- Caption
- SS guard Anton SSchmeiler and other staff of the Lipa labor camp go on a winter hunting trip.
- Date
-
Circa 1940 - 1943
- Locale
- Havlickuv Brod, [Bohemia] Czechoslovakia
- Variant Locale
- Lipa
Linden bei Deutsch-Brod
Czech Republic
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Karel Vasicek
- Event History
- Lipa concentration camp or Umschulungslager Linden bei Deutsch-Brod was established in Havlickuv Brod in 1940 by the Zentralstelle fuer Juedische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration), an authority coordinating all activities associated with Jews after the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia had been constituted in March 1939. Lípa camp was designated by Nazis as a retraining facility. According to Nazi propaganda, Jews were to be retrained there for working in agriculture and then to move out to Palestine. The name of the camp referred to Zionistic ideals that Nazis tried to abuse to their benefit. Prior to Lípa, similar camps emerged in Austria, where they were also under administration of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration. One of the chief instigators of the establishment of the Nazi policy on Jews, Adolf Eichmann, was involved in the creation of the camps. The camp in Lípa operated in the 1940-1945 period, accommodating approximately
300 persons on average. Jews were employed on a farm expropriated from a Jewish Kraus
family. According to initial instructions, Jews were to be retrained there in a three-month
period and then they were to move out of the Protectorate. However, moving out became next
to impossible in 1940 due to the outbreak of World War II. While Jews only stayed for a
limited period of time in the camp, for 3 months, 6 months, but also longer, they were
transported from Lípa to other concentration camps and an overwhelming majority of
prisoners from Lípa did not survive World War II.
[source: email from Nathan Beyrak, Aug. 2012]