German Jews at Stutthof Concentration Camp

This database contains information about 2,756 German Jews at the Stutthof concentration camp.

Stutthof Concentration Camp

Stutthof is one of the lesser-known concentration camps.  It is located in the eastern suburbs of Gdańsk, Poland (formerly Danzig), in the town now known as Sztutowo, Poland.  Stutthof has the dubious distinction of being the first concentration camp located outside of Germany.  Initially used to hold political prisoners from the city of Danzig, it gradually came to incarcerate prisoners from further away.  It remained relatively small through 1940-41, with about 12,000 prisoners.

Beginning in 1942, prisoners of various nationalities were transferred to Stutthof from other camps, such as Mauthausen and Flossenbürg.  In 1943, the camp grew larger and established an extensive system of sub-camps, with prisoners primarily from Poland, but also substantial numbers from Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia and elsewhere.  The major influx of prisoners began in 1944, when 75,000 prisoners, especially Hungarian and Polish Jews, were sent there.  Another large number of Jewish prisoners were sent to Stutthof from Rīga, Latvia.  Altogether, about 120,000 individuals passed through or died in Stutthof.

Explanatory Notes:

Some months ago I was asked to catalog a large collection of records of the Stutthof concentration camp, held by the Stutthof Museum, which were recently microfilmed and acquired by the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.  This collection of 305 microfilm reels is catalogued as RG04.058 at the museum archive.  For more details on this collection, see “Stutthof Concentration Camp: A Major New Source of Data, Valuable Yet Frustrating” in Avotaynu, Volume XIII, Number 2 (Summer 1997), pages 46-47.

The Stutthof camp was originally not designed to hold Jews, but, beginning in 1944, substantial numbers (30,000-50,000) of Jews were sent there, primarily from Kovno, Rīga and Auschwitz.  While it had long been known that Jews had been shipped from these places, no name lists had been located up to then.

A comparison of these names with the Bundesarchiv's 1986 Gedenkbuch (memorial book) indicated that many of these names did not appear at all, or the information was incorrect/incomplete.  For example, a person was listed as perishing in Rīga, when, in fact, he/she had been transferred to Stutthof.  My initial primary purpose for preparing the list, therefore, was to provide information for an expanded Gedenkbuch, which is currently being prepared by the German Bundesarchiv.  It is, of course, possible that a few of the persons listed survived, but the list will be compared to German government lists of survivors.

Database Contents:

The information in this database was taken either from the Personalbogen (personnel forms) which were prepared for many, but not all, persons who were admitted into Stutthof; or from transportation lists to and from Stutthof.  The extent of the information available on each person varies widely, sometimes little more than a name, but in other cases considerably more.

Over the following months I also began to work with French and Italian deportation lists as well as records from other camps.  I decided to include examples from these lists as well, not in the hope of offering complete lists, but rather to indicate the wide range of material that was available to researchers.

This database consists of 2,756 individuals who were designated as Jews.  They were included when the records indicated that either they were born in or last resided in Germany or, in the absence of such information, where their nationality was shown as German.  Austrians were designated separately and are not included here.

The information given on each person varies widely but has been listed as given.  The first location given after the date of birth is the place of birth, followed by the last place of residence.  In some cases, more than one date of birth was given for an individual.  In such cases I have included the other date of birth in the comments field.  Where information on persons was taken from forms prepared on their relatives I assumed that the relative had resided in the same town as the person on whom the form had been prepared.  However, to indicate that this information did not appear on the forms themselves, I included a question mark by such information.  Question marks were also added after other information where the material was not completely legible.  In some cases, the information was that the last place of residence was Kauen (Kovno) or Rīga, and this has been so listed.  In most cases, however, this probably indicates the last camp where they were held, rather than a real residence.  In many cases persons were transferred between camps and in these cases they are listed in order, with the last named camp the place where the records were consulted.  In a few cases the records, or other information which I received, indicate that a person escaped or survived, and this information is included in the comments field.  As noted above, others may have survived but the absence of a date of death merely indicates that this information is not contained in the files to which I had access.

Names/words are typed as they appear in the records and no attempt has been made to correct typographical errors, e.g.: "Dortmunt".  In cases where a name was spelled differently in various parts of the form, the most likely spelling was taken, but in some cases more than one spelling is included.  This material is often difficult to read and almost always incomplete and I make no pretense that the Stutthof name list is complete, but I hope it is helpful and attracts attention to this valuable source of information.  While this list is limited to German Jews, the overwhelming majority of the Jews sent to Stutthof came from other countries, particularly Poland and Lithuania.  I hope that other researchers will make a list of all nationalities.  While the original files from Stutthof are held at the Stutthof Museum, microfilmed copies of the Stutthof files are available in the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

November 1, 1998
Peter W. Landé

This database can be searched via both the JewishGen Germany Database, and JewishGen's Holocaust Database.