Transports of Jewish prisoners

When the Red Army approached Lublin in July 1944, Jews from the Majdanek concentration camp located there were transported to the Stutthof camp. At the same time, 23,600 Jewish prisoners from Auschwitz-Birkenau, most of whom were Hungarian women, and 10,000 prisoners from the Kovno ghetto were sent to the camp. The transports intensified in August 1944 and were mainly directed from camps and ghettos in the cities of the Baltic states, especially Riga, Vilnius, and Kovno. This phenomenon is illustrated by statistics: in June 1944, only 3% of the 37,600 prisoners at the Stutthof camp were of Jewish origin, while after the intensification of deportations, there were about 50,000 Jewish prisoners in the camp. 98% of them were women of that religion, who quickly became the most numerous group among the prisoners.

Numerous transports led to rapid overcrowding at the Stutthof camp, and thus to a further deterioration in the conditions in which prisoners were held. They lived in very primitive conditions, in overcrowded barracks without any sanitary facilities. The prisoners tried to survive despite starvation rations.

In mid-1944, the disinfection chamber located in the camp was converted into a gas chamber, which could kill a group of 25 to 30 people at a time. By January 1945, approximately 9,400 Jewish prisoners had been murdered in this chamber. In that winter month, the first death march left Stutthof, leaving behind about 7,000 Jewish women, of whom only 1,500 survived the war—some remained in the camp until its liberation, while others managed to survive the subsequent stages of the camp's evacuation.