Description
Book SynopsisWithin the vast network of Nazi camps, Stutthof may be the least known beyond Poland. This book is the first scholarly publication in English to break the silence of Stutthof, where 120,000 people were interned and at least 65,000 perished.
A Nazi Camp Near Danzig offers an overview of Stutthof's history. It also explores Danzig's significance in promoting the cult of German nationalism which led to Stutthof's establishment and which shaped its subsequent development in 1942 into a Concentration Camp, with the full resources of the Nazi Reich.The book shows how Danzig/Gdansk, generally identified as the city where the Second World War started, became under Albert Forster, Hitler's hand-picked
Gauleiter, the vanguard of Germandom in the east' and with its disputed history, the poster city for the Third Reich. It reflects on the fact that Danzig was close enough to supply Stutthof with both prisoners initially local Poles and Jews as well as local men for its SS workforce
Trade ReviewAn imaginative close reading of Günter Grass’s Danzig trilogy with its hints of nearby “Stutthof” leads into and frames a fully researched historical account of the creation and changing functions of that concentration camp in the context of Nazi policies before and during World War II. From the role of local SS men and the camp’s changing organizational structure to harrowing details from published memoirs and oral histories by witnesses, perpetrators and survivors, Ruth Schwertfeger’s book offers a full view of the unimaginable level of truly hellish terror and violence unleashed in just one small site of the “Bloodlands.” This must have been a very hard book to research and write for an author whose humane voice shines through in
A Nazi Camp Near Danzig.
* Werner Sollors, Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English, Emeritus, Harvard University, USA *
Outstanding study on the Danzing/Gdansk as city and Stutthof/Sztutowo as a concentration camp near by it. The book of Professor Ruth Schwertfeger put in the light of day names, experiences and feelings of inhabitants of the concentration camp’s micro-socium. This much needed and thought-provoking book discusses values of a human being in the circumstances of dehumanization and connect History, Literature and contemporary specific understanding of such places as Stutthof. * Prof. Dr. Jurgita Šiauciunaite-Verbickiene, Faculty of History, Vilnius University, Lithuania *
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Promoting German-Consciousness in a Revamped Gau, 1930-1939 2. Danzig-West Prussia and Stutthof: Implementing Germandom, September 1939 – January 1942 3. Gaining the Next Tier of Germandom as a Nazi Konzentrationslager 4. Entering the Zone of the Final Solution, Summer of 1944 5. The Collapse of Germandom, Winter of 1945 Epilogue Sources Abbreviations and Key Terms Bibliography Appendices Index
