Laurahütte

Members of the Boys were slave labours in the Laurahütte labour camp, a subcamp of the Auschwitz concentration, extermination and labour camp complex.

The Auschwitz complex was operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. The camp had 40 subcamps.

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

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The Laurahütte camp was at the Laura steel mill in Siemianowice Śląskie in Poland. It was located just north of Katowice in Upper Silesia. The main Auschwitz I camp was further south in the town of Oświęcim.

The operation was owned by the Dusseldorf based company Rheinmetall Borsig AG company, who were part of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring. The prisoners in the Laurahütte subcamp were mainly Jews from the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Hungary.

History

The camp opened in early April 1944 when a transport of about 200 prisoners, mostly Jews from France and Holland, arrived in Siemianowice. More prisoners followed over the subsequent months, and the population rose steadily to 550 prisoners in the summer and 937 in the days before evacuation.

Structure

The prisoners were housed inside the factory, where three-tier bunks were provided. The subcamp also included a kitchen barracks, an infirmary, and a brick storehouse. A three-meter-high wall topped with barbed wire surrounded the camp, with guard towers at the corners. SS-Oberscharführer Walter Quakernack, who had only a few SS men under his command, was the director. The actual guards were coastal artillery soldiers commanded by Obermat Adamczyk. The prisoners manufactured worked 12-hour shifts.

Dissolution

On 23 January 1945, all the prisoners were loaded onto a train and taken to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. On the war the train stopped in the forest at Rzędówka and the bodies of other prisoners were taken on board. The journey took five days, and 134 prisoners died en route. Some prisoners remained in Mauthausen and its subcamps, while others were moved to Hannover-Linden a sub camp of Neuengamme concentration camp.

Kurt Klapphotlz had already been moved out of the camp when it was evacuated but Simon Lecker was among those who endure the journey to Mauthausen.

Aftermath

In 1948, the steel plant was renamed Huta Jedność. The company went into liquidation in the early 20th century. Today, there is a memorial at the site.