Strafkompanie

Strafkompanie ("Punitive Unit") is the German word for the penal work division in the Nazi concentration camps.

These penal divisions were yet another hardship that could be forced on the already exhausted inmates of the camps.

The prisoners of the Strafkompanie were given hard work, e.g., in the quarries, where most "workers" died.

In the SK they worked longer hours than other inmates, had shorter breaks, less food, more brutal treatment, and they lived isolated in separate barracks.

The Strafkompanie consisted of all kinds of prisoners: criminals, Jews, Soviet soldiers, political prisoners, priests, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, Roma Gypsies.