The mostly Jewish women prisoners dispatched from the main camp in Sztutowo worked as slave-labour for the German railways; loading cargo, clearing and repairing tracks, and digging ditches.

The direct order to set up the Bromberg-Ost subcamp was issued on 12 September 1944, by the superintendent of Stutthof concentration camp, Paul Werner Hoppe.

The following day the first 300 women prisoners were sent there under the control of seven female overseers belonging to Schutzstaffel (SS).

[1] From June 1944 until March 1945 the position of Oberaufseherin in Bromberg-Ost was held by Johanna Wisotzki,[2] while among guards reassigned to Bromberg-Ost from Stutthof were the notoriously cruel aufseherinnen Herta Bothe (died March 2000), Ewa Paradies (hanged 1946) and Gerda Steinhoff (hanged 1946) who took part in selections of prisoners to be sent to the gas chambers.

A group of thirteen ex-officials and overseers of the Bromberg-Ost and Stutthof concentration camps were tried and convicted of crimes against humanity at the Stutthof trials, the war crime tribunals held at Gdańsk, Poland, from April 25, 1946, to May 31, 1946.