Vaivara
Encyclopedia
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
and labor camps established in Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
by the Nazi regime during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. It had 20,000 Jewish prisoners pass through its gates, mostly from the Vilna
Vilna Ghetto
The Vilna Ghetto or Vilnius Ghetto was a Jewish ghetto established by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius in the occupied Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic , during the Holocaust in World War II...
and Kovno Ghettos, but also from 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...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
and the Theresienstadt concentration camp
Theresienstadt concentration camp
Theresienstadt concentration camp was a Nazi German ghetto during World War II. It was established by the Gestapo in the fortress and garrison city of Terezín , located in what is now the Czech Republic.-History:The fortress of Terezín was constructed between the years 1780 and 1790 by the orders...
. Vaivara concentration camp was one of the last camps to be established. It existed from August 1943 to February 1944.
On 21 June 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...
ordered the liquidation of the remaining ghettos in the Baltic states. Subsequently, German occupation authorities met under the auspices of the Commander of the Security Police and SD in Reval (the German name for the Estonian capital Tallinn
Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...
) in order to plan the establishment of forced labor camps for the oil-shale extraction operations of Baltöl, a IG Farben subsidiary. Beginning in August 1943 a series of concentration camps was established all over Estonia by the Organisation Todt
Organisation Todt
The Todt Organisation, was a Third Reich civil and military engineering group in Germany named after its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior Nazi figure...
. In September 1943 took over from the OT . The administrative center of the camp complex was located in Vaivara with Hans Aumeier
Hans Aumeier
Hans Aumeier was a Nazi war criminal, an SS-Sturmbannführer and the deputy commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp.-Life before the War:...
, a former camp commander in Auschwitz in charge. The administrative staff was headed by Otto Brenneis. He was assisted by Hstf. Max Dahlmann, Hstf. Kurt Pannicke and Helmut Schnabel. Franz von Bodmann
Franz von Bodmann
Franz Hermann Johann Maria Freiherr von Bodmann, sometimes written as Bodman was German SS-Obersturmführer who served as a camp physician in several Nazi concentration camps....
was the camp's surgeon. Altogether only 15 Germans served in the camp, most of the guards were provided by Estonian and Russian auxiliaries of the 287th and 290th Security Battalions (Schutzmannschaftsbataillone).
The camp was established in the beginning of August 1943 near the Vaivara
Vaivara
Vaivara concentration camp was the largest of the 22 concentration and labor camps established in Estonia by the Nazi regime during World War II. It had 20,000 Jewish prisoners pass through its gates, mostly from the Vilna and Kovno Ghettos, but also from Latvia, Poland, Hungary and the...
train station. It served as the main camp (Hauptlager) of 20 forced labor camps located throughout Estonia, some of which existed for brief times, and all together being commonly referred to as the Vaivara [concentration] camp complex. At first the camp was run by the OT, but after a few weeks Kurt Pannicke took over. When Pannicke took over the Narva subcamp at the end of September, Helmut Schnabel became commander. In autumn 1944 some of the inmates were evacuated by sea to the Stutthof concentration camp
Stutthof concentration camp
Stutthof was the first Nazi concentration camp built outside of 1937 German borders.Completed on September 2, 1939, it was located in a secluded, wet, and wooded area west of the small town of Sztutowo . The town is located in the former territory of the Free City of Danzig, 34 km east of...
. From there they were distributed to the satellite camps of Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.
Since the main purpose of the camps was the fullest exploitation of the work capacity of their inmates, no large-scale killings of the able-bodied took place in the camps. Prisoners in the concentration camp had to work in the nearby forest, a quarry or in the oil shale
Oil shale
Oil shale, an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock, contains significant amounts of kerogen from which liquid hydrocarbons called shale oil can be produced...
extraction. Those prisoners too old or too sick to work were killed in Selektionen (selections), as were children. The first such selection took place in the autumn of 1943, when 150 Jewish men and women were shot in the nearby woods. A second selection involved 300 Jews, most of them suffering from typhoid fever
Typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known as Typhoid, is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella enterica, serovar Typhi...
. In twenty more selections approximately 500 more Jewish prisoners were murdered, including a group of children.
From Bodmann's reports the camp population in the whole complex was 6,982 in October 1943, 9,207 in November 1943, 8,210 in February 1944 and 6,662 in June 1944.
In December 1943 a typhoid epidemic broke out in the camps, resulting in the deaths of 20 per cent of the camp population.
With the front coming closer in early 1944, the Vaivara camp was evacuated on 4 and 5 February 1944. 2,466 inmates were marched to the camps at Kiviõli
Kiviõli
Kiviõli is an industrial town in Ida-Viru County, Estonia with a population of 7000 . The main industry is oil shale mining, which gives the town its name...
(46 kilometres (28.6 mi)), Ereda
Ereda
Ereda is a village in Mäetaguse Parish, Ida-Viru County in northeastern Estonia....
(30 kilometres (18.6 mi)), Jõhvi
Jõhvi
Jõhvi is a town in north-eastern Estonia, and the capital of Ida-Viru County. The town is also an administrative centre of Jõhvi Parish. It is situated 50 km from the Russian border....
(20 kilometres (12.4 mi)) and Goldfields (30 kilometres (18.6 mi)). The inmates had to walk for three days in bad winter weather with poor clothing, footwear and food. The columns were also attacked by Soviet aircraft.
In July 1944 Bodmann held a strict selection, known as Ten Percent Selection, when one in ten of the inmates was selected and shot near Ereda
Ereda
Ereda is a village in Mäetaguse Parish, Ida-Viru County in northeastern Estonia....
