners such as Latvian returnees from Russia
, whom the Nazis considered politically suspect. Furthermore work education prisoners and recruits to local Latvian collaboration units (Schutzmannschaften) who had committed routine crimes. There were in the camp only twelve Jews; many had died or been returned to Riga in weak condition.
Typhoid fever and medical experiments of Nazi doctors killed most of the children at the camp.9 According to the 1946 "Soviet Extraordinary State Commission for the Investigation of the German-fascist crimes" however about 12,000 children are to have been arrested, of whom at least 7,000 were Jewish, and they were used as involuntary blood donors to supply German military hospitals.
and Salaspils concentration camps. Some accused were condemned to life imprisonment.
In 1967 a memorial was established in Salaspils, which included an exhibit room, several sculptures and a large marble block. During the time of the Soviet Union, the Russian group “Singing Guitars
” had dedicated a song “Salaspils” to the children's camp.
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
(Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
). The Nazi bureaucracy drew distinctions between different types of camps. Officially, Salaspils was a Police Prison and Work Education Camp (Polizeigegfängnis und Arbeitserziehungslager). It was also known as camp Kurtenhof after the German name for the city of Salaspils
Salaspils
Salaspils is a town in Latvia, the administrative centre of Salaspils municipality. The town is situated on the northern bank of the Daugava River 18 kilometers to the south-east of the city of Riga.-History:...
. Planning for the development of the camp and its prisoner structure changed several times. In 1943, Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
briefly considered converting the camp into an official concentration camp (Konzentrationslager), which would have formally subordinated the camp to the National Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA) , but nothing came of this.
Original plan
In October 1941, SSSchutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
-Sturmbannführer
Sturmbannführer
Sturmbannführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party equivalent to major, used both in the Sturmabteilung and the Schutzstaffel...
Rudolf Lange
Rudolf Lange
Dr. Martin Franz Erwin Rudolf Lange was a prominent Nazi police official. He served as commander of the SD and SIPO in Riga, Latvia...
began planning a detention camp to be built at Salaspils to confine people arrested in Latvia by the police and also to house Jewish people deported from Germany and other countries to Latvia. Lange, who originally was the coordinator of Special Assignment Group A (Einsatzgruppe A)
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
, a mobile squad of killers, started a new job in December 1941 as commander of both the security police (Sicherheitspolizei) in Latvia and also of the Security Service (Sicherheitsdient
Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst , full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the...
). The place selected, near the city of Salaspils, was readily accessible from the main railway connecting Riga and Daugavpils
Daugavpils
Daugavpils is a city in southeastern Latvia, located on the banks of the Daugava River, from which the city gets its name. Daugavpils literally means "Daugava Castle". With a population of over 100,000, it is the second largest city in the country after the capital Riga, which is located some...
, the two largest cities in Latvia. The plan was to work the prisoners harvesting peat
Peat
Peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation matter or histosol. Peat forms in wetland bogs, moors, muskegs, pocosins, mires, and peat swamp forests. Peat is harvested as an important source of fuel in certain parts of the world...
and also, as part of what soon became known as the Final Solution
Final Solution
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
, to separate Jewish men from Jewish women to prevent them from having children. In February 1942 Lange, probably because of his deeds in Latvia, became a participant in the Wannsee Conference
Wannsee Conference
The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference was to inform administrative leaders of Departments responsible for various policies relating to Jews, that Reinhard Heydrich...
where the final plans for the murder of the Jews of Europe announced by the Nazi hierarchy.
Camp construction and changes of plan
Minsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
to Riga. The Jewish people on the train were housed temporarily in Jungfernhof concentration camp
Jungfernhof concentration camp
The Jungfernhof concentration camp was an improvised concentration camp in Latvia, at the Mazjumprava Manor, near the Šķirotava Railway Station about three or four kilometers from Riga...
