Klooga concentration camp

Many prisoners were sent west by sea to the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig and to Freiburg in Schlesien, present day Świebodzice, then in Germany, now Poland.

From 19–22 September 1944, with the perimeter of the camp guarded by 60–70 Estonian recruits to the 20th SS Division, a German task force began systematically slaughtering the remaining prisoners in a nearby forest.

[2] According to Ruth Bettina Birn the execution of 2,000 prisoners was conducted by Estonian soldiers of 20th SS Division and presumably Schutzmannschaft Battalion under German command.

The liberation forces found numerous pyres of stacked corpses left unburned by the camp's guards when they fled.

SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Aumeier, a German, who was Lagerkommandant (camp commander) for all Estonia, as well as having worked at Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald, was subsequently arrested and put on trial for crimes against humanity.

[5]In July 2005, President of Estonia Arnold Rüütel, Israeli Ambassador Shemi Zur, and Holocaust survivors took part in an unveiling ceremony for the gray marble memorial stone, inscribed with following words: "Between 1941 and 1944, the German occupying powers established 20 labour and concentration camps in Estonia.

[6] Later in the year Israeli President Moshe Katsav laid a wreath at the site of the camp deep in the Estonian forest while on a diplomatic tour of the Baltic countries.