The increasing emphasis on the use of concentration camp prisoners in the production of armaments led to the expansion of the Gross-Rosen Camp, which became the center of an industrial complex and the administrative hub of a vast network of at least 97 sub camps. As of Jan. 1, 1945 the Gross-Rosen complex held 76,728 prisoners. Nearly 26,000 of these were women, most of them Jews. This was one of the largest groupings of female prisoners in the entire concentration camp system.
Several hundred Jews had been prisoners in Gross-Rosen between 1940 and 1943. In late 1943, a mass influx of Jews swelled the prisoner population. Starting in October of that year, as many as 60,000 Jewish prisoners were deported to Gross-Rosen. Most of them came from Poland, and after 1944 they came from Hungary. Some came from southern and western Europe. A large number of these Jews came from 28 forced-labor camps which had been part of the original Organization Schmelt system in Silesia.
Other incoming prisoners were distributed within the Gross-Rosen sub camp system in order to be forced labor for the war effort. Many of these prisoners worked for companies such as Krupp, I.G. Farben, and Daimler Benz. Jewish prisoners didn't begin arriving in the main camp until the fall of 1944, with the evacuation of Auschwitz.
One of the better known sub camps of Gross-Rosen is Brunnlitz, a subcamp established in an empty former textile factory through the efforts of Oskar Schindler. After the closure of that camp at Krakow-Plaszow, 1,100 Jewish prisoners who had worked there for Schindler were transported for labor at the new camp at Brunnlitz, where they were able to survive the war.
As Soviet forces approached Gross-Rosen in Jan. 1945, the Germans began evacuation of the Gross-Rosen complex. The sub camps on the eastern side of the Oder River were dissolved. In early 1945 the main camp was evacuated, followed by additional sub camps. About 40,000 prisoners, half of them Jews, were forced on death marches, marching west on foot, under brutal conditions. Some of the survivors were then transported by rail to Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenburg, Mauthausen, Dora-Mittelbau, and Neuengamme - camps in the Third Reich. Many prisoners died in the evacuations due to starvation from the lack of food and water. SS guards killed prisoners who became too weak to continue. Soviet forces liberated the main Gross-Rosen camp on Feb. 13, 1945.
It is estimated that of the 120,000 prisoners who passed through the Gross-Rosen camp system, 40,000 of them died either in Gross-Rosen or during the evacuation of the camp.
