Description
WWII/Holocaust era camps > Strobitz Cottbus (Germany): 22 Dec 1944 postmarked postal card with 21 Dec. dated letter in Polish (#55 in this Grabowska-Woyciechowski correspondence), sent from KRAKOW (German occupied Poland) to prisoner with Polish name at labor camp #21, ARBEITS LAGER R. RECKMAN in STROBITZ COTTBUS (Germany); franked 12pf using Generalgouvernement Hitler head stamp & tied by local machine cancel; front-stamped carmine handstamp of the camp with censor's signature endorsement + 29 Dec. docketed arrival. The circled number "2" is the post code for the Brandenburg district in which the city is located.
The referenced labor camp belonged to the private company of Richard Reckman Eisenbahnbau-Bahnbedarf-Tiefbau, also known as "Gleisbau Reckman", a railway and civil engineering company of Cottbus located in the quarter of Strobitz. In the spring of 1944 this company laid track #3 at the ramp of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and built roads and tracks for the Waffen-SS around Jamlitz.
In this era the company's labor camp was part of the Lieberose concentration camp in the Cottbus region, and in the course of 1944, the concentration camp became the largest concentration camp for prisoners persecuted as Jews in the territory of the German Reich apart from the Auschwitz camp network, though ironically in this period the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp served the Lieberose camp as a source of labor on the one hand, while on the other it served to exterminate those inmates who were no longer able to work. Of an estimated 6-10,000 Jewish prisoners there fewer than 400 survived. At its peak occupance in late autumn 1944 the Lieberose concentration camp numbered around 4350 prisoners in 18 barracks. Of historical note the head of "Office Group C" (construction) in the WVHA (the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office) at the camp was SS General Dr. Hans Kammler who also oversaw the Vengeance Weapons (V-Weapons) program.
