German Nazi Concentration Camp, Zabikowo, Poznan, Holocaust, Jewish, Stasinski

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German Nazi Concentration Camp, Zabikowo, Poznan, Holocaust, Jewish, Stasinski:
$174.90

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This medal has been issued in 1974 to commemorate the Concentration Camp in ZABIKOWO, near Poznan, Poland and the 30th anniversary of the Execution of the members of the Polish Workers’ Party in 1944.

This medal comes from the atelier of Profs Jozef STASINSKI, one of the best Polish sculptors and medalists.

See the references.

The Zabikowo Concentration Camp Museum;

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The Polish Workers\' Party (Polish: Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR) was a communist party in Poland from 1942 to 1948. It was founded as a reconstitution of the Communist Party of Poland, and merged with the Polish Socialist Party in 1948 to form the Polish United Workers\' Party

av. The barbed wire of the ZABIKOWO Concentration Camp

rv. The commemorative inscription in Polish

size – 135 x 125 mm (5⅜ x 5“)

weight – 343.50 gr, (16.80 oz)

metal – bronze, atelier patina

Nazi Concentration Camps

When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, the Germans began to build a large network of motorways in the Third Reich. In June, 1933, Hitler passed a law to set up an enterprise Reichsautobahnen (Reich Motorways, RAB). Fritz Todt – Inspector General of the German road and motorway system – was responsible for marking out the routes. In September, 1935, the first motorway section between Frankfurt am Main and Darmstadt was put into use. The network of roads was built particularly for strategic reasons related to plans of the Third Reich territorial expansion. The invasion of Poland gave rise to a new road construction stage initiated, among others, with a project of building a motorway between Franfkurt (Oder) and the former Polish frontier.

On November 15, Albert Speer – General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital and other cities – came to Poznań. Then some preparatory measures were taken to include Poznań to the Reich network of motorways. The decision to start the enterprise was taken very quickly, which proves the investment had been arranged before Poland was invaded, whereas its construction was related to the military plans. The motorway route was to be expanded to the city of Łódź as the final plan was to connect Berlin with Warsaw. They also intended to connect Poznań with Gdańsk and Wrocław and to make those significant transport routes cross with each other in the Eastern part of Poznań.

Since 1940 they planned to employ Jews. On December 10, 1940 the first transports with 638 Jewish prisoners were sent to build the motorway. Initially, these were Jews who came from the Łódź ghetto. Since mid-1941 they started to bring Jews from Zduńska Wola, Sieradz, Wieluń, Gąbin, Gostynin and other ghettos of the Reichsgau Wartheland.

Until the end of February, 1941, 2400 people were sent only from the Łódź ghetto to support the motorway construction works. It is assumed that at least 10 000 people, previously deported from ghettos in the Reichsgau Wartheland, were transported to 24 labour camps called Reichsautobahnlager (Reich motorway camps) set up along the motorway. Jewish labour force was exploited by private German construction companies who were subcontractors of the project. They derived large financial profits from their work, owing to which they could further develop.

Two labour camps were established on the area of today’s city of Luboń. The first one was set up on the border between Luboń and Poznań and the second one in Żabikowo at Kościuszki Street. Each of the camps contained about 300 prisoners who came particularly from ghettos in Wieluń, Zduńska Wola and Sieradz. They were placed in wooden barracks built especially for this purpose.

Construction equipment, including breakstone, gravel and steel, was stored at Kościelna Street. A hall in a nearby parish house was used as a storage. Camp prisoners built tracks of a narrow-gauge railway on the route to Komorniki which helped in the motorway construction works. The rest of the labourers would build a motorway embankment or do the earthwork.

The living conditions created by Hitler’s administration, like terror, starvation and ravaging work, made the slave labour camps for Jewish people become places of actual extermination. Every day, camp prisoners were flogged, beaten and subjected to public executions. They received the worst quality food. Scanty clothes did not protect them against the changing weather. All this resulted in a very high mortality rate among RAB camp prisoners. The situation on the Eastern front, and the numerous defeats of German soldiers in mid-1942 in particular, impaired the construction works. The camps along the motorway were gradually liquidated. The surviving prisoners were transported to other labour and concentration camps. Those who were ill or unable to work were taken to the extermination camp in Chełmno upon Ner.

The Security Police Prison and Corrective Labour Camp Poznań-Junikowo

The German prison camp in Żabikowo near Poznań was set up in April, 1943. Until the spring of 1944, it functioned along with the camp Fort VII in Poznań as its continuation. When Fort VII was liquidated on April 27, 1944, it consisted of 750 prisoners. Commandant Reinhold Hans Walter with all his garrison of 80–100 SS men moved to Żabikowo.

