Neustadt

Members of the Boys were slave labourers in the Neustadt 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. Blechhammer was the second largest of the Auschwitz subcamps under the command of Auschwitz III-Monowitz.

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

The camp was in modern-day in Prudnik near Nysa, then known by its German name of Neustadt.

History

It was founded in late September 1944 when about 400 women prisoners were brought from Auschwitz to work in the Schlesische Feinweberei AG textile mill. The women, mostly Jews from Hungary, worked on the spinning machines in the mill.

SS-Oberscharführer Bernhard Becker was the director and had 20 SS men at his disposal.

Dissolution

In January 1945, the prisoners were evacuated on a death march to Gross-Rosen concentration camp. The women where then taken by death train to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The textile mill is still in use today.