Kiel Canal Kiel Canal The Kiel Canal (, literally "North-[to]-Baltic Sea canal", formerly known as the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal) is a long freshwater canal in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. The canal was finished in 1895, but later widened, and links the North Sea at Brunsbüttel to the Baltic Sea at Kiel-Holtenau. An average of is saved by using the Kiel Canal instead of going around the Jutland Peninsula. This not only saves time but also avoids storm-prone seas and having to pass through the Sound or Belts. Besides its two sea entrances, the Kiel Canal is linked, at Oldenbüttel, to the navigable River
White Sea–Baltic Canal Camp) has been reorganized into the White Sea-Baltic Combine (Baltiysko-Belomorsky Kombinat [BBK]), still within the NKVD system, by the order of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated August 17, 1933. The Combine was charged with operating the canal and the economic development of the adjacent areas, including 2.8 million hectares of forest lands, and all the industrial facilities that had been constructed along the canal. A major part of the Combine's workforce consisted of Beltbaltlag's prisoners, around 75-85 thousand of them. In addition, the Combine included 21 "special settlements" ("spetsposyolok"), with some 30 thousand residents, mostly dispossessed