("KZ Jungfernhof") or a little later in a Nazi-delineated part of Riga which later became known as the Riga Ghetto
Riga Ghetto
The Riga Ghetto was a small area in Maskavas Forštate, neighborhood of Riga, Latvia, designated by the Nazis where Jews from Latvia, and later from Germany, were forced to live during World War II. On October 25, 1941, the Nazis relocated all Jews from Riga and the vicinity to the ghetto while the...
.
The camp site was prepared in October 1941 by Soviet prisoners of war from the Salaspils branch camp Stalag 350/Z of the Riga of base camp 350 and by deported Czech Jews as well as few German Jews from KZ Jungfernhof. In the middle of January 1942 at least 1,000 Jews from the Riga Ghetto were forced to work building the camp. Insufficient accommodation and sanitary conditions, lack of nutrition and severe cold weather caused an extraordinarily high number of deaths.
The Nazis had planned to deport the last remaining Jews from Germany by the end of the summer of 1942. To support this, the plans for the Salaspils camp were revised in an effort to allow the camp to accommodate 15,000 Jews deported from Germany. The camp by then played three roles, general police prison, later the security police prisoner camp, and then a forced labor camp. However the last expansion plan was not carried out.
In the autumn of 1942 the camp comprised 15 barracks of the 45 that were planned, housing 1,800 prisoners. Although a police prison and work education camp, Salaspils became comparable to a German concentration camp in the way the work was organized, the types of prisoners, as well as their treatment, as they recounted later.
By the end of 1942 the Salaspils camp held mainly political prisoners (who had originally been incarcerated at the Riga central prison without due process
Due process
Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...
under "protective custody orders") and interned foreigners such as Latvian returnees from Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, whom the Nazis considered politically suspect. Furthermore work education prisoners and recruits to local Latvian collaboration units (Schutzmannschaften) who had committed routine crimes. There were in the camp only twelve Jews; many had died or been returned to Riga in weak condition.
Children in Salaspils
As a result of the carrying out of the "gang combat action" on the Latvian-Russian border area between January and March 1943, 2,228 persons were rounded up and brought to Salaspils, at that time occupied by 1,990 prisoners. Among the incarcerated were about 1,100 so-called "gang children", who had been picked up to a large extent without their adult relatives or guardians. The children were to have been housed in homes and orphanages; young people able to work were to be placed on farms. According to other plans the children were to have been sent to a separate department of Majdanek concentration camp. In fact they were eventually remanded to the so-called "Youth Protection Camp" at Tuchingen, in Łódź.Typhoid fever and medical experiments of Nazi doctors killed most of the children at the camp.9 According to the 1946 "Soviet Extraordinary State Commission for the Investigation of the German-fascist crimes" however about 12,000 children are to have been arrested, of whom at least 7,000 were Jewish, and they were used as involuntary blood donors to supply German military hospitals.
Numbers of victims
About 12,000 prisoners went through the camp during its existence. In addition to the German Jews who perished during the construction phase, an additional 2,000 to 3000 people died here, of whom a particularly high number were children and young people from the "gang areas".Later history
Starting in 1949 legal proceedings were brought against some of the persons responsible for the Nazi crimes in Latvia, including the Riga Ghetto, and the JungfernhofJungfernhof concentration camp
The Jungfernhof concentration camp was an improvised concentration camp in Latvia, at the Mazjumprava Manor, near the Šķirotava Railway Station about three or four kilometers from Riga...
and Salaspils concentration camps. Some accused were condemned to life imprisonment.
In 1967 a memorial was established in Salaspils, which included an exhibit room, several sculptures and a large marble block. During the time of the Soviet Union, the Russian group “Singing Guitars
Poyushchiye Gitary
Pojuschie Gitary were the Soviet Union's first rock band to reach a phenomenal rate of success and popularity in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and in other countries. For that reason, they are often nicknamed "the Soviet Beatles" in a manner not that different from Hungary's Illés and Poland's...
” had dedicated a song “Salaspils” to the children's camp.