Fort VII
The main entrance to the fort, with the Konzentrationslager Posen sign
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| Date | 1939–1944 |
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| Location | Occupied Poland |
| Cause | Invasion of Poland |
| Participants | Gestapo, SS |
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Minimum of 4,500 Polish civilians including patients and staff of psychiatric hospitals in Poznań and Owińska Part of a series
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World War II crimes in occupied Poland |
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Minimum of 4,500 Polish civilians including patients and staff of psychiatric hospitals in Poznań and Owińska
Fort VII, officially Konzentrationslager Posen (renamed later), was a Nazi German death camp set up in Poznań in German-occupied Poland during World War II, located in one of the 19th-century forts circling the city. According to different estimates, between 4,500 and 20,000 people, mostly Poles from Poznań and the surrounding region, died while imprisoned at the camp.
The decades-old Fort VII (also known as Fort Colomb from 1902–1918) was one of the ring of defensive forts built around the perimeter of Poznań by the Prussian authorities in the late 19th century, in the second stage of their Festung Posen plan. It was built in 1876–1880 (with improvements in 1887–1888). At present, it stands in the western part of the city, on today's ul. Polska in the Ogrody neighbourhood, part of Jeżyce district. In the interwar period it was used for storage purposes.
Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Fort VII was chosen as the site of the first concentration camp in occupied Poland, called Konzentrationslager Posen. It was probably created by decision of the Reichsstatthalter of the Poznań region, Arthur Greiser. It began functioning at some time around October 1939. The prisoners were mostly Poles from the Wielkopolska region. Many were representatives of the region's intelligentsia, often people who had been engaged in social and political life, as well as known Polish patriots and veterans of the Wielkopolska Uprising (1918–1919) and Silesian Uprisings. In the early stages of the camp's existence prisoners were generally executed within a week of arrival. In October 1939 an early experiment in execution by gas chamber was carried out by an SS chemist, Dr. August Becker,[p.175] whereby around 400 patients and staff from psychiatric hospitals in Poznań were gassed at Bunker No. 17. The extermination of mentally ill was conducted by SS-Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange, chief of the Gestapo in occupied Poznań. Lange served with Einsatzgruppe VI during Operation Tannenberg. He and his men were responsible also for the murder of 2,750 patients at Kościan, about 1,100 patients at Owińska, as well as 1,558 patients and 300 civilian Poles at Działdowo; the experience gained allowed Lange to become the first commandant of Chełmno extermination camp (until April 1942).
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