In what incident did a resistance press leak cause a concentration camp commander demotion?
Upvote:11
I found it (by googling in Dutch rather than English). In English, the atrocity is referred to as the Bunker Tragedy, as summarised by Wikipedia:
The Bunker Tragedy or the Bunkerdrama was an atrocity committed by the staff at the Herzogenbusch concentration camp (also known as Kamp Vught) in the Netherlands, in January 1944 during World War II.
Events
When one woman from barrack 23B was locked up in the camp prison (the 'bunker'), other women protested against it. Commander Adam Grünewald, as a punishment, had as many women as possible incarcerated in one cell. Eventually, 74 women were pressed together in cell 115, which had a floor area of 9m² and hardly any ventilation. After 14 hours of confinement, the inmates ere released from the cell. Ten women did not survive the night.
The incident soon became known outside the camp and was written about in resistance newspapers. The occupying power was not pleased with the fact that the news had leaked. The commander was demoted to the ranks and was sent to the Eastern front, where he was killed in combat.
More details
More details are available on the website of the museum Kamp Vught, albeit in Dutch. The remainder of this answer is an abridged version of what is told in this source. It is also the topic of a radio documentary from 15 November 1987 (in Dutch) and a book published in 1995.
According to the museum, Commander Grünewald had been appointed to make Camp Vught a model camp. In Nazi Germany, model camps were punishment/labour camps where circumstances were less bad than in other camps, serving propaganda purposes. One of the prisoners, Jedzini, betrays other prisoners by telling guards that she overheard others discussing how they can once again help people into hiding after they are released. The other prisoners find out and decide to punish Jedzini. Thea and Non Breman cut off Jedzini's hair. The next day, Grünewald hears about this incident and puts Non Breman into solitary confinement. 89 women decide to declare solidarity with Non. What happens the following night is not entirely clear, but Jedzini goes outside (perhaps to escape more punishment by fellow prisoners?), is shot by a guard, and ends up in the infirmary. The following morning, camp guards receive a list with the names of all the women who declared solidarity. Suze Arts, a Dutch woman working in the camp as a guard, is tasked with gathering all the 89 women on the list just before her weekend off. She has always denied knowing what happens next.
Grünewald puts as many of those 89 women as he can into the same 9m² prison cell as Non Breman. He manages to fit 74 women in there, the other women are put in another cell. The situation in the cell is terrible, the women are breaking the one tiny window to get some air, but many faint due to the heat and lack of oxygen. Ten women die.
The next morning, the camp doctor ignores Grünewalds commands and treats the survivors against Grünewalds orders, distributing them with five women per cell and providing mattresses, food, and drink.
Thea Breman was scheduled for release and is released according to plan.
Suze Arts, on her weekend off, is called in to the Sicherheitsdienst to describe what happened. The camp doctor writes a letter to Berlin with his testimony, and the telephonist Eva travels to The Hague to describe the same. The underground newspaper Trouw (today one of the main daily newspapers in The Netherlands) reports on the incident, but does not know much about the details. Days later, thousands of people write protest letters to the Sicherheitsdienst. Himmler travels to Vught, an SS court convicts and demotes Grünewald. Vught was supposed to be a model camp, and this atrocity does not fit in this image. Himmler revokes the conviction, because he says that if Grünewald is convicted for this then every SS member in The Netherlands is at risk of conviction. Nevertheless, he is moved to the East Front; although technically not a demotion, he dies in combat there. Jedzini dies from her wounds. The camp doctor is promoted. After the war, Suze Arts is convicted to fifteen years in prison by an extraordinary Dutch court.
Reading the details, it is less clear to me how important the press leak was. It seems that this is topic of some historical debate. What was the role of Trouw in spreading information to the thousands of people who wrote protest letters? Would Grünewald have been demoted and moved if news had not spread? I find it an interesting detail that Thea Breman was released, did she tell the underground press? I suppose those questions may never be fully answered, but the atrocity gives some insight in both life in Kamp Vught, the spreading of news under the occupation, and in the handling by the SS and the SD regardless.
Further reading/listening (all in Dutch)
- Hans Olink. Vrouwen van Vught (1995): Een nacht in een concentratiekamp. Amsterdam : Bas Lubberhuizen. 122 pages. ISBN 90-73978-35-1
- Het 'Bunkerdrama' in Kamp Vught: radio documentary broadcast 1987-11-15. Listen online via VPRO
- Online summary at the website of the Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught
More post
- 📝 Was WWII Systemic Drug Use by Axis and Allies Supported By Scholarship?
