Vaivara concentration camp

Creation

On 21 June 1943, Heinrich Himmler 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) to plan the establishment of forced labor camps for the oil-shale extraction operations of Baltöl, an IG Farben subsidiary.

Beginning in August 1943, a series of concentration camps was established all over Estonia by Organisation Todt. The administrative center of the camp complex was in Vaivara. Hans Aumeier, a former camp commander of 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 was the camp's surgeon. Altogether only 15 Germans served in the camp. Most of the guards were 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 train station. It served as the main camp (Hauptlager) of 20 forced labor camps throughout Estonia, some of which existed only briefly, all of them together 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. From there they were distributed to the satellite camps of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.

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Conditions and prisoners

Since the main purpose of the camps was to fully exploit 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 oil shale 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 eliminated 300 Jews, most of them suffering from typhoid fever. In twenty more selections, approximately 500 more Jewish prisoners were killed, 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.

Evacuation

With the front coming closer in early 1944, the Vaivara camp was evacuated on 4 and 5 February 1944. A total of 2,466 inmates were marched to the camps at Kiviõli (46 kilometres (29 mi)), Ereda (30 kilometres (19 mi)), Jõhvi (20 kilometres (12 mi)) and Goldfields (30 kilometres (19 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. In August and September, as Germans prepared the evacuation of Estonia, the inmates were sent west. As there were not enough ships, they crowded into the camps of Klooga and Lagedi. 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.

Aftermath

Aumeier was tried at the Auschwitz trial in Poland in 1947 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 16 years imprisonment in 1968, which was reduced to 6 years in 1969. However, he was given a life sentence after another trial in 1977. Others were indicted but never tried by German courts.

Satellite camps

Satellite camps of Vaivara concentration camp were located in:

Aseri
Auvere
Ereda, with branches in Goldfields (now Kohtla and Kohtla shale oil factory) and Kohtla-Nõmme.
Hungerburg (now Narva-Jõesuu)
Ilinurme (either in Ilistvere or Illuka)
Jägala
Jõhvi
Kerstovo (now in Opolye volost, Kingiseppsky District, Leningrad Oblast, Russia)
Kiviõli
Klooga, with branches in Laoküla and Paldiski.
Kūdupe (in northern Latvia)
Kukruse
Kunda
Kuremäe
Lagedi (two transportation camps from July to August and from August to September.)
Narva (according to Eugenie Gurin-Loov the site is located in nowadays Russia.)
Pankjavitsa (various spellings), now Panikovichi, Russia
Petseri
Putki (in Kose Parish, Viru County)
Saka
Sonda
Soska (near the Agusalu Lake, 1.5 km east of Agusalu)
Ülenurme
Viivikonna