The Żabikowo camp was officially called Polizeigefängnis der Sicherhaitspolizei und Arbeitserziehungslager Posen-Lenzingen (the Security Police Prison and Corrective Labour Camp Poznań-Junikowo). The camp was divided into two parts: police prison and penal camp. The Żabikowo camp of about 3.74 ha was controlled by the Gestapo from Poznań and was set up on the area of a former brickyard. It was surrounded with a double barbed, high-tension wire fencing and watchtowers. The gaps in the fencing were filled with additional barbed wire to prevent prisoners from escaping. There were separate barracks for men and women, the living conditions did not differ from the conditions in concentration camps.

The security police prison was a transit place of seclusion for people whom Germans accused of underground activity. Prisoners were kept there from several days up to several weeks.

Occasionally, however, particular prisoners stayed there for a few months. They were kept in wooden barracks (some of them remained after the former labour camp for Jews – Reichsautobahnlager Poggenburg). The Żabikowo camp was a transit camp. Prisoners were deported from there to concentration camps or occasionally released. 28 transports with prisoners were sent from Żabikowo. The first one was sent to KL Auschwitz and then to Gross-Rossen, Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück.

In the penal part of the Żabikowo camp, there were people whom the Nazis convicted of common infringement of law, i.e. shirking the duty to work, not turning up in places indicated by the German Job Office (Arbeitsamt) or escaping from forced labour in the Third Reich. Initially, prisoners were detained for 14 days, then the sentence was extended to 21 days, while in 1944 they were occasionally kept for 28 and 56 days. On serving the sentence, prisoners were released or taken to concentration camps.

The camp was meant especially for Poles. However, there were also Soviet prisoners of war and escapees from labour camps, Germans – deserters from the Wehrmacht, Luxembourgers, the Dutch, Hungarians, Slovaks, citizens of the USA. There was also a separate group of prisoners called “niedzielnicy” (“Sunday prisoners”) who were detained on the basis of slanders, denunciations and administrative directives. They would be brought to the camp on Friday evening, subjected to horrific tortures and released on Monday morning.

Until January 19, 1945, there were 21 624 registered names of prisoners. In the Żabikowo camp, soldiers of the Polish Home Army (AK) in the Poznań and Pomeranian areas were executed (altogether in Żabikowo there were 1500 members of AK or the National Military Organization and Independent Poland – which later merged with AK), members of the Grey Ranks (Szare Szeregi) and the Polish Workers’ Party.

Corpses of prisoners were taken to Poznań and cremated in Collegium Anatomicum. On the basis of death certificates executed by Germans and found in the registry office, 290 names of the dead and murdered in Żabikowo were identified. Their bodies were sent with a note gestorben (deceased), without the actual cause of death.

They began to evacuate the camp at night on January 19, 1945. The first group of about 700 prisoners was transported by train to the Sachsenhausen camp. Ultimately, 408 of them got there. During its liquidation, the camp was torched. The Nazis also burnt the corpses of previously executed prisoners. Those who survived were forced to walk to the Sachsenhausen camp and only 208 of them got there. Female political prisoners were forced to walk even further, to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. The weak and exhausted with marching were killed along the way.

The last group of 33 prisoners from the Maków Mazowiecki area arrived at the burnt-down camp and was executed on the Żabikowo cemetery by the SS escort. It was the last time Germans murdered prisoners. In the afternoon, January 26, 1945, Soviet forces of the 2nd Belorussian Front entered Żabikowo, occupying Luboń and the surrounding area

The Martyrs’ Museum in Żabikowo set up in 1979 carries out its statutory tasks by taking care of the area and remains of the buildings which were a part of a Nazi concentration camps between 1941–1945 and a former internment camp where German people were detained between 1945–1948.

The museum area covers about 3 ha and expands for almost 0.5 km along the A2 motorway – it is also commemorated with memorials related to the martyring of Poles, Jews, Luxembourgers, the Dutch, citizens of the former Soviet Union and other nations.

The museum building was expanded on the foundations of the camp barrack and the remains of the Nazi camp commander’s villa. It complies with all the requirements of maintaining and commemorating the museum’ substance; it has also an educational function as it serves as the International Youth Meeting Centre.

The museum’s history is systematically documented. Its archives include photos from various periods of the museum’s activity.