New Stutthof exhibitions mark liberation anniversary
New exhibitions are scheduled to open Monday at the Stutthof Museum on the site of the onetime Nazi death camp Stutthof in north Poland will mark the 71st anniversary of the camp's liberation.
Also planned on Monday are anniversary celebrations at a memorial to the camp's victims on the museum premises. An ecumenical prayer by members of five religions will be followed by a roll-call for all who died in the camp and a gunfire salute. The gathering will be addressed by Maria Kowalska, a onetime Stutthof inmate incarcerated for her part in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising and subject of one of the museum's exhibitions. Also on show will be pictures and poetry by Stutthof inmates.
The Stutthof concentration camp opened on September 2, 1939 near what is today known as Sztutowo in north Poland. Initially to hold Poles from the Pomeranian area, from 1942 the camp also took in Poles from other parts of the country and prisoners of other nationalities, including Jews and Russians.
The Germans began evacuating the camp in January 1945, forcing half of its remaining 24,000 inmates to a death march in which 2,000 died and another 2,000 managed to escape. Those who remained in the camp were decimated by typhoid and starvation.
From 1939 to 1945, the Stutthof camp received around 110,000 prisoners, of whom an estimated 65,000 - including 28,000 Jews - perished.
The Stutthof Museum opened in Sztutowo 1962 on the initiative of former camp inmates. (PAP)
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