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Revision as of 07:34, 27 January 2006 by ExRat (talk | contribs) (→Other Nazi concentration camps in Estonia)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)This article deals with the Klooga concentration camp. For other meanings of the word Klooga see Klooga (disambiguation).
Klooga was a Nazi labor subcamp of the Vaivara concentration camp established in the summer of 1943 during World War II near the northern Estonian village of the same name. During the German occupation, Estonia was included in the Reichskommissariat Ostland, a German civilian administration which included the Baltic states and western Belarus.
Klooga held approximately 3,000 male and female prisoners at any given time during its operation; the overwhelming majority of which were Jews who were forcibly relocated in August and September of 1943 from the Vilnius and Kaunas ghettos in Lithuania, Salaspils in Latvia, and smaller numbers from Estonia, Russia and Romania. There were also smaller numbers of political prisoners, criminals, homosexuals, and approximately 100 Soviet POW's imprisoned in the camp.
The entire camp was enclosed by barbed wire, as were each of the large two-story buildings approximately 600 yards apart from one another that housed the male and female prisoners. Prisoners in Klooga were guarded by both the German SS and the Estonian SS, as well as the 287th Estonian police battalion. Prisoners in the camp were forced to work peat harvesting as well as in the camp cement works, sawmills, brickworks and in the camp factory that manufactured clogs for inmates of the camp.
Conditions in the camp were extremely harsh and in the early years of the camp a small group of approxiamtely 75 inmates began to mount a prisoner resistance movement from within Klooga. However, the underground movement but was unable to mount a fully effective resistance due to the frequency of transfers of the prisoners from camp to camp, both within Estonia and throughout Nazi occupied territories.
When the Soviet army began its advancement through Nazi occupied Estonia in July and August of 1944, many prisoners from Klooga were quickly transferred by sea to Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig and Freiburg in Germany. During September 19 through September 23, 1944 German and Estonian SS soldiers surrounded the camp and began systematically slaughtering the remaining prisoners in a nearby forest. The prisoners were first shot and then laid onto wooden pyres and burned. On September 28, 1944 when Soviet troops liberated Klooga, only 85 of the 2,400 prisoners remaining at the camp had managed to survive by hiding within the camp or escaping into the surrounding forests. SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Aumeier who was Lagerkommandant for all Estonia, as well as having served at Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald was subsequently arrested and tried for "Crimes Against Humanity". He was sentenced to death in Kraków, Poland and executed on December 22, 1947.
In May of 2005, the Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip gave a speech while visiting Klooga in which he both condemned the Holocaust and accepted that many Estonian citizens were complicit in comitting genocide and war crimes during WWII:
"Although these murderers must answer for their crimes as individuals, the Estonian Government continues to do everything possible to expose these crimes.
I apologise for the fact that Estonian citizens could be found among those who participated in the murdering of people or assisted in the perpetration of these crimes. "
In July of 2005 President of Estonia Arnold Rüütel, Israeli Ambassador Shemi Zur and Holocaust survivors took part in an unveiling ceremony for a large gray marble memorial stone at the former concentration camp. That same year Israeli President Moshe Katsav laid a wreath at the site of the camp deep in the Estonian forest while on a diplomatic tour of the Baltic countries.
Other Nazi concentration camps in Estonia
- Auvere
- Aseri
- Dorpat
- Ereda
- Goldfields
- Idu-Virumaa
- Illinurme
- Jägala
- Jõhvi
- Kalevi-Liiva
- Kiviõli
- Kukruse
- Kunda
- Kuremäe
- Lagedi
- Narva
- Narva-Jõesuu
- Petschur
- Putki
- Saka
- Sonda
- Soski
- Vaivara
- Viivikonna
- Wesenburg (Rakvere)
References
Encyclopedia of the Holocaust by Israel Gutman. MacMillan Publishing Group, 1990. ISBN 0-02-896090-4
The Holocaust Chronicle by Various contributing authors. Publications International, Ltd., 2003. ISBN 0-7853-2963-3