. In August and September, as Germans prepared the evacuation of Estonia, the inmates were send to the west. As there were not enough ships, they crowded in the camps of Klooga
Klooga
Klooga is a small borough in Keila Parish in Harju County in northern Estonia. It has a population of 1,029 .During th German occupation in World War II a Nazi labor camp was situated in Klooga....
and Lagedi
Lagedi
Lagedi is a small borough in Rae Parish, Harju County, northern Estonia. It has a population of 847 .-External links:*...
. On 19 September 1944, about 2,000 inmates of the Klooga camp were executed and the corpses burned on pyres. Similar mass executions took place at Lagedi.
Aumeier was tried in Poland in 1948 and executed. In 1951 the Soviets tried a number of Estonian auxiliaries. Brenneis was killed at the end of the war. Bodmann committed suicide in May 1945. Pannicke disappeared after the war. Schnabel was sentenced in Germany to life imprisonment in 1977. Others were indicted but not tried, due to their failing health.
Satellite camps
Satellite camps of Vaivara concentration camp were located in:- Aseri (near AseriAseriAseri is a small borough in Ida-Viru County, in northeastern Estonia. It's the administrative centre of Aseri Parish. Aseri has a population of 1,642 .-Notable people:*Heino Hankewitz , social manager...
) - AuvereAuvere-See also:*Battle of Auvere...
- EredaEredaEreda is a village in Mäetaguse Parish, Ida-Viru County in northeastern Estonia....
, with branches in Goldfields (now Kohtla – Kohtla shale oil factory) and Kohtla-NõmmeKohtla-NõmmeKohtla-Nõmme is a borough in northeastern Estonia. Administratively it constitutes Kohtla-Nõmme Parish — a rural municipality within Ida-Viru County. It has a population of 1,047 and an area of 4.64 km².-External links:* *...
. - Hungerburg (now Narva-JõesuuNarva-JõesuuNarva-Jõesuu is a town in Ida-Viru County, Estonia, located on the country's northern Baltic Sea coast near the Russian border. The name of the town in Estonian and Russian means "mouth of the Narva River"....
) - Ilinurme (either in IlistvereIlistvereIlistvere is a village in Laekvere Parish, Lääne-Viru County, in northeastern Estonia....
or IllukaIllukaIlluka is a village in Ida-Viru County in northeastern Estonia. It's the administrative centre of Illuka Parish....
) - JõhviJõhviJõhvi is a town in north-eastern Estonia, and the capital of Ida-Viru County. The town is also an administrative centre of Jõhvi Parish. It is situated 50 km from the Russian border....
- Kerstovo (now in Opolye volost, Kingiseppsky District, Leningrad OblastLeningrad OblastLeningrad Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . It was established on August 1, 1927, although it was not until 1946 that the oblast's borders had been mostly settled in their present position...
, Russia) - KiviõliKiviõliKiviõli is an industrial town in Ida-Viru County, Estonia with a population of 7000 . The main industry is oil shale mining, which gives the town its name...
- KloogaKloogaKlooga is a small borough in Keila Parish in Harju County in northern Estonia. It has a population of 1,029 .During th German occupation in World War II a Nazi labor camp was situated in Klooga....
, with branches in LaokülaLaokülaLaoküla is a village in Keila Parish, Harju County in northern Estonia....
and PaldiskiPaldiskiPaldiski is a town and Baltic Sea port situated on the Pakri peninsula of north-western Estonia. Originally a Swedish settlement known as Rågervik, it became a Russian naval base in the 18th century. The Russians renamed it Балтийский Порт Paldiski is a town and Baltic Sea port situated on the...
. - Kūdupe (in northern Latvia)
- KukruseKukruseKukruse is a village in Kohtla Parish, Ida-Viru County in northeastern Estonia.Kukersite, a marine type oil shale of Ordovician age, is named after Kukruse.Eduard von Toll lived in Kuckers manor....
- Kunda
- KuremäeKuremäe-See also:*Pühtitsa Convent...
- LagediLagediLagedi is a small borough in Rae Parish, Harju County, northern Estonia. It has a population of 847 .-External links:*...
(2 transportation camps from July to August and from August to September.) - NarvaNarvaNarva is the third largest city in Estonia. It is located at the eastern extreme point of Estonia, by the Russian border, on the Narva River which drains Lake Peipus.-Early history:...
(according to Eugenie Gurin-Loov the site is located in nowadays Russia.) - Panjevitsa
- PechoryPechoryPechory : Petseri; ) is a town and the administrative center of Pechorsky District of Pskov Oblast, Russia. Population: The population includes a few hundred ethnic Estonians.The town is famous for the Russian Orthodox Pskovo-Pechersky Monastery....
- Putki (in Kose Parish, Viru County)
- SakaSaka, EstoniaSaka is a village in Kohtla Parish, Ida-Viru County in northeastern Estonia....
- SondaSonda, EstoniaSonda is a small borough in Ida-Viru County in northeastern Estonia. It's the administrative centre of Sonda Parish....
- Soska (near the Lake Agusalu, 1.5 km east of AgusaluAgusaluAgusalu is a village in Illuka Parish, Ida-Viru County in northeastern Estonia....
) - ÜlenurmeÜlenurmeÜlenurme is a small borough in Tartu County, Estonia. It's the administrative centre of Ülenurme Parish. Ülenurme has a population of 1,574 ....
- Viivikonna
See also
- List of Nazi-German concentration camps