September 2nd, 1939. Just 24 hours after the gunfire of the invasion of Poland rang out, while the world had not yet recovered from the shock of war, a brutal decision was stamped into effect in the shadows. There was no loud announcement, no public decree, only the grinding operation of a repression apparatus that had been prepared months in advance.

In the village of Stuttoo, 34 km east of Gdinesk, the first strands of barbed wire were pulled tight, driven straight into the peaceful space of the Baltic coast. Guard towers went up in haste. Blacklists were opened. The Stutoff Camp officially began operations. This was a deadly milestone. The first Nazi concentration camp established outside Germany’s pre-war borders.

 Clear proof that Nazi violence always moved ahead of the army itself. The first people to pass through the camp gates did not wear uniforms. They were teachers, lawyers, priests, and journalists. The intellectual core of the Polish nation. The Nazis did not detain them for questioning. They detained them to eliminate them.

 Stutoff was built with a cold objective to sever the leadership class of a nation. No front lines were required. only the removal of the ability to speak, write, and think. While the rest of the world still viewed this war as a conventional military conflict, Stuto had already revealed itself as a work site for restructuring society through blood.

 Here, human beings were no longer lives, but material in an experiment of systematic violence, and the nightmare had only just begun. The evolution of a meat grinder. Stutoff was not created as an improvised response to war. It was the product of a plan conceived in advance. From 1939 to 1941, the camp directly served operation intelligion, a campaign aimed at eliminating the Polish intelligencia immediately after the occupation began.

The objective was not numbers, but social function. The first prisoners sent to Stutoff were priests, [music] teachers, judges, veterans, and local officials. They did not represent a military threat, but the capacity to organize, lead, and sustain communal identity. Arrests were selective and based on prepared lists.

 When these individuals disappeared, Polish society was paralyzed without the need for large-scale repression campaigns. In this early phase, [music] Stutoff remained a detention camp of limited scale. Facilities were rudimentary, [music] but the function was already clear. The camp operated as a tool of intellectual purification, where profession and social role became criteria determining fate.

 This was when Stutoff learned how to classify people through files, personal records, and positions within the community. From 1942 onward, the role of the camp changed. Fundamentally, Stutoff was integrated into the SS economic system and placed under the authority of the WVHA. From that point forward, the camp no longer merely held people.

 It became a hub for extracting and distributing forced labor for the war economy. A network of more than 100 sub camps was rapidly established across the Baltic coast and Pomerania. Prisoners were transferred constantly according to production demands rather than physical condition. Major industrial corporations directly used this [music] labor force.

Fauler Wolf received prisoners for aircraft production lines while Shika Verka [music] exploited human labor in shipyards and heavy engineering workshops. At this stage, Stutoff functioned as a manpower transit center [music] where people were measured by endurance and the length of time they could still be used.

By 1943 and 1944, the course of the war forced the camp to assume a new function. As the Red Army advanced rapidly from the east and extermination centers in Poland faced the threat of liberation, Stutoff became a final receiving point in the dismantling of remaining areas. Jewish transports from shrinking territories were sent there at an accelerating pace.

During this period, Stutoff operated as a supplementary link in Operation Reinhard, not by initiating the campaign, but by receiving and processing what remained as the military encirclement tightened. The camp did not need to change its nature to fulfill this role. What had already been built, classification, transfer, and the treatment of human beings as administrative units was simply accelerated and expanded.

 Throughout its development, Stutoff underwent a continuous process of evolution. It began as a tool for eliminating intellectuals, then became a center for labor exploitation [music] and finally a receiving point within the extermination network. Each phase matched the needs of the system at that moment. There was no dramatic turning point, only a steady expansion of function.

It was precisely this evolution that made Stutoff particularly dangerous. It did not need to break order to produce destruction. It operated within order through files, plans, and quotas. And in that process, human beings were gradually crushed as an inevitable consequence of the machine technology of killing.

 When death became a procedure, when Stutoff entered its phase of full operation, death was no longer a random consequence of detention conditions. It became part of the camp’s management procedure, not spontaneous, [music] not chaotic. Each method had a specific purpose, a specific target, and a specific context of use. At first, elimination was carried out through direct methods that were inexpensive and easy to conceal.

