The Punishment: Groβ Rosen, Buchenwald, Natzweiler, Bisingen,and Dachau Concentration Camps

"Unternehmen Wuste" (Operation Desert)
A true hell hole to slave in  

Updated March 2023 This is a story has become close to me and needs to be told before time silences the evil for good. It is one of the untold thousands of similar stories of the oppressed Poles in WWII, salvaged from the ash heap of history. The story of  a you

 man, my uncle, Tadeusz Frackiewicz.

The extensive research I performed on the blog of my late Polish POW father, 

 "Zygmunt Frackiewicz - The Journey of a Polish POW1939-1945",  viewable at: rfrack.blogspot.com  provided simple clues. A birth date of February 23, 1923, 

birthplace of Warsaw, parents were Piotr and Aleksandra (Zarema) Frackiewicz. Oral

 family history stated he was "arrested"  by Germans in 1944. That was all that was

 known of this man, the Uncle I never knew. Using some of the same resources to discover evidence and documents in my Dad's blog: International Tracing Service (ITS), various Red Cross agencies and Concentration Camp researchers, I was able to find evidence of the last year of Tadeusz's life.

Tadeusz Frackiewicz would have been 14 when my dad entered the army and 16 when

dad was captured by Russians in 1939. During the ensuing 5 years of German occupation of Poland, surely this young man would have been a member of the Polish underground 

and resistance and was active in the Warsaw Uprising! In the 61 days between August 1 

and October 2, 1944 Warsaw was razed to the ground and that was the time frame of his “arrest” by the Nazis at age 21. His sentence was a “tour” of the 4 worst concentration camps in  Hitler's Nazi Germany.

The complexity of following his trail is  the fact concentration camps each had a number

of subcamps: Groβ Rosen had 102 sub-camps, Buchenwald had 44, Natzweiler had 63 and Dachau had 123. So even as the main camp was liberated, evacuations, deportations and transfers to keep the Nazi machine running though the satellite camps, and very desperate

as both the Allies and Red Army were advancing.  

The first record shows him at Groβ Rosen as inmate # 11945. This was the site of forced 

labor at a granite stone quarry. After several months there, there was a frantic evacuation 

of prisoners in January of 1945 due to the advance of the Red Army. Tadeusz was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp 425 km away and arrived on February 10,1945. His 

papers list him as a "Political Prisoner".  Groβ Rosen was liberated on February 13, 1945.  

He missed liberation by days.

At Buchenwald, he was assigned prisoner # 130719. Then again there was a hasty

 evacuation and transfer to another camp. 

This time he missed the April 11, 1945 liberation by 1 month.

The record shows transfer  to the Natzweiler concentration camp ( the only concentration camp on French soil) on March 12, 1945.  History shows the 1st French Army liberated Natzweiler on November 23, 1944, but the evacuated prisoners were rushed to support 

the frantic Nazi war effort even as the Allies advanced. Tadeusz was recorded as being 

on transport “Wuste II” (Desert II) to support project “Unternehmen Wuste” (Operation Desert) at one of Natzweiler's sub-camps, Bisingen.  This project was the extraction of shale oil for synthetic fuel. Can you imagine the filthy, backbreaking work

 for the sick, starved and emaciated  inmates under the fear of "natural death" or Nazi sponsored  planned extermination?

 This man, Dave Fischel, was documented to be on the same
 transport from Buchenwald to Bisingen on the same date and he survived. An eerie coincidence.
I would have loved to speak to him 

Yet another transfer to Dachau recorded in April 1945 and this time listed as in 

"Protective Custody" and assigned to sub-camp Allach. The last entry in the ITS record

 show liberation on April 29, 1945. Tadeusz Frackiewicz was never heard from again. 

There is no death record at Dachau, there is no death record anywhere I can find. After

 being in 4 of the worst concentration camps in Nazi Germany during the desperate 

evacuations and transfer of prisoners, I can't imagine a scenario in which he survived. 

But I keep searching !

I am very proud to discover and put together these traces of a long forgotten person, to

 put a face and a story on my uncle after 70 years of anonymity.  Tadeusz was a brave

resistance fighter, arrested, weathered notorious concentration camps with 

liberation tantalizingly close several times. But as the fate of countless others, he most

 likely perished somewhere at or after  the liberation of Dachau, at 22, in the prime of his

 life.

Uncle Tadeusz Frackiewicz, this is your story and you will not be forgotten.

So young

Too soon gone