SS herded together the 35,000 prisoners
The concentration camp of Stutthof was situated about twenty miles east of the Polish town of Danzig.
The evacuation of prisoners from the Stutthof camp system in northern Poland began on January 25, 1945. When the final evacuation began, there were nearly 50,000 prisoners, the majority of them Jews, in the Stutthof camp system. About 5,000 prisoners from Stutthof subcamps were marched to the Baltic Sea coast, forced into the water, and machine-gunned. The rest of the prisoners were marched in the direction of Lauenburg in eastern Germany. Cut off by advancing Soviet forces the Germans forced the surviving prisoners back to Stutthof. Marching in severe winter conditions and brutal treatment by SS guards led to thousands of deaths.
In late April 1945, the remaining prisoners were removed from Stutthof by sea, since the camp was completely encircled by Soviet forces. Again, hundreds of prisoners were forced into the sea and shot. Over 4,000 were sent by small boat to Germany, some to the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, and some to camps along the Baltic coast. Many drowned along the way. A barge full of prisoners was washed ashore at Klintholm Havn in Denmark where 351 of the 370 on board were saved on 5 May 1945. Shortly before the German surrender, some prisoners were transferred to Malmö, Sweden, and released into the care of that neutral country. It has been estimated that over 25,000 prisoners, one in two, died during the evacuation from Stutthof and its subcamps.
Soviet forces liberated Stutthof on May 9, 1945, rescuing about 100 prisoners who had managed to hide during the final evacuation of the camp.
Reputed to have the highest death rate from disease and hunger of any of the Nazi camps.
--
A few weeks before liberation by the Red Army, the SS herded together the 35,000 prisoners in the camp and began a forced march towards the west. Without food, and little water, they dropped dead like flies.
A large group of prisoners, estimated at around four thousand, were driven to the cliffs overlooking the sea and there mercilessly machine-gunned.
Another group, mostly women prisoners from Lithuania and Hungary were locked up in a vacant factory in Palmnicken after a 25 mile march from Konispsberg.
There, they were machined-gunned to death. Only a few thousand of the thirty-five thousand reached the west alive.
Photo: Soviet-occupied Poland publicly hanged eleven convicted war criminals of the Stutthof concentration camp