Wirtschaftshof Raisko

Rajsko · subcamp of KL Auschwitz

Record no. 16 of 45
Fragments preserved

300 Women prisoners in the camp

The experimental station at Rajsko, where three hundred women prisoners carried out research on a rubber bearing plant for the Third Reich.

German name: Wirtschaftshof Raisko
Established: June 1943
Closed: 18 January 1945
Subordinate to: Auschwitz II-Birkenau (from November 1943)
Employer: SS-WVHA, Amt W V, Land-, Forst- und Fischwirtschaft
Type of work: Horticulture and experimental cultivation of kok-saghyz
Surviving structures: The buildings of the experimental station and the farm
Access: Rajsko, in the village, buildings still in use

Period of operation against the Auschwitz system

JUN 1943 — JAN 1945

1940

1941

1942

1943

1944

1945

All 45 subcamps of KL Auschwitz on one map, this one marked with a ring. The filled square is Auschwitz I, the empty one Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

Distances in a straight line — approximate

Auschwitz I≈ 3 km
Auschwitz II-Birkenau≈ 5 km
Krakow≈ 50 km
TownRajsko

Measured from the centre of the town, accurate to within a few kilometres.

Branch of industry in the register

Farm

What happened here

At Rajsko the SS ran a horticultural unit and a plant laboratory in which attempts were made to obtain rubber from kok-saghyz. About three hundred women worked here, some of them with scientific training.

Work in the laboratory meant slightly better conditions than in the fields, which in the reality of the camp could be the difference between survival and death.

What is left

Little survives at the place where the women prisoners were quartered. In the village of Rajsko, however, many buildings and structures connected with the camp's farm and experimental station still stand.

A plaque on the building of the former laboratory states that between 1941 and 1945 the horticultural grounds at Rajsko were a place of slave labour by prisoners.

Archival photographs of this place
Photographs and documents from the time the camp existed are held and made available by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim.

Museum gallery →

Sources — the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, archive and historical collections · Re-Finding the Sub Camps of Auschwitz, field research by the Tiergartenstrasse4 Association 2005–2008, subcamps-auschwitz.org · field documentation by Auschwitz Subcamps.

Auschwitz Subcamps is a brand of KrakowOmnia sp. z o.o.

ul. Rakowicka 10B/4, 31-511 Kraków, Poland · KRS 0001046320 · VAT PL6751785068 · operations: AllInKrakow