Vaivara was the largest of the 22 concentration and labor camps established in occupied Estonia by the Nazi regime during World War II. Some 20,000 Jewish prisoners passed through its gates, mostly from the Vilna and Kovno Ghettos, but also from Latvia, Poland, Hungary and the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Vaivara was one of the last camps established. It existed from August 1943 to February 1944.[1]
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 [de]. 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.[2] From there they were distributed to the satellite camps of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.
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.[dubious – discuss] 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.[citation needed] In twenty more selections, approximately 500 more Jewish prisoners were killed, including a group of children.[citation needed]
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.[3] Others were indicted but never tried by German courts.
Satellite camps
Satellite camps of Vaivara concentration camp were located in:[4]
^VAIVARA MAIN CAMP The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Volume I: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA), 2009, pp. 1491-1510 (20 pages) doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt16gzb17.47 accessed 17 October 2023
^Andrej Angrick, "Aktion 1005" - Spurenbeseitigung von NS-Massenverbrechen 1942 - 1945: Eine "geheime Reichssache" im Spannungsfeld von Kriegswende und Propaganda, p. 681 via books.google.com, ISBN9783835332683
Mark Dworzecki (1970): Jewish Camps in Estonia, Jerusalem, Yad Vashem.
Riho Västrik, Meelis Maripuu: Vaivara Concentration Camp in 1943-1944, in: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity (ed.) (2006): Estonia 1940-1945, pp. 719–738.
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