Lamsdorf German detention camp in Lambinowice, Poland. Between 1945 and 1946, 6,488 prisoners died, according to Heinz Esser’s estimates, while other Polish studies estimate 1,500 deaths, 1,462 of whom are known by name. Then, in October 1945, a terrible fire broke out in one of the barracks. 581 German prisoners died. The Polish communist government, confronted with these stories in 1965, vehemently denied them. Trials were held in 1956, 1989, and 2000. Camp commander Czeslaw Geborsky was brought to trial in 2001, but the trial was annulled in 2005 due to the defendant’s poor health. He died the following year. While it’s true that repugnant instances of extreme sadism against Germans occurred in Polish labor camps, there’s no evidence that these were part of an official extermination policy. Equating the atrocities of Lamsdorf or Zgoda with the Holocaust is absurd, both in terms of quality and scale. Justice in the immediate postwar period was a highly subjective affair, rarely administered within a framework we would today call legal.
