Today in Dutch WWII History: Concentration-Camps 1

  

Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch

Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch (Concentration-camp ’s-Hertogenbosch) was the only SS concentration camp in the Netherlands (The more known camp at Westerbork, was a transit camp for Jews.) and was located at the town called Vught. Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch was the same organized as the SS camps in Nazi Germany. But the prisoners are treated less rigid than in the other camps. This way the Nazis wanted to prevent that the Dutch population started to protest against the treatment.
The choice of the location for the camp was well thought out. Vught was surrounded by railways and roads and nearby is ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Here a lot of the German authorities headquarters were located. In 1942 they started the building of the camp. The layout of the camp is over 1 kilometer long and 400 meters wide. Wrapped around the camp is a big moat digged by the camp prisoners. On all sides of the camp is a high barbed wire fence.
At every 100 meters there is a watchtower, with guards, searchlights and Machine-guns. The guards on the towers were almost all Dutch, who had chosen to side with the Germans.

Aerial view of the camp with right of the middle the "Fusilladeplaats".

Between January 1943 and September 1944 more than 31,000 men, women and children were encased in the camp. Among them more than 12,000 Jews who were from Vught  transported to Westerbork. Also in this camp were about 19,000 political prisoners, resistance fighters, drifters, Sinti and Roma, Jehovah's, gays, black marketers and criminals. Women were imprisoned in a special women's camp. At least 750 people died in the camp from disease and abuse or being shot outside the camp at the so called “fusilladeplaats”. At the approaching of the Allied army’s the Nazi’s started at the beginning of September 1944 with the evacuation of the camp. The prisoners were put on trains and transported to camps in Germany. On October 26, 1944, the empty camp is liberated.

The first commander was the 39 year old Karl Chmielewski. In the first months the camp was badly organized. The prisoners receive little food, the sick are not treated well and the drinking water is bad. Many people die in the time that Chmielewski was the Commander. In October 1943 he was sacked because he had stolen on a large scale in the camp. In 1961 he was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the concentration camps.

The second commander was the 40 year old Adam Grünewald. He introduced strict rules. He gave the order in January 1944 to put a large group of female prisoners into one cell. A horrible decision, which comes to be known as the “Bunker Drama”. He was brought to face the SS court and was sent to the Russian front as a soldier. He was killed in 1945.

The last commander of the Camp, was the 50-year-old Hans Hüttig. He fought as a soldier in the First World War and he became a member of the Nazi party before 1933. The SS leaders were very pleased with him. Under his leadership in July / September 1944 a certain number of 329 men are shot by the firing squad.

After the war the camp fulfilled many purposes. One of them was to imprison those Dutch people who had chosen to side with the Germans during the war.
Now a days most of the camp is a museum and a memorial center.

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Photo: Nederland in de Tweede Wereldoorlog