Trautenau Ring

Member of the Boys were taken as slave labours to the Trautenau labour camp complex, a subcamp of the Gross Rosen concentration camp.

The Gross Rosen concentration camp was operated by Nazi Germany.  The camp had 100 subcamps located in what is now Czechia, Germany and Poland. 

The Boys were child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

The Trauenau Ring was a complex of textile plants and labour camps located in Trutnov then in the Sudetenland that had been annexed by Germany in 1938 and which is now in the Czech Republic.

The main camp was at Parschnitz.

History

The ruthless Lagerführerin Else Hawlik was one of the commanders of the Trautenau camps which included Ludwigsdorf (now Ludwikowice Kłodzkie) and Ober-Hohenelbe where members of the Boys were held as slave labourers.

About 3,000 people were taken from Sosnowiec. Initially men were also taken as slave labourers. Kurt Klappholtz was also in the ring of camps and worked in an armaments factory in Ludwigsdorf. In early 1943, a group of men arrived at Ludwigsdorf from the camp at Brande (later Prądki in Opole Province).

In 1944, groups of Hungarian women from the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp were brought to Trautenau. The Hungarian women arrived with shaved heads, wearing only thin dresses, and were according to testaments visibly traumatised. Among them was Ida Beckman.

The camp complex also included the Liebau women’s labour camp.

The camp provided slave labour for an armaments factory.

Structure

The women prisoners worked at the Hasse and Welzel textile plants manufacturing uniforms and gas mask parts for the Wehrmacht. Unusually, in the textile factories Jews and non-Jews worked side by side.

Some of the Czech non-Jewish workers helped the Jewish girls by bringing food and medicine for them.

Dissolution & Liberation

As the Red Army drew near the Germans abandoned the camp.

The Jewish women stayed in their barracks without food until they were liberated by Soviet soldiers in the spring of 1945. Some of the women were then raped.