338 GOLGOTA
1943 (181); Borow, 2 February 1944 (232); Lazek, 2 February 1944 (187);
Szczecyn, 2 February 1944 (368); Jamy, 3 March 1944 (147);Milejow, 6
September 1939 (150); Kaszyce, 7 March 1943 (117); Krusze, 31 August 1944
(148); Lipniak-Majorat, 2 September 1944 (370)... The largest single
pacification campaign took place between November 1942 and August 1943 in
the region of Zamosc, which had been designated for recolonization by German
and Ukrainian settlers. Over 100,000 Polish peasants were forcibly evicted from
some 300 villages. Those capable of work were transported to the Reich. The
children were deported for Germanization. The troublemakers were sent for
extermination to Auschwitz and Maidaneck. The rest were distributed through-
out the General-Gouvernement. The scale of German ambitions in this regard
can be judged by the fact that a further 400 villages embraced by this pilot pro-
ject remained untouched, simply because the SS lacked the manpower to deal
with them.^22
The proliferation of Nazi camps exceeded anything which existed elsewhere
in Europe. They included six main categories. The Prisoner-of-War Camps -
Oflagen for officers, and Stalagen for other ranks — were administered by the
German military. In Poland they were mainly used for prisoners from the
Eastern Front, and quickly shed all pretence of humane standards. A strict pol-
icy of starvation for all prisoners who refused to serve in German formations
produced conditions unheard-of elsewhere in Germany. Some 500,000 Soviet
prisoners, and some 50,000 Italians interned after the collapse of Mussolini in
1943, are thought to have died in Stalag VIIIB at Lambinowice, Stalag VIHC at
Zagan, Frontstalag 307 at Deldin, or Stalag 325 at Zamosc. Other camps were
administered by the SS or the Gestapo. Special Camps catered for various cat-
egories of prisoner, such as orphans, juvenile delinquents, or children selected
for Germanization. The Labour Camps — Judenlager for Jews, Polenlager for
Poles — were sited near major military work-sites, and were usually classified as
'labour reformatories'. The Penal-Investigation Camps such as that at Zabikow
near Poznari were created by the Gestapo to facilitate criminal and political
enquiries. The Transit Camps were designed to accommodate deportees, people
awaiting to be processed, and slave-labourers en route for the Reich. The
Concentration Camps were the special concern of the SS, and were reserved for
the political and racial enemies of the Nazi order. The main installations in
Poland at Auschwitz-Birkenau (1940-5), Maidaneck (1941-5), Dora (1943-5),
Treblinka (1942-4), and Plaschau (1944-5) near Cracow were supported by two
thousand collecting centres and command posts. They were staffed by perma-
nent cadres of German personnel. Their size and blatantly public activities pre-
vented any realization of Himmler's policy of official secrecy. From their
original detailment as places of internment or punishment, they soon developed
into centres of systematic genocide: among other things as the sites of the Nazis'
Final Solution of the Jews.^23
Of all the camps, none achieved the proportions or the notoriety of
Auschwitz-Birkenau, conveniently stationed on the lawless bank of the old