# Malchow concentration camp

Part of a series on :
The Holocaust :
Jews on selection ramp at Auschwitz, May 1944 :
Responsibility
Nazi Germany
People
Major perpetrators
Adolf Hitler
Heinrich Himmler
Joseph Goebbels
Heinrich Müller
Reinhard Heydrich
Adolf Eichmann
Odilo Globocnik
Theodor Eicke
Richard Glücks
Ernst Kaltenbrunner
Rudolf Höss
Christian Wirth
Organizations
Nazi Party
Gestapo
Schutzstaffel (SS)
Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV)
Einsatzgruppen
Sturmabteilung (SA)
Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT)
Wehrmacht
Trawniki men
Collaborators during World War II
Nazi ideologues :
Early policies
Racial policy
Nazi eugenics
Nuremberg Laws
Haavara Agreement
Madagascar Plan
Forced euthanasia :
Victims
Jews
Romani people (Gypsies)
Poles
Soviet POWs
Slavs in Eastern Europe
Homosexuals
People with disabilities :
Ghettos
Białystok
Budapest
Kaunas
Kraków
Łódź
Lublin
Lwów
Minsk
Riga
Warsaw
Vilnius
Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland
List of selected ghettos :
Camps
Nazi extermination camps
Auschwitz II-Birkenau
Bełżec
Chełmno
Jasenovac
Majdanek
Sajmište
Sobibor
Treblinka
Nazi concentration camps
Auschwitz I
Bergen-Belsen
Bogdanovka
Buchenwald
Dachau
Dora
Gonars (Italy)
Gross-Rosen
Herzogenbusch
Janowska
Kaiserwald
Mauthausen-Gusen
Neuengamme
Rab
Ravensbrück
Sachsenhausen
Salaspils
Stutthof
Transnistria (Romania)
Theresienstadt
Uckermark
Warsaw
Transit and collection camps
Belgium
Breendonk
Mechelen
France
Gurs
Drancy
Italy
Bolzano
Netherlands
Amersfoort
Westerbork
Slovakia
Sereď
Divisions
SS-Totenkopfverbände
Concentration Camps Inspectorate
Politische Abteilung
Sanitätswesen
Extermination methods
Gas van
Gas chamber
Extermination through labour
Einsatzgruppen
Human medical experimentation :
Atrocities
Pogroms
Kristallnacht
Bucharest
Dorohoi
Iași
Izieu
Szczuczyn
Jedwabne
Plungė
Radziłów pogrom
Kaunas
Lviv (Lvov)
Marseille
Tykocin
Vel' d'Hiv
Wąsosz
Einsatzgruppen
Babi Yar
Bydgoszcz
Częstochowa
Kamianets-Podilskyi
Ninth Fort
Odessa
Piaśnica
Ponary
Rumbula
Erntefest
"Final Solution"
Wannsee Conference
Mogilev Conference
Operation "Reinhard"
Holocaust trains
Extermination camps
End of World War II
Wola massacre
Death marches :
Resistance
Auschwitz Protocols
Vrba–Wetzler report
Czesław Mordowicz
Jerzy Tabeau
Rudolf Vrba
Alfréd Wetzler
Bricha
Jewish partisans
Sonderkommando photographs
Witold Pilecki
Resistance movement in Auschwitz
Związek Organizacji Wojskowej
Witold's Report
Ghetto uprisings
Warsaw
Białystok
Łachwa
Częstochowa :
International responseJoint Declaration by Members of the United Nations
Auschwitz bombing debate
MS St. Louis
Nuremberg trials
Denazification :
Aftermath
Bricha
Displaced persons
Survivors
Central Committee of the Liberated Jews
Reparations Agreement between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany :
Lists
Holocaust survivors
Deportations of French Jews to death camps
Survivors of Sobibor
Timeline of Treblinka extermination camp
Victims of Nazism
Rescuers of Jews
Memorials and museums :
Resources
Bibliography
List of books about Nazi Germany
The Destruction of the European Jews
Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos
Functionalism versus intentionalism :
Remembrance
Days of remembrance
Memorials and museums
Righteous Among the Nations :
vte :
Malchow was one of the numerous sub-camps of Nazi concentration camp: Ravensbrück, located in Germany, which is believed to be first opened in the winter of 1943. It was located at Malchow in Mecklenburg.

## Size of the Malchow camp

The Malchow camp system consisted of ten barracks on the terrain of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, which each had the capacity to house about 100 women. This meant that the Malchow camp was able to house 1,000 women prisoners. But, by 1945, the camp population had grown to 5,000 women. In the summer of 1943, the camp terrain finally became enclosed by a high fence. The ten barracks that were part of the camp, which was originally used for the construction workers of Ravensbrück, were enclosed by this fence.

## Conditions and life in the camp

Day-to-day conditions in the camp were almost unbearable. The prisoners were forced against their will to stand at attention for roll call, twice a day, like most regular concentration camp prisoners would have to do. The prisoners were guarded under the watchful eyes of the Schutzstaffel (SS) female guards and their German Shepherd Dogs. The SS were very cruel, but probably one of the harshest female guards at Malchow was the SS wardress Luise Danz. She was transferred from the main camp of Ravensbrück to Malchow and became commandant of the camp. She was captured in 1945 and put on trial for crimes against humanity at the Auschwitz trial in Kraków, Poland. She was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1947, but released due to general amnesty on 20 August 1957
In Malchow, the prisoners barely received anything to eat and were forced to kneel on sharp gravel stones. Body searches and beatings were routine at Malchow. Although residents of the town of Malchow were not allowed to have any contact with the prisoners of the camp, some townspeople provided the inmates with supplies of food. When they were discovered by the SS, they too were imprisoned in Malchow. Aside from starvation and exhaustion, many prisoners also died during many epidemics of diseases such as tuberculosis and typhus. Some types of forced labor that the prisoners had to do were producing mines, collecting nettles from children's playgrounds, cleaning the factory and town, building canals for the hospital of Malchow, and doing horticultural work.

## Malchow as a transit camp

During 1944, when most of the death marches were taking place across Europe, Malchow served as a transit camp for other prisoners arriving from other concentration camps. Eyewitness reports of many Malchow survivors say that a transport of about 1,000 concentration camp prisoners arrived at the camp on 24 November 1944. They had traveled on a death march for several weeks. There, at Malchow, they were brought to Wismar, and placed on barges that were sunk in the Baltic Sea or a nearby river.

## Liberation of Malchow

On 2 May 1945, Malchow, and the rest of Ravensbrück was liberated by the Red Army.

## Notable survivors

* Hanna Zemer, Slovak-born Israeli journalist
* Liliana Segre, Italian Senator
* Berta Berkovich Kohut, Hungarian-born Jewish inmate among the Dressmakers of Auschwitz, liberated from Malchow after arriving in the Auschwitz death march