- 📝 Using a lance while on a charging horse against ground based enemy
- 📝 What's the Ancient Egyptian word for "benedict"?
- 📝 What sovereign Jewish polities have existed outside of Palestine?
- 📝 Are there contemporary records of why flappers used cosmetics to create thin, upturned eyebrows?
- 📝 Was Ludwig von Mises a holocaust survivor?
- 📝 Why did Charles I not borrow abroad?
- 📝 Did this "sledge rigged like a sloop" vehicle ever exist, or was it an invention of Jules Verne?
- 📝 Communication lag during the Age of Sail: what if enemy claimed that peace agreement was signed?
- 📝 What is the proper terminology for the changes that occur in a text throughout history?
- 📝 During WW2, why did the USA occupy Clipperton Island?
- 📝 What were the historical antecedents of Russia BTG-based military organization?
- 📝 Where did Hannibal cross the Pyrenees?
- 📝 Why did the Arab spring and Iranian Green movement failed for the most part, but the European revolution did not?
- 📝 Why did Mozambique join the British Commonwealth?
- 📝 Why was Colonel Bill Eddy kneeling in front of FDR and King Saud?
- 📝 Jewish Money Lenders in England: What happened to Money Lendings after Expulsion?
- 📝 When did households become electrified?
- 📝 Where can I find information about "stone power" / lapidaire?
- 📝 Did the Germans use the V1 and V2 missile system on the Eastern Front in World War 2?
- 📝 Was Uranus a Roman god?
- 📝 How can a megalith be dated via the C14 method?
- 📝 What pretext did Hitler use to justify Operation Barbarossa?
- 📝 Did Charlemagne ever visit Constantinople?
- 📝 In view of the widespread use of the term "Semitic", which groups of people are classified as being of Hamitic ethnicity?
- 📝 To what extent did the 1793 yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia influence the process of relocating the capital to Washington DC in 1800?
- 📝 What level of knowledge was required to enter medieval universities?
- 📝 Did Japan perceive their hypergrowth as stable and unstoppable as the United States did?
- 📝 What kind of radio equipment is depicted in this Vietnam era picture?
- 📝 Was the Athenian generals' trial after Arginusae a political one?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 In what incident did a resistance press leak cause a concentration camp commander demotion?
- 📝 What were the Government Press Prosecutions of 1858 and why did they occur?
- 📝 How did the news of the reality Nazi concentration camps reach the United State's mainstream? What were the waves of awareness and when?
- 📝 What color triangles did the different religious groups (those not Jews or JWs) wear in Nazi concentration camps?
- 📝 How did Nazi concentration camp staff deal with survivors of gassings?
- 📝 What did NATO AFCENT commander Bennecke do during World War 2?
- 📝 What did the French resistance call the oil used to destroy German tanks/trucks?
- 📝 Did Adolf Hitler ever address the fact that his own appearance was almost an exact opposite of what he considered the ideal Aryan appearance?
- 📝 What damage did anti-tank rifles hope to inflict on tanks in WW2?
- 📝 What did babies eat before the advent of modern blenders?
- 📝 What did the Emancipation Proclamation exactly do?
- 📝 What did Germany do in World War II about the different rail gauge in the Soviet Union?
- 📝 How were concentration and extermination camp guards recruited?
- 📝 What did people in 13th century England know about Greek mythology?
- 📝 What language did Gaius Julius Caesar speak with Cleopatra?
- 📝 Did Rothschild say this famous quote? If yes, what did he mean by it?
- 📝 To what extent did Native American cultures develop metalworking for tools and weapons?
- 📝 What pretext did Hitler use to justify Operation Barbarossa?
- 📝 What concessions did Hitler demand from the Poles before 1939?
- 📝 What did squires do in the middle of a medieval battle?
- 📝 What form of home address did Romans use?
- 📝 How did the gold of the new world cause the Spanish Empire to collapse?
- 📝 What advantages did Catholic missionaries to the Indians have over Protestant missionaries in old Oregon Country?
- 📝 What is the context for Napoleon's quote "[the Austrians] did not know the value of five minutes"?
- 📝 What did Germany do after World War II to recover so successfully that it became more prosperous than its WW2 victors?
- 📝 What / When was the first use of concentration camps in history?
- 📝 What did the Romans do for Judea?
- 📝 What role did the Eastern Roman Empire play in the fall of the Western Roman Empire?
- 📝 What language did Brahe talk with Kepler?
- 📝 in what form did William the Conqueror write the date of his own coronation?