Thread by @jacoburowsky

Among the many horrors of WWII, there lies a particular atrocity that remains undiscussed, ignored due to its unsettling implications:

The NKVD punishment camps, where Jews enacted systematic vengeance against German civilians.

Thousands were crammed into small facilities. Typhus was intentionally spread, rations withheld, prisoners were beaten, tortured and worked to death

An average of 100 prisoners died daily. Children were smothered in human pyramids and forced to slowly expire in freezing water

Most prisoners were not Nazi collaborators, even accused of a crime, but sent by decision of Soviet Authorities. One historian noted, "in reality almost anyone could end up there" The memorial in front of the camp's main gate describes the prisoners as mainly local population.

Despite their innocence they were punished with creativity related to the Holocaust. Forced to sing Nazi celebration songs while tortured, or surprised with mass beatings on Hitler’s birthday. Children accused of being Hitler youth members were forced on the ground and trampled

Women were raped and buried in manure, a toad shoved down a woman’s throat before she choked to death. A woman’s infant was struck dead after she pleaded for soup. She was then chased around the yard, clutching the body, before the guard retired to his quarters and ate the soup.

Women and girls were forced to exhume a mass grave, then forced to lay with the rotting corpses. Guards used their rifles to force the women’s faces into the rotting flesh. 64 women and girls were literally suffocated to death by rotting flesh.

One escaped prisoner, an innocent Dutch citizen mistaken for being German, said,

“Concentration camps have not been abolished but have been taken over by new owners.”

Salomon Morel was the commander of Zgoda. Morel, a Jew, survived the war and Holocaust under the protection of a Catholic Polish farmer, before joining communist partisans.

Morel became the head of several concentration camps run by the NKVD and communist authorities until 1956

After his case was publicized by international media, he was formally indicted of genocide by the Polish public prosecutor's office

The charges against Morel were based primarily on the evidence of over 100 witnesses, including 58 former inmates of the Zgoda camp.

Morel fled to Israel and was granted citizenship under the Law of Return. Poland twice requested his extradition, once in 1998 and once in 2004, but Israel refused to comply.

Israel rejected the charges as being false and part of an antisemitic conspiracy, also claiming that the statute of limitations against Morel had run out and that Morel was in poor health.

More died in Israel, at the age of 87, of natural causes.