Fehrbellin labor education camp

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The Fehrbellin labor education camp , AEL Fehrbellin for short or Ael Fehrbellin, in Fehrbellin , was, between 1942 and April 1945, next to the Ravensbrück concentration camp near Fürstenberg, the central women's prison camp of the Reich capital Berlin , which was managed by the Potsdam Gestapo , but it was mainly provided by the various Berlin Gestapo Put women in the labor education camp as prisoners.

Inmate numbers

Until April 1945, according to the few lists that have been preserved, there were continuously between 300 and 600 "prisoners" (or "AEL girls" named in the company files) as punishment for various offenses in labor in the flax harvest and flax production. Reasons for imprisonment were often refusal to work or attempts to escape by foreign forced laborers or a less serious, verbal political degradation of the Nazi regime by German women. Around 8,000 women are believed to have walked through the camp with an assumed average prison term of 56 days. However, a number of around 10,000 prisoners is also possible during this period.

Warehouse management

The camp leader was a police chief secretary Fritz Neusesser . In addition to police and SS men as external guards, female prison sergeants were used for internal guidance.

The warehouse

Former bast fiber factory in Fehrbellin

They were accommodated in wooden barracks around a roll call area. In the barracks there were two-story beds made of wood, without blankets, only with mattresses made of straw. There was a small stove in the middle of the barracks. As a result, it was very cold in winter. An air raid shelter in the factory could be used in the event of an air raid. The hygienic conditions are described as miserable as there was no spare laundry, soap or warm water.

The hemp factory

In 1935 the Bast fiber GmbH was founded in Wuppertal . In the course of the National Socialist autarky policy , hemp and flax production was increased again. After the establishment of the Rhinow / Mark hemp plant in 1937, the company's headquarters were relocated to Fehrbellin in 1940, as the most important growing area in Germany was around this location. A prerequisite for relocating the company to the sparsely populated Brandenburg was the possibility of recruiting workers. Work was carried out in three shifts, from February 1943 in two 12-hour shifts. The prisoners mainly worked in the open air threshing and loading the threshing machines .

Punishments, abuse

According to inmates' memories, inmates were beaten to death several times. For this, the name of the guard Frieda Stranz was mentioned. Nothing is officially known about deaths in Fehrbellin; the wartime death books were gone.

literature

  • Christian Kranz: Forced laborers in the bast fiber factory. Almost forgotten: During the Third Reich, there was a prison camp for women on Fehrbellin's current Newtex site. In: Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung / Ruppiner Tageblatt from February 15, 2000 and in a continuation on March 9, 2000.
  • Adamska, Jolanta: Labor Education Camp - Extermination Camp for Polish Forced Laborers , ed. v. Glówna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich, Warszawa, 1983.
  • Amsterdam Edition of the Post-War Nazi Trials: Justice and Nazi Crimes. The German criminal proceedings for National Socialist homicides . Compiled in the Institute for Criminal Law at the University of Amsterdam by Prof. Dr. CF Rüter and Dr. DW de Mildt, http://www.jur.uva.nl/junsv/ , accessed on February 11, 2011.
  • Working Group of Berlin Regional Museums (ed.): Forced Labor in Berlin 1938–1945 , Berlin 2003.
  • Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt (ed.): Fehrbellin Labor Education Camp - Forced Laborers in the Gestapo Prison Camp (PDF; 1.03 MB), 2004, ISBN 3-932502-38-8
  • Berlin History Workshop (ed.): Forced labor in Berlin 1940–1945. Memory reports from Poland, Ukraine and Belarus. (Story told). 128 S. Erfurt, Sutton Verlag, 2000.
  • Bridegroom, Helmut: Foreign workers in Brandenburg during the Nazi era. Documentation on the deployment of foreigners in the former administrative district of Potsdam from 1939 to 1945 (RAA Brandenburg, Intercultural Contributions, Vol. 17), Potsdam 1996.
  • Bridegroom, Helmut: National Socialist Forced Camps in Berlin IV: Foreign Workers Camp 1939 to 1945 . Pp. 235–280 in: Wolfgang Ribbe (ed.): Berlin-Forschungen IV, Berlin (Colloquium Verlag) 1989
  • Bröckers, Mathias (Ed.): The rediscovery of the useful plant hemp, Cannabis, Marihuana , Munich 1996.
  • Finally, Stefanie; Kaiser, Wolf: On dealing with satellite concentration camps since 1945 , in: Winfried Meyer, Klaus Neitmann (Ed.): Forced labor during the Nazi era in Berlin and Brandenburg. Forms, Function and Reception , Potsdam 2001, pp. 193–210.
  • King, Gerhard; König, Inge: The police headquarters in Berlin-Alexanderplatz. His story - his police - his prisoners (1933-1945) , Berlin 1997.
  • Kubatzki, Rainer: Forced Labor and POW Camps. Locations and topography in Berlin and the Brandenburg area from 1939 to 1945 . With research by Klaus Leutner, Gianfranco Matthiello, Wolfgang Vogt. A documentation. Berlin, Berlin Verlag, 2001
  • Meyer, Winfried; Neitmann, Klaus (ed.): Forced labor during the Nazi era in Berlin and Brandenburg. Forms, Function and Reception , Potsdam, 2001.
  • Pagenstecher, Cord: AEL Fehrbellin. A women's prison camp for forced laborers in Berlin , in: Sabine Moller, Miriam Rürup, Christel Trouvé (eds.): A closed chapter? On the history of the concentration camps and the Nazi trials . (Studies on National Socialism in edition diskord, Volume 5), Tübingen, 2002, pp. 28–45.
  • Pagenstecher, Cord: Private Photos of Former Forced Laborers - A Collection of Sources and Their Research Relevance , in: Winfried Meyer, Klaus Neitmann (Eds.), Forced Labor. see above 2001, pp. 223-246.
  • Leonore Scholze-Irrlitz, Karoline Noack (ed.): Work for the enemy. Everyday forced laborers in Berlin and Brandenburg 1939–1945, Berlin 1998, pp. 35–44 (Wenzel, Gisela: Forgotten camps - forgotten victims)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt (ed.): Fehrbellin Labor Education Camp - Forced Laborers in the Gestapo Penal Camp ( Memento of the original from November 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.03 MB), p. 82, 2004, ISBN 3-932502-38-8 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.politische-bildung-brandenburg.de
  2. Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt (ed.): Fehrbellin labor education camp - forced laborers in the Gestapo prison camp ( memento of the original from November 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.03 MB), pp. 93–96, 2004, ISBN 3-932502-38-8 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.politische-bildung-brandenburg.de
  3. Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt (ed.): Fehrbellin labor education camp - forced laborers in the Gestapo prison camp ( memento of the original from November 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.03 MB), pp. 91–92, 2004, ISBN 3-932502-38-8 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.politische-bildung-brandenburg.de
  4. Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt (ed.): Fehrbellin labor education camp - forced laborers in the Gestapo prison camp ( memento of the original from November 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.03 MB), p. 88, 2004, ISBN 3-932502-38-8 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.politische-bildung-brandenburg.de

Coordinates: 52 ° 48 ′ 53.9 ″  N , 12 ° 46 ′ 36 ″  E