Establishment Date Controversy
The earliest official mention of the Warsaw concentration camp (KZ Warschau) is from June 19, 1943, which referred to the concentration camp in the ruins of the former Warsaw Ghetto. However, the term KZ Warschau was also used to describe similar camps that were discovered at an earlier date. Nevertheless, it is estimated that the camp was in operation from the autumn of 1942 until the Warsaw Uprising. The first commandant of the camp was SS-Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Goecke, the former commandant of Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. In addition to its genocidal purposes, the camp was designed to provide a work force to clean up the leveled ruins of the former Warsaw Ghetto and ultimately turn this area into a planned recreational park for the SS.
The exact date of the camp's creation remains unknown. Some historians have suggested that it was created following the orders of SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl on June 11, 1943. However, others, among them historian and Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) judge Maria Trzcińska, claimed that the camp has been already operational prior to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943. The factual basis for this aforementioned claim is that on October 9, 1942, the SS head Heinrich Himmler issued an order in which he stated, regarding the population of the Warsaw Ghetto: "I've issued orders and requested that all the so-called arms factories workers working only as tailors, furriers or bootmakers be grouped in the nearest concentration camps, that is in Warsaw and in Lublin."
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