Stutthoff

Stutthof concentration camp
Map of KL Stutthof main camp after expansion. The German armaments factory DAW (Deutsche-Ausrüstungs-Werke) to the right (black, outlined in red) by the prisoner barracks. Death gate marked with an arrow, next to the red-brick SS administration building (photo below). Museum permanent exhibit.
KL Stutthof Museum panorama, 2007
Operation
Period	2 September 1939 – 9 May 1945
Prisoners	110,000 (with 65,000 dead)

Stutthof was a Nazi German concentration camp established in a secluded, wet, and wooded area near the small town of Sztutowo (German: Stutthof) 34 km (21 mi) east of the city of Gdańsk in the former territory of the Free City of Danzig. The camp was set up around already existing structures after the invasion of Poland in World War II, used for the imprisonment of Polish intelligentsia. The actual barracks were built in the following year by hundreds of prisoners enslaved in labour commandos.

Stutthof was the first Nazi camp set up outside German borders in World War II, in operation from 2 September 1939. It was also the last camp liberated by the Allies on 9 May 1945. It is estimated that between 63,000 and 65,000 prisoners of Stutthof concentration camp and its subcamps died as a result of murder, epidemics, extreme labour conditions, evacuations, and lack of medical help. Some 28,000 of them were Jews. In total, as many as 110,000 people were deported there in the course of the camp's existence.

As early as 1936 the Nazi authorities of the Free City of Danzig began compiling target data about known Jewish and Polish intelligentsia, and were secretly reviewing suitable places to set up concentration camps in their area.

Originally, Stutthof was a civilian internment camp under the Danzig police chief, before its subsequent massive expansion. In November 1941, it became a "labor education" camp, administered by the German Security Police. Finally, in January 1942, Stutthof became a regular concentration camp.

The original camp (known as the old camp) was surrounded by the barbed-wire fence. It comprised eight barracks for the inmates and a "Kommandantur" for the SS guards, totaling 120,000 m². In 1943, the camp was enlarged and a new camp was constructed alongside the earlier one. It was also surrounded by electrified barbed-wire fence and contained thirty new barracks, raising the total area to 1.2 km² (0.5 sq mi). A crematorium and gas chamber were added in 1943, just in time to start mass executions when Stutthof was included in the "Final Solution" in June 1944. Mobile gas wagons were also used to complement the maximum capacity of the gas chamber (150 people per execution) when needed.