The concentration camp Gross-Rosen was established in August 1940 as a subcamp of the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. Its prisoners were destined for hard work in the local granite quarry.
On 1st May 1941 Arbeitslager Gross-Rosen gained the status of self-reliant concentration camp. In the first two years of its existence KL Gross-Rosen was a small camp, mainly supplying service of the quarry. Exhausting 12-hour work in the quarry, starving rations of food, lack of proper medical care, incessant maltreat and terrorization of prisoners both by SS crew and functionary prisoners caused high mortality rate and KL Gross-Rosen was reckoned as one of the hardest concentrations camps.
The most numerous national groups among KL Gross- Rosen’s prisoners were Jews (citizens of different European countries), Poles, and inhabitants of the former Soviet Union. Estimated number of victims of Gross- Rosen camp is 40 000 people.
One of the most tragic periods of this camp’s history was the evacuation. During the transports, some of which lasted even several weeks, died many thousands of prisoners.
Polish students visited a little museum of former German air-raid shelter in Dzierżoniów. During WW2 Dzierżoniów was called Reichenbach and it was a German town. It was not to surrender till the end of the war and it surrendered only on 8th May 1945 when the Soviet Army took over the town.
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