Located 36 kilometers from Gdansk, the Stutthof concentration camp was founded in 1939 as a “camp for civilian prisoners” (“Zivilkriegsgefangenenlager”) and was intended for political prisoners of Poles.
But in 1942 the name of the camp was changed and it became known as a concentration camp. 100 thousand prisoners passed through Stutthof, 65 thousand people died here.
The camp was liberated by the troops of the Soviet Army in May 1945.
During the Warsaw Uprising, a large number of Warsaw residents were brought to Stutthof, including many insurgents - men and women. 40 signalmen of the Crane Army, dressed in military uniform, were also sent here.
Initially, they were treated like prisoners of war, but some time later the prisoners were deprived of the rights arising from the status of prisoners of war, and they began to be treated like ordinary prisoners.
An underground organization of the Polish Resistance Movement operated on the territory of the concentration camp. One of its leaders was Lieutenant Kazimierz Rusinek, who was unexpectedly taken out of Poland and, after long ordeals, was imprisoned in Stutthof.
Captain Kashtelyan, who was in the camp for some time, collaborated with this organization: he maintained a short-wave transmitter and a radio apparatus mounted in the wall of the warehouse where he was assigned to work.
Kastelyan was executed in 1942 in Konigsberg. He was "a very correct person, a real citizen and a good friend, he rendered great services to the organization and had been in contact with it since 1940."
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In the concentration camp, there was an attempt to organize a mass escape of almost 150 "Polish partisans" who were sent to the crematorium for liquidation on December 21 or 22, 1944.
At that moment, when, shackled, they were led past the dining room, they suddenly started to run.
The guards and guards stationed on the watchtowers opened heavy fire and killed about 15 people on the spot, the rest were seized, dragged into the gas chambers and killed there.
At the beginning of 1944, a detachment of 350-400 Norwegian police officers was imprisoned in the Stutthof branch, located three kilometers from the main camp.
At first, in this so-called "camp for the Germans" ("Gennanenlager") they were treated with a certain preference: they enjoyed relative freedom behind the wire and consisted of SS allowances.
But as soon as they refused to go to serve in the SS, the attitude towards them changed dramatically: they were sent to hard work, transferred to a camp-wide meal and applied the regime that was "normal" for all prisoners of Stutthof.