Stutthof — Pauly and the first contingent

Pauly applies B. Under Nazi typology, Stutthof at this stage belongs to the category of concentration camps rather than extermination centres. Regime at Stutthof: forced labour 14 hours a day (draining marshes, peat extraction, building of barracks), ration of about 600 calories a day, mortality of 30-40 percent in the first year (without gas). At 31 December 1939, 3,500 prisoners are held. At its peak occupancy (1944), Stutthof will hold 57,000 detainees. From June 1944 the camp becomes an extermination centre with the construction of gas chambers (Zyklon B) to murder the Hungarian Jewish women transferred from Auschwitz. Total death toll: between 65,000 and 110,000 (consensus figures), mostly Polish and Jewish. Pauly is promoted to commandant of Neuengamme in 1942, then condemned by the British at the Hamburg trial in 1946 and hanged in October 1946. Stutthof remains one of the major sites of Polish Holocaust memory — a Polish state museum was established in 1962. A particularity: its late ending; active combat takes place there until 9 May 1945 (two days after the German capitulation), with evacuation by ship into the Baltic: about 25,000 prisoners are evacuated, several thousand perish in shipwrecks (notably the Cap Arcona on 3 May 1945, bombed by the RAF, which mistook the ship for a military transport).