 Phenol injections were used as a form of medical treatment in disguise. Victims were taken into the infirmary under the pretense of care. The chemical was injected directly into the heart. The process was brief. Records listed the cause of death as illness or exhaustion. This method allowed the camp to remove individuals without causing major disruption.

 Alongside this were killing methods that required no fixed facilities. Drowning in muddy marshland was used, particularly targeting women. The area surrounding the camp contained many shallow waters and muddy terrain that was difficult to access. Victims were pushed down and held until they stopped moving. No gunfire, no clear traces.

 The bodies were quickly concealed by the environment. In addition, beating victims to death was the most common method because it required no concealment. Clubs, rifle butts, and shovels were used in areas out of sight or directly within the campyard. These deaths were often recorded as the result of disciplinary violations or work accidents.

 Violence became a familiar part of daily routine, frequent enough to instill fear, but not unusual enough to attract attention from outside. From June 1944, Stutoff entered a different phase. Death was industrialized. Gas chambers using Cyclone B officially began operating. In a short period of time, approximately 4,000 people were killed in this way, most of them women and children.

 The process was standardized. Assembly, escort, processing, cleanup, no explanation required, no dialogue necessary to handle the aftermath. The crerematoria were operated continuously. Capacity was pushed [music] to the maximum. Black smoke rose day after day. The smell of burning spread across the Baltic region.

 Nearby residents did not need to see inside the camp to know what was happening. The surrounding space itself became a witness. Beyond taking lives, Stutoff also implemented deliberate psychological violence. Public hangings were staged inside the camp in front of hundreds of prisoners. The goal was not only to punish an individual, but to break collective will.

In many cases, prisoners were forced to assist in executions by holding ladders, pulling ropes, and clearing the site afterward. This was not done to save manpower, but to compel them to become part of the process. Humanity was eroded not through physical pain alone, but through forced complicity.

 At Stutoff, death did not occur in a single form. It was adjusted according to circumstances, targets, and [music] timing. When silence was needed, the camp used injections. When intimidation was needed, it used public violence. When speed was required, it used industrial procedures. What is terrifying is not the number of methods, but the flexibility of the system.

 Stoof was not loyal to one way of killing. It was loyal to efficiency. And when efficiency became the criterion, death was reduced to a step in an operational chain. The female monsters of Stutoff at Stutoff. The presence of the Alferinan created a constant underlying fear throughout the camp’s [music] operation. These female guards were one of the elements that made the camp particularly cold.

 These women did not appear as exceptions. They were selected, trained, and assigned according to the formal structure of the SS system. Their role was not logistical support or distant supervision. They directly participated in maintaining discipline, administering punishment, and selecting [music] victims. In many cases, the level of violence they exercised matched or even exceeded that of their male counterparts, not because of emotional outbursts, but because of absolute compliance with the role assigned to them.

What made Stutoff terrifying was not that these women were abnormal. On the contrary, they were entirely ordinary before entering the camp. Jenny Wonder Bachmann was very young when she was assigned to Stutoff. Attractive appearance, confident demeanor. In the memories of witnesses, she was known by the nickname the beautiful ghost.

 Her face often appeared during selection rounds. Her laughter was quiet, her gestures decisive. Life and death decisions were made as part of a routine shift. No explanation required, no hesitation. Gerder Steinhoff came from a more modest background. Before the war, she was a baker.

 No criminal record, no obvious signs of extremism. At Stutoff, Steinhoff was remembered for her initiative in punishment. Not only carrying out orders, but actively seeking opportunities to exercise power. Violence for her was no longer a duty. It became a habit. Wonder Claf had previously been a worker in a jam factory, a repetitive, monotonous job with no authority.

 When she put on the uniform of a guard, Claf’s role changed completely. In postwar testimony, she was repeatedly mentioned as someone who directly participated in physical punishment with a cold and emotionless attitude. Movements were efficient, rhythm steady, no different from a task carried out according to procedure.

 There were many other cases as well. These three women do not represent individual deviations. They represent a model. The common feature was age. Most female guards at Stutoff were between 22 and 23 years old when they began their duties. Young, healthy, no experience of the battlefield, no trauma from the front. They entered the camp with a clearly defined role and a system already in place for them to integrate into.

Their brutality cannot be separated from that context. It did not originate from personal hatred. It was shaped by the environment, by the normalization, reward and daily repetition of violence. When behavior was legalized, moral boundaries quickly disappeared. At Stutoff, these women were not forced to become perpetrators.

