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After 1945, Soviet forces made Nazi death camps part of the GULAG, Moscow portal says

Soviet secret order to convert German concentration camps to GULAG camps. Nazi concentration camps were used in this quality for five more years. Of them, some of the most infamous were Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen (special camps #2 and #7 in the Soviet terminology). Starting with 1948, the former Nazi concentration camps were transferred to GULAG, and destroyed only in the 1950s. The Soviets even saved their equipment and tools: the new owners moved it to the USSR and used for their intended purpose inside Soviet domestic concentration camps within the GULAG. This document states that the USSR took wooden barracks, kitchen, laundry, and medical equipment, as well as some so-called "production mechanisms." What was hidden under that menacing term the document did not explain. (Image: ГА РФ. Ф. 9414. ОП. 1С. Д. 360. Л. 222)
Soviet secret order to convert German concentration camps to GULAG camps. Nazi concentration camps were used in this quality for five more years. Of them, some of the most infamous were Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen (special camps #2 and #7 in the Soviet terminology). Starting with 1948, the former Nazi concentration camps were transferred to GULAG, and destroyed only in the 1950s. The Soviets even saved their equipment and tools: the new owners moved it to the USSR and used for their intended purpose inside Soviet domestic concentration camps within the GULAG. This document states that the USSR took wooden barracks, kitchen, laundry, and medical equipment, as well as some so-called “production mechanisms.” What was hidden under that menacing term the document did not explain. (Image: ГА РФ. Ф. 9414. ОП. 1С. Д. 360. Л. 222)
Edited by: A. N.

The Putin regime denounces every suggestion that Stalin’s dictatorship was in any way like Hitler’s. It has even made such comparisons a criminal offense. That makes the appearance of an article on a Moscow portal about how the Soviets transformed Nazi death camps into parts of the GULAG all the more striking.

[quote]“Concentration camps,” the Russian-7 portal says, “from the point of view of economics are valuable objects in which large sums were invested. The USSR having won the war decided to use them in its own interests,” carrying off their property for use in the GULAG and imprisoning Germans in them.[/quote]

Managing the enormous number of German POWs was “a serious problem,” the portal says; and so it was decided to put the prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps that had been emptied out. Among them, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, were rechristened Special Camp No. 2 and Special Camp No. 7, in 1948.

These camps were operated until 1950, and there is evidence, Russian-7 says, that “7,000 German prisoners” died in the first of these alone during that period. The camps’ equipment was moved to the Soviet Union for continued use within its GULAG system.

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Edited by: A. N.
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