Mieroszów
Labour camp Friedland · Mieroszów, Poland
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In the last minute

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In the spring of 1945, Felix Kolmer was transferred from Auschwitz to another large concentration camp, Gross-Rosen, and specifically to its branch which was in Friedland. This camp was only ten kilometres away from the former Czechoslovakian border. Felix Kolmer often contemplated escaping the camp since he was so close to home, but in the end he never acted on any of his plans. The prisoners in Friedland suffered from terrible hunger. “When people were dying of hunger while they were working, the commander of the camp set off with a few prisoners to the frontline which was forty kilometres away. There, they dug out the organs of dead horses, whose meat had already been eaten by German soldiers, and brought them to the camp. The intestines were cleaned and then cooked to obtain soup with at least some fat. And we would throw ourselves at the raw intestines, which were still filled with horse excrements and started to bite the fat from them. When hunger strikes, a person would do anything, to get something to eat.” On the night of May 9th 1945, the Soviet Red Army had bombarded the power station which also supplied the fence of the Friedland camp with electricity. When the prisoners noticed that the lights were out, about two hundred of them (including Felix Kolmer) took the courage and left the camp. They were running in the direction of Wałbrzych, where they met the Russian army. “On the next day, following our escape, the Red Army managed to break the frontline, so we had returned with the army to Friedland. We went to go for a look at our former camp and we found a large number of shot prisoners there. That way we realised that we had escaped in the last possible minute.”

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Prof. Ing. Felix Kolmer, DrSc.

Prof. Ing. Felix Kolmer, DrSc.

Prof. Ing. Felix Kolmer, DrSc. was born May 3rd, 1922 in Prague into a family of an Italian legionnaire and tradesman with electrotechnics. Influenced by his father's profession, he was interested in electrical technology since his childhood, and his future career path was clear to him - he would become an electrical engineer. After the father's death in 1932 he would usually spent summer holidays and Christmas with his uncle in Austria, where he watched the occupation of the country by Nazis. He was an eager and active scout. After the rise of Nazism, as a result of anti-Jewish repression he became a carpenter's apprentice. On November 24th, 1941 he went to Terezín as a member of the so-called Aufbaukommando, where he worked on the ghetto construction, and later he witnessed the horrors taking place in the Small Fortress and also became a member of the underground movement there. His mother died in Terezín in 1941. On October 16, 1944 he was transported to Auschwitz, where he also witnessed a smiling Dr Mengele sending people to gas chambers. By a lucky coincidence he managed to escape to the camp Friedland, where he survived till the end of the war. After that he was finally able to study and he eventually became a world-renowned expert in acoustics. He is one of the pioneers of this field in our country, he is active as a lecturer and he also authored and co-authored many works. He incessantly works on the process of recompensing the victims of Nazi terror. He has received several awards and decorations for this activity and for his academic achievements.

Mieroszów

Available in: English | Česky

The subsidiary labor camp of Gross-Rosen concentration camp – Friedland was situated about a kilometre north from today's Polish town Mieroszów, near to the road to Wałbrzych. The camp was established in September 1944 and there were 515 prisoners, mostly from the concentration camp Auschwitz. Most of them worked in the aircraft factory VDM, (Vereinigte Deutsche Metallwerke, Hamburg). Forty prisoners were employed in a carpentry workshop Fritz-Schuber. At the end of the war some of the prisoners were sent to dig a tunnel to nearby mountains. The camp Friedland was liberated by the Red Army on May 9, 1945. The locality of the labour camp is only tentative, based on the description of the information from the Gross-Rossen Museum. Nothing remained from the camp.

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In the last minute

In the last minute

Prof. Ing. Felix Kolmer, DrSc.
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