The ‘Security Police Youth Detention Camp for Poles in Litzmannstadt’, in German-annexed Poland, was established on 1 December 1942 to house Polish boys and girls aged between eight and 16. It was the only concentration camp for children and young people established for this purpose1During the Nazi era, anyone up to the age of 14 was considered a child, those aged 14 to 18 were considered youths, and those aged 18 to 21 were considered minors. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child defines all people up to the age of 18 as children. within the German sphere of influence. As with the concentration camps at Moringen and Uckermark in the ‘Altreich’, children and young people were to be detained there on the basis of ‘preventive fight against crime’.2Unless otherwise stated, this article is based on Person and Steinert, Przemysłowa concentration camp. According to what we know so far, there was a Romani boy, Pero T., among the children in the camp; he had been born in a German town in 1930 but held Croatian nationality.
The Camp
Oswald Pohl (1892–1951), head of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, had rejected earlier proposals to establish a camp under the authority of the Schutzstaffel (SS) within the city limits of Litzmannstadt [Polish: Łódź].3Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, GK 310/197t.22, Head of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, Oswald Pohl, to the Head of the Security Police and the SD, Reinhard Heydrich, 30 May 1942. Instead, responsibility was transferred to the Security Police, on whose behalf the local criminal police designated several blocks of streets within the Litzmannstadt ghetto as a separate camp section. The camp grounds were sealed off by a high wooden fence topped with barbed wire, as well as the wall of the Jewish cemetery, which stood three to 3.5 metres high. Watchtowers were added shortly afterwards.
The main entrance to the camp was on ul. Przemysłowa. It was guarded by around 50 guards working in two shifts. Although the ‘youth detention camp’ was officially opened on 1 December 1942, the first children and young people had already been in the camp section for some time beforehand. They were compelled to perform forced labour to build the camp, as were prisoners arriving later.
The camp commander was SS-Sturmbannführer and Head of the Litzmannstadt Criminal Police, Friedrich Camillo Ehrlich (1893–1974).4On Ehrlich, usually referred to in the literature as “Karl Ehrlich”, see https://muzeumdziecipolskich.pl/der-peiniger-der-polnischen-kinder-war-ein-stasi-agent and https://muzeumdziecipolskich.pl/f/komendant22.pdf [accessed: 10/03/2026]. His office decided on applications for admission, which could be submitted by all German police stations in the annexed Polish territories (Danzig-West Prussia, East Upper Silesia, parts of the Province of East Prussia, Warthegau). However, he had to submit these to the Reich Criminal Police Office (RKPA) in Berlin for approval.
Applications from other parts of the Reich were to be submitted to the ‘Reich Central Office for Combating Juvenile Delinquency’, to which the youth concentration camps were subordinate. This agency was established in 1939 and incorporated into the RKPA, and as such it formed part of the Reich Security Main Office from 1940 onwards.
The reasons given for taking children to the camp ranged from petty crime to organised theft or refusal to work. Sometimes it was enough for the local occupation authorities simply not to like a child, or for the child to be seen in public places, to be homeless, or to use public transport without a ticket. Others were deported because their parents were active in the resistance, were in prison, or had refused to sign the German People’s List.
Forced labour and military drill dominated the children’s daily routine. The hard labour involved in setting up and expanding the camp was dreaded; it often lasted ten to twelve hours a day, sometimes even in two shifts, accompanied by beatings from the guards. This included demolition work and road construction, during which children had to pull a heavy roller; this sometimes led to lifelong physical damage. The same applied to girls in the camp who had to work in the laundry, standing barefoot in cold water for hours on end. In addition, children and young people had to work in the camp’s workshops, where production was predominantly for the German military.
The exact number of children sent to the camp is unknown, because of gaps in the historical record. At any one time, there were around 1,000 children and young people in the camp. It is estimated that the total number of children and young people during the camp’s existence was around 1,500, but no more than 2,000. The number of children and young people who died in the camp is unknown, whether they were deliberately murdered or did not survive the extremely harsh living and working conditions and the physical and psychological violence.
Pero T.
Jakub Poznański (1890–1959), a Jewish inmate of the ghetto, wrote in his diary about the children and young people from the ‘youth detention camp’ who received medical care in the ghetto during a typhus epidemic in 1943/44. Among them were not only Polish children from the annexed territories, but also some French and Greek children, as well as children from other countries.5Poznański, Tagebuch, 189 ff. This is confirmed by Kozłowicz, “Das Arbeitsstraflager”, 55, without providing further details. Verena Meier (born 1988) drew attention to one of these non-German and non-Polish children in the ‘youth detention camp’.6The following is based on Meier, Kriminalpolizei und Völkermord, 350–65, and the Saxony-Anhalt State Archives, C 29 Appendix II, Z No. 524. This was Pero T. (also referred to as ‘Peter’ in the files), born in March 1930, who was living with his parents and siblings in Magdeburg, Germany, at the time of his arrest.
The family had fallen victim to the Nazi persecution policy targeting people stigmatised as ‘Gypsies’. In 1940/1941, they had been forced to live in a detention camp in Magdeburg, from which they were released because they held Croatian nationality. However, they had been registered by the Racial Hygiene Research Unit. The ‘expert opinion’ issued in January 1942 stated the following about Pero T.: ‘not of German blood (member of a Gypsy clan of Balkan origin)’.7Ibid., p. 5.
A deportation of the family under the ‘Auschwitz Decree’ was considered in early 1943 but rejected on account of their Croatian nationality. The parents, who had been banned from running their own business (animal shows), were forced to work in industrial plants and on road construction. The boy, who was not of school age, was therefore left to his own devices and repeatedly came to the attention of municipal and police authorities.
In May 1943, the Magdeburg Social Welfare and Youth Office first contacted the Reich Central Office for Combating Juvenile Delinquency, and, in collaboration with the Women’s Division of the Criminal Police, finally submitted a formal application in June 1943 for the 13-year-old to be placed in a camp. The grounds for the application stated, among other things: ‘To the general public, he [Pero T.] is gradually becoming a nuisance; to German youth, he is a danger, as they see the boy living his own life. It is also to be feared that he will become a criminal over time, even though he has not yet attracted attention in this regard.’8Ibid., p. 29, State Criminal Police Magdeburg, Application for the admission of a juvenile of Polish [sic] ethnicity to the Litzmannstadt Youth Detention Camp for Poles, 16 June 1943.
As Pero T. was considered ‘not of German blood’ and, moreover, a Croat, the only option was the ‘youth detention camp’ in Litzmannstadt. In the application for admission, the boy was described as a ‘youth of Polish ethnicity’. Following his arrest on 16 June 1943, he had to remain in police custody for a month until approval arrived from the Reich headquarters. On 16 July 1943, Pero T. was transferred to Litzmannstadt. It is not known whether he survived.
After 1945
On 19 January 1945, between 800 and 900 children and young people were liberated by soldiers of the Red Army. The camp buildings were almost completely demolished after the war. Initially, the Soviet military continued to use the site, and from 1960 onwards residential buildings for the Polish population were constructed. In 1977, the Federal Republic of Germany officially recognised the ‘Polish Youth Detention Camp’ as a concentration camp.
The eight-metre-high ‘Monument of the Broken Heart’, unveiled on 9 May 1971 in the adjacent Promieniści Park (now Park Szarych Szeregów), is regarded as a milestone in the culture of remembrance. The ‘Museum of Polish Children—Victims of Totalitarianism’ was formally established on 1 June 2021 and remains under development. In 2022, the museum acquired two buildings on the site of the former German concentration camp for Polish children. A permanent exhibition is to be set up in the former camp commandant’s office.
