Evacuation and Liberation
When the Soviet army began its advance through Nazi-occupied Estonia in September 1944, the SS started to evacuate the 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 September 19 to 22, 1944, with the perimeter of the camp guarded by 60-70 Estonian guards and SS recruits of the 20th SS Division, a German task force began systematically slaughtering the remaining prisoners in a nearby forest. According to Soviet historiography, approximately 2,000 were shot, then their bodies were stacked onto wooden pyres and burned. Estonian Police Battalion 287 tried to defend prisoners and had a clash with the German unit.
On September 22, 1944, when Soviet troops reached the Klooga camp, only 85 of the 2,400 prisoners remaining post-evacuation had managed to survive by hiding inside the camp or escaping into the surrounding forests. 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 served at Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald, was subsequently arrested and put on trial for crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to death in Kraków, Poland, and executed on December 22, 1947.
Read more about this topic: Klooga Concentration Camp
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