Barskamp

The camp was established in August 1944 in response to the needs of Hamburgische Elektricitätswerke AG (a power plant from Hamburg), which was building a coal-fired power plant on the banks of the Elbe in Alt Garge. The first 500 prisoners were selected at Sachsenhausen concentration camp and transported on the 24th of August 1944 in ten freight cars to the site where the new branch was being established. They were mostly Poles captured in the first days of the Warsaw Uprising. First of all, they had to build camp rooms for themselves and for the SS sentry unit. The prisoners carried out the toughest earthwork, manually dug holes for foundations and levelled the ground. After several weeks of exhausting work and insufficient food, the first fatalities were recorded. As early as in October 1944, a hundred exhausted prisoners, unable to continue work, were sent back to the Neuengamme main camp. Such a transport was almost always equal to a death sentence. The next transports of this type took place in December and January 1945. In February that year, the camp was closed. The remaining prisoners were transported to Neuengamme and those who were still able to work were sent to the Hannover-Misburg branch. The victims of Alt Garge camp were buried in Barskamp a few kilometres away. Among 40 Poles, residents of Warsaw, there were two Home Army soldiers, participants of the Warsaw Uprising, taken prisoner in the initial phase of the fighting:

BATORY JÓZEF

* 24.10.1902

† 28.12.1944

KALIŃSKI KRZYSZTOF

* 5.8.1923

† 16.12.1944