- Stutthof was the first concentration camp which was build outside of the Nazi Germany borders. The preparations for the camp began already in the mid-August 1939, that being a time when Nazi Germany was not in war and still the concentration camp was build outside of it's borders. The area where the construction began, was located in the administrative area of the Free City of Danzig. 

- The history of the Free City of Danzig is an complex one, born after the First World War, it was supposed to be governed by Germans and by Poles, but in reality the Polish minority were suppressed in the city and it was ruled by the ethnic Germans. The Nazis took the power in the city in 1933. The German authorities in the city were already in 1936 compiling list of the Jews living in the city.

- The war began on 1st of September 1939 and on 2nd of September the first prisoners arrived to the concentration camp of Stutthof. The first prisoners were Polish citizen from the area of the Free City of Danzig. Within few weeks the number of prisoners in the camp rose to 6 000. Not until 1942 other nationalities started to arrive to the camp.

- Even when the first prisoners were Jews, the Stutthof camp served mostly to imprison and exterminate the Polish intelligentsia and people who were resisting the German occupation. At first the Stutthof camp was not recognized as an official state concentration camp and it remained under the authority of the local SS high command. In 1942 this however changed and Stutthof was included into the list of the state concentration camps and became under the authority of the Concentration Camps Inspectorate. What this meant was that now the camp was receiving prisoners from all over the occupied Europe. In 1944, Stutthof was included into the so-called "Final Solution" program and in this way, became one of the mass extermination camps.

- In total, some 110 000 people were kept in KL Stutthof, which had grown from a mere 12 hectare camp planned for 3 500 people, to a 120 hectares which could held 57 000 people inside of it's barbed wire fences. Additionally some 39 sub-camps belonged to the Stutthof camp. From the 110 000 people who passed the gates of the camp, some 65 000 died as a result of the cruel conditions and as a result of other methods of exterminating the prisoners. The 110 000 people compromised 25 nationalities, including people from all over the Europe, from Finland to Italy, from Italy to Spain and from Spain to White Russia people found themselves inside the Stutthof camp.

- Stutthof was among the last concentration camps to be freed by the advancing Allied troops. The Death Marches, evacuations of the prisoners deeper into the Third Reich began on late January 1945. At that time the advancing Russian troops were already approaching Elbing and Marienburg, only 40 to 50 kilometers from Stutthof camp. The evacuation itself was poorly planned and executed and as a result many prisoners died while marching in the freezing weather. Some of the prisoners even after marching for weeks, found themselves back in Stutthof. However the main Russian offensive was aimed towards Berlin and as a result, units from Wehrmacht were still holding the area of Stutthof on 8th of May 1945, the day on which the German Armed Forces surrendered. On 9th of May the last German troops had abandoned the camp area. Finally the camp was liberated by the men from the 3rd Battalion of the 717th Regiment of the Colonel Semyon Tsyplenkov's division which belonged to the 48th Army of the III Belorussian Front. The 3rd Battalion was commanded by Lieutenant Sasha Yegorov. After the camp was liberated by the Red Army, investigations of the crimes committed in the camp begun immediately.

- Max Pauly the first commandant of Stutthof was brought to trial by the British in the Neuengamme trial from March to May 1946. He received a death sentence for the crimes committed in that camp. The sentence was carried out on 8th of October 1946. Paul - Werner Hoppe who was the second commandant of Stutthof faced a trial in the First Trial of Stutthof from April to May 1946. He was sentenced to a 9 years of imprisonment. He was released 18 months earlier. In total, some hundred SS-men from the camp and six female supervisors were sentenced into various sentences in the trials for crimes commited in Stutthof.

- During the over 56 months of the camps existence, tens of thousands of victims and stories about suffering...you cannot hide behind your camera here.

- The place does not need any empty words.