Located 22 miles east of Danzig, Stutthof became a regular concentration camp in January 1942. Conditions in the camp were brutal and prisoners were used as forced laborers. Those whom the SS guards judged too weak or sick to work were gassed. More than 60,000 people died in Stutthof.
These ID cards and oral history excerpts describe individuals' experiences in Stutthof.
![Siegfried Wohlfarth [LCID: 1324]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/06df5ce4-780f-41a8-a2dc-3285707600f5.gif "Siegfried Wohlfarth [LCID: 1324]")
The elder of two sons of religious German-Jewish parents, Siegfried grew up in the city of Frankfurt. Upon completing his education, he became a certified public accountant in Frankfurt. In his free time he worked as a freelance music critic. While on a vacation in 1932 on the North Sea island of Norderney, he met Herta Katz, a young woman with whom he quickly fell in love.
1933-39: The Nazis had fired Siegfried from his government job because he was Jewish. Although his mother opposed the match, Siegfried proposed to Herta and she accepted. They married in June 1933. In 1934 they left for Amsterdam, where Siegfried found a job. Herta gave birth to a daughter and began a successful interior decorating business. Just before the outbreak of war in 1939, Siegfried's parents also moved to Amsterdam.
1940-44: In May 1940 the Germans occupied the Netherlands. Two years later the Wohlfarths were ordered to report to the train station, but went into hiding. In 1944 they heard on the BBC that the Germans had killed 2 million Jews in extermination camps and that the biggest camp was Auschwitz-Birkenau. When Herta and Siegfried were arrested and put on a train on September 3, 1944, Siegfried feared the worst. Determined not to let the Germans have more than his body, he tore up their money during the journey.
Siegfried was deported to Auschwitz, and later to the Stutthof concentration camp where he died on December 5, 1944.
Item View![Feiga Malnik [LCID: 3363]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/5fcfa226-214e-4462-b771-6ca066a5c755.gif "Feiga Malnik [LCID: 3363]")
Raised in a Jewish family, Feiga lived with her husband, Josef, in Kovno, a city with a large Jewish community of 38,000. Kovno was situated at the confluence of two rivers, and with its opera company, chic stores and lively nightclubs, it was often called "Little Paris." Feiga was a beautician and Josef was a barber, and together they ran a shop in downtown Kovno.
1933-39: Every day Josef and Feiga walk to their shop, which is near their house. It's hard work, being a beautician--Feiga is on her feet most of the day and her fingers are swollen from the harsh chemicals she uses to give permanents. It'll all seem worth it to Feiga, though, if she can help her son, Abe, have a better life as a doctor or a lawyer. He's a good boy. He works hard at school and helps his parents out at the shop sometimes, sweeping the floor.
1940-44: The Nazis have occupied Kovno. They've forced all the Jews to wear a Star of David and to relocate to a fenced-in ghetto. Every day the guards take people away, never to return. This morning--a cold, drizzly autumn day--everyone in the ghetto has to report to Democracy Plaza for an inspection. They have to comply or risk being killed. Feiga wonders where they will be taken and what will happen to them. They march to the plaza over streets lightly dusted with snow--Josef, Abe and Feiga, her 66-year-old mother and Feiga's sister, Yenta.
That October 28, 1941, Lithuanian guards under Nazi orders killed 10,000 Jews. Feiga escaped. In 1944 she was deported to the Stutthof concentration camp, where she perished.
Item View![Mina Beker [LCID: 5905]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/88f716fa-6261-4d07-a4b5-7fe8672f32a4.gif "Mina Beker [LCID: 5905]")
Mina, born Mina Friedman, was the youngest of four daughters born to a Jewish family in the Lithuanian town of Jonava. At the age of 18, Mina married Osser Beker, a lumber dealer. The couple settled in Jonava where Mina worked as a seamstress. The Bekers had two sons and two daughters, but their oldest son died in a childhood accident.
1933-39: Mina's son Abe attended a Jewish religious school in Jonava. But since Mina had received an extensive Jewish education, she decided to teach her daughters at home. Mina also taught Jewish studies to local women and children, using a Yiddish translation of the Bible. In 1937 her husband died while away on a business trip. Almost a year later, Mina moved the family to Kovno, where they resided at #20 Luksus Gatve.
1940-44: On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded Lithuania, and reached Kovno two days later. In July the Bekers were confined to the city's ghetto where they remained for two years. In 1943 the family was sent outside Kovno to the Ninth Fort, a Nazi execution site. The Bekers were held for several days and then returned to the ghetto. They were told they had been sent back because there were not enough bullets to kill all the prisoners. A week later, Mina and her daughters were sent to a Nazi camp at Stutthof.
Mina was gassed at Stutthof on the Baltic coast in late 1944 or early 1945.
Item ViewThe Germans occupied Riga in 1941, and confined the Jews to a ghetto. In late 1941, at least 25,000 Jews from the ghetto were massacred at the Rumbula forest, near Riga. Steven and his brother were sent to a small ghetto for able-bodied men. In 1943 Steven was deported to the Kaiserwald camp and sent to a nearby work camp. In 1944 he was transferred to Stutthof and forced to work in a shipbuilding firm. In 1945, Steven and his brother survived a death march and were liberated by Soviet forces.
Item ViewUpon her father's death, Judith and her family moved to Kovno. Soon, they were confined to the ghetto, which the Germans formed in 1941. Judith, her mother and sister were deported to Stutthof, where her mother died. Judith and her sister escaped from a death march out of Stutthof. They posed as non-Jews, found farm work and eventual refuge in Denmark. Their brother survived Dachau.
Item ViewLeo was arrested on the first day of the war, and assigned to forced labor in a shipyard, then on a farm. In 1940, like other Jews, he was deported to Stutthof. There, he upholstered furniture for the SS. The following year, he was sent to Auschwitz, where he cleaned the streets and dug ditches. As the Allies neared, Leo was evacuated to a series of camps. On a death march from Flossenbürg, the Nazis dispersed, allowing Leo and other prisoners to get away. He was liberated by US forces in April 1945.
Item ViewHenny was born into an upper-middle-class Jewish family in Kovno, Lithuania. She and her brother attended private schools. In June 1940 the Soviets occupied Lithuania, but little seemed to change until the German invasion in June 1941. The Germans sealed off a ghetto in Kovno in August 1941. Henny and her family were forced to move into the ghetto. Henny married in the ghetto in November 1943; her dowry was a pound of sugar. She survived several roundups during which some of her friends and family were deported. Henny was herself deported to the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, when the Germans liquidated the Kovno ghetto. She was placed in a forced-labor group. The Germans forced Henny and other prisoners on a death march as Soviet troops advanced. After Soviet troops liberated Henny in 1945, she eventually reunited with her husband and moved to the United States.
Item ViewThe Germans occupied Vilna in June 1941. In October, Rochelle and her family were confined to the Vilna ghetto, where her mother died. Her father, a Jewish council member, was killed in a camp in Estonia. When the ghetto was liquidated in 1943, Rochelle and her sister were deported--first to the Kaiserwald camp in Latvia and later to Stutthof, near Danzig. In 1945, on the sixth week of a death march that forced the sisters to protect their bare feet with rags, the Soviet army liberated them.
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