Stutthof Museum

The Stutthof Museum occupies the grounds of the former Stutthof concentration camp at ul. Muzealna 6 in Sztutowo, on the Vistula Spit east of Gdańsk in the Pomeranian Voivodeship of Poland. The camp was set up in September 1939, immediately after the German invasion, initially to hold members of the Polish elite of Gdańsk and Pomerania. It expanded to a large complex that held many nationalities, including Poles, Jews, Soviet prisoners and others, and in its later years was also a site of mass murder. Of roughly 110,000 people deported to Stutthof and its subcamps, around 65,000 died, through shootings, forced labour, disease, starvation and gassing. The camp was evacuated in January 1945 in death marches and sea transports, and Soviet troops reached the site on 9 May 1945.

The museum was established in 1946 and is one of the oldest of its kind in Europe. Visitors can see the preserved entrance gate, a number of barracks, the gas chamber, the crematorium, the camp prison and a railway wagon of the type used for deportations. Other remaining areas show the foundations of lost buildings, and the memorial monument at the far end of the site commemorates the dead. The exhibition inside the preserved buildings uses documents, personal items, photographs and survivor testimony arranged in a broadly chronological way, explaining the camp's development and its place in the wider system of camps.

Part of the original camp was dismantled or destroyed after the war and some structures have been preserved only as foundations or reconstructed. Conservation work continues on surviving buildings. The site is a place of remembrance and the tone for visitors is sombre; it is not recommended for young children, and the museum asks for quiet, respectful behaviour.