Zgoda labour camp

After the NKVD transfer of the facility to MBP, Colonel Salomon Morel became the commander of the renamed Zgoda camp on 15 March 1945.

However, its infrastructure was left intact and after a few weeks the camp was restored by the NKVD, disinfected, and repopulated in February 1945 with Silesian prisoners from Kattowitz/Katowice, Bielitz/Bielsko and Neisse/Nysa.

[6] The decision to treat Silesian prisoners as Germans were motivated by prior dealings with the Volksdeutsche from the Nazi General Government, and did not take into account local conditions under which the population found themselves on DVL lists, often unwillingly.

[6] The policy was changed in 1946, and the criteria were no longer based on Volksdeutsche list number, but on specific actions of individual prisoners during the Nazi occupation of Poland.

This was a violation of a directive by the Security Department that forbade admitting prisoners along with children below 13 years old, who were ordered to be handed over to state care instead.

[6] The inmates were systematically maltreated and tortured by the guards including by Morel himself, who used to make pyramids of beaten prisoners (up to six layers high) causing suffocation.

[8] For his negligence and for allowing the epidemic to take its toll, as well as for the failure to uphold his duties as commander of the camp, Morel was punished by a three-day house arrest and temporary reduction of pay by 50%.

[8] He was also reprimanded by the prosecutor for failing to send back to prison detainees who had arrest warrants issued against them, and instead keeping them in the camp.

[8] The Zgoda camp was closed in November 1945 based on general order of the Minister of Security Stanisław Radkiewicz, issued 15 September 1945.

[6] For years, the history of the camp lived exclusively in the memories of its former prisoners and their families, carefully hidden for fear of repressions for revealing how the native people of Silesia were treated.