 They were granted the authority to do so and they learned to use that authority effectively. What makes the image of the Alfahharin and haunting [music] is not outward aggression but calmness, young faces, neatly pressed uniforms, hands performing the assigned tasks. No anger required, no justification needed. Stutoff did not create monsters in the conventional sense.

 [music] It created personnel who fit the system. And in such a system, fitness is the most frightening thing of all. The blood soaked final chapter, the death march. In January 1945, as the Red Army advanced rapidly from the east, Stutoff entered its final phase. There was no administrative plan to dismantle the camp. There was only one decision.

Evacuate at all costs. Approximately 56,000 prisoners were forced to leave the camp under brutal winter conditions. They were driven to march dozens of kilometers in sub-zero temperatures with insufficient food, no proper footwear, and no shelter. This movement was not intended to save lives.

 Its purpose was to erase evidence before the camp fell into Red Army hands. Long columns of people stretched across the white snow. Thin uniforms offered no protection against the cold. Many survived by eating snow. Anyone who collapsed or fell behind was shot on the spot. No questioning. No hesitation. The march became a white nightmare [music] where human life was consumed step by step.

 Along both land and sea routes, the catastrophe expanded further. More than 25,000 people did not survive the evacuation. Some prisoner groups were forced onto barges in the Baltic Sea. Many of these vessels were sunk, dragging thousands down into the freezing water. There were no rescue efforts. There were no complete records, only rising numbers in postwar statistics.

On May 8th, 1945, the Red Army entered Stutoff. The camp was no longer operating. What remained were unburied bodies and survivors in a state of extreme exhaustion. The system was gone. The orders had ended. Only the traces of a machine that had just stopped remained. The evacuation of January 1945 was not an organizational failure.

 It was the inevitable result of how Stuto had functioned for [music] years. When human beings were viewed only as objects to be processed, the system continued to consume them even as it collapsed until the very last moment. delayed justice and the end. After the war, Stutoff was not sealed away in silence.

 In 1946, the Polish judicial system opened the Gdanksk trials, bringing those who had directly operated the camp before the courts. This was not a symbolic process. 11 defendants were sentenced to death by hanging, including female guards who had spread terror at Stutoff. Jenny Wer Bachmann, Gerder [music] Steinhoff, and Wander Claf. The sentences were not carried out behind closed doors.

 The executions took place publicly [music] at Biscupia Gorka before thousands of civilians. This was not an act of revenge. It was a declaration by postwar society. What had been carried out publicly through power would be judged publicly through law. Yet justice did not end there. Many cases were delayed for decades due [music] to the Cold War, legal limitations, and the evasion of perpetrators.

 Only in the 21st century were the final cases brought to light. In 2020, Bruno Day was convicted at the age of 93 for his role as an accessory in 5,230 killings at Stutoff. The verdict was not based on direct acts, but on his contribution to maintaining the system. [music] The final case belonged to Fchner.

 In 2021, at the age of 96, [music] she attempted to flee just before her trial. The escape failed. The court determined that she was an accessory to 10,55 murders through the handling of administrative documents. No weapon was required, only stamps, paperwork, and obedience. In January 2025, [music] Fchner died. With her death, the final chapter of post-war justice related to Stutoff formally closed.

 No defendants remained alive to stand trial. But the records did not disappear. As a historian, I believe the most important lesson of Stutoff does not lie in the scale of violence, [music] but in how that violence was organized. This is not a story of people who lost control. It is a story of individuals performing their functions, following procedures, [music] and fulfilling assigned roles.

Stuto shows that evil does not require open fanaticism to exist. It requires obedience, indifference, and the belief that responsibility always belongs to someone else. When actions are divided into anonymous tasks, conscience is divided with them. For future generations, what matters most is not memorizing every [music] number or every name.

 What matters more is recognizing the mechanisms early. When people are [music] reduced to files, when administrative language obscures human consequences, when efficiency is valued above dignity, history does not repeat itself in the same form. But the way it operates does. Stoff reminds us that the boundary between a normal society and one built on organized violence is thinner than we often assume. Justice may arrive late.

Sometimes [music] it comes when the perpetrators are old, frail, and near the end of life. But pursuing justice, even late, carries a fundamental meaning. It does not allow the past to be closed through forgetting. And that is the most enduring responsibility of history.