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May 10, 1945:

"SS General Richard Glücks, head of the Reich concentration camp inspectorate, is found dead at the Flensburg naval hospital.
The cause of death--suicide or murder--is unclear.
"German forces in Czechoslovakia surrender.
"Norwegian traitor Vidkun Quisling is arrested; See October 24, 1945."

"As Allied forces fought their way closer to concentration camps, German troops and collaborators, SS men assigned to the 'care' of Jews and other prisoners were taken captive in ever-increasing numbers.
The men seen here were photographed after they fell into Allied hands.
Here is Leonhard Eichberger, a death-march SS guard."

"Michael Redwitz, SS guard."

"Konrad Belsh, death-march SS guard."

"Jean Scheibel, a guard, possibly not with the SS."

"Camp guards often executed inmates as the Allied armies approached.
Here, commandant Eichelsdörfer of the Kaufering III concentration camp at Landsberg, Germany, is forced by American liberators to stand amidst the emaciated corpses of hundreds of the camp's victims, many of whom had been shot as the Americans drew near.
Kaufering III was a subcamp of Dachau."

"Camp survivors often sought revenge against their former captors, especially those who had been particularly vicious.
Here, at the camp at Gusen, Austria, a small crowd of liberated prisoners and American soldiers scrutinizes the dead body of a camp guard, who was killed by some of his former charges."

Victims and Statistics

"On June 28, 1941, German forces conquered the Belorussian city of Minsk.
The Germans had killed thousands of its 80,000 ghettoized Jews by mid-autumn, but Masha Bruskina, a 17-year-old girl, was among the Jews who resisted.
The Germans caught her, and she was hanged on October 26.
Starvation, forced labor, shooting, gassing...Nazi Germany destroyed European Jews and millions of non-Jews in many ways, but each person perished one by one.

"Individual deaths multiplied into mind-boggling statistics.
One leading Holocaust scholar, Raul Hilberg, estimates that 5.1 million Jews perished in the Holocaust.
Most scholars now believe that the Jewish death total approached six million.
Israel Gutman and Robert Rozett, for example, put Jewish losses between 5,596,000 and 5,860,000.
German scholar Wolfgang Benz lists the figure at 6.1 million.
The estimates of deaths vary widely for several reasons: the years and geographical boundaries used to determine prewar census data, the margins of error in death reports from German and Jewish sources, the difficulties of comparing prewar and postwar populations, and the fact that the Germans and their collaborators did not record the death of every victim.

"Every reliable judgment finds that nearly two-thirds of the European Jews--and one-third of the Jews in the world--were killed in the Holocaust.
Hitler intended to obliterate all Jewish life--root and branch.
The staggering number of those who indeed met their deaths demonstrates how close he came."

http://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/StutthofEng.html

Stutthof - Sztutowo (Poland)

Location: Poland, near Gdansk
Established on: 1939
Liberation: May 10th, 1945, by the Russian Army.
Estimated number of victims: 85,000
Sub-camps: 40 sub-camps and external kommandos (click here for a list of those sub-camps)
Camps annexes: 40 camps annexes et kommandos extérieurs (cliquez ici pour la liste de ces camps annexes)

Stutthof is 34 km from Danzig and was the first concentration camp created by the Nazis outside of the country of Germany (September 2nd. 1939). It is also the last camp liberated by the Allies (May 10th 1945). The first prisoners arrived in the camp on September 2nd. 1939: 250 Polish citizens and P.O.W. Two weeks later, on September 15th 1939, there were 6,000 prisoners in the camp: prisoners of war, scientists, etc,... Most of them were executed by the SS.

The camp was composed of 8 barracks for the inmates and a huge building (the “kommandantur”) for the SS. It was called “the old camp”. In 1942, the SS began to build a “new” camp: 30 barracks were added. In 1943, the Nazis added a crematory and a gas chamber. The gas chamber had a maximum capacity of 150 people at one time. When the SS had too many people to execute, they also used wagons as gas chambers. Between September 2nd 1939 and May 10th 1945, 127,000 prisoners were registered upon their arrival in the camp. The lowest estimation of the number of victims is 85,000. The real number is certainly much higher: the inmates who were selected for immediate execution at their arrival were not registered.

The commander of the camp was SS officer Max Pauli. After the war, Max Pauli was tried by an Allied tribunal and sentenced to death. The security officer of the camp was SS Captain Werner Hoppe. Despite the evidence of his participation in hundreds of murders,the court sentenced Werner Hoppe to nine years in prison. These are the names of other SS murderers: 1st SS Lieutenant Schwarz, SS Lieutenant Dittmann, 1st SS Lieutenant and MD Otto, 1st Lieutenant Oerli, SS Lieutenants Mathesius and Neubauer.

One of the worst crimes committed by the Nazies has been in Stutthof. Professor Rudolf Spanner, an SS officer and “scientist”, was owner of a small soap factory located in Danzig. In 1940, he invented a process to produce soap from human fat. This “product” was called R.J.S. - “Reines Judische Fett” - which means “Pure Jewish Fat”.

Hundreds of inmates were executed for the “production” of soap. Rudolf Spanner was very proud of his invention. Following testimonies of some survivors, he used to spend hours and hours just to admire his “invention”. At the liberation, the Allies discovered chambers full of corpses used for the production of soap. After the war, Rudolf Spanner was not arrested and continued his “researchs”...