Danzig Matzkau as a transit camp for German settlers

[00:00:00]In the hills to the southwest of the city, the Senate of the free city of Danzig in May 1939 allotted funds to buy some land from a private owner. The declared aim was to build a recreational and tourist project here.

[00:00:18]Whether or not that was the real purpose, I have my doubts. Whilst under construction, access to the area was denied and it was closely guarded by the police. Not the normal sort of thing you get on a tourist project. Whatever the original plans may have been, in July 1939, Hinrich Himmler made a visit to Danzig and suggested an increase in the number of men in its local SS units. Himmler was not interested in tourism, but he was interested in finding accommodation for units like the SSheim Danzig. And thus, instead of tourist infrastructure, construction of barracks for the Danzig SS unit began here. As it happened, the SS Heim Danzig was located in four places in the free city, and this camp was to be one of those four.

[00:01:10][Music] The camp operated as a barracks only for a very short time, that is to say, until the autumn of 1939. Then for almost a year, as from October 39, it became a transit camp for German resettlers from the Baltic countries and from Finia, which was part of eastern Poland before the war. This was part of the policy of return to the Reich whereby ethnic Germans were moved from their ancestral homelands in places recently occupied by the Soviet Union.

[00:01:49]Many of these people were then relocated to locations in newly occupied Poland, above all the Vartagau region. However, those that came from the Baltic states usually traveled by ship to Danzig. And it was in Danzig where they awaited for farms to be allotted to them. farms which had been stolen from their previous Polish owners. Nearby locations which also served this purpose were sanatoria and social welfare centers in Hoyita and Kotarovo as well as the monastery building in Helno Topalno and Gosha. By the end of the year a program of building 45 new settlement camps and territories occupy the Reich had begun, 14 of which were in the region of Danzig Britson. Whilst at these camps, the displaced persons, which is what they were, as they probably had little choice in coming home to the Reich, waited for their new homes. They were forced to remain there until the appropriate decisions were issued by the National Socialist Administration. After the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1944, the movement of people continued, but at a much slower pace.