Heddernheim labor education camp
The Heddernheim labor education camp was the only labor education camp in Frankfurt am Main during the National Socialist era . It was located in the excavated clay pit of a former brickworks on the northern edge of the Frankfurt district of Heddernheim on Oberschelder Weg / corner of Zeilweg. Since 1986 a small memorial has been commemorating the existence of the camp.
history
The camp existed from April 1, 1942 to March 18, 1945, a total of around 10,000 Germans and foreigners were imprisoned there during this time. Many details of the labor education camp Heddernheim can not be reconstructed, since according to the report of the Frankfurt city archives of 15 September 1983, the source location is bad: "The camp book, the camp files, at all the files of the Frankfurt Gestapo . Have been burned before the war ended" in Hirzenhain was Another camp for female prisoners operated by the Frankfurt Gestapo, the Hirzenhain labor education camp . In addition, there were several so-called "external commands", for example in Hundstadt , in Freienseen or at the Köppern Forest Hospital.
The accommodation of the prisoners
The area of the Heddernheim labor education camp covered around 1250 m². It was traditionally called Kull by the local residents , a local dialect expression for "clay pit". After the camp was established, the name Kajenn became established as an allusion to a notorious French penal colony near the town of Cayenne on Devil's Island . Because of their blue clothing, the prisoners in Heddernheim were also called the Blue Division .
According to eyewitness reports, the camp consisted of three elongated barracks for the prisoners, several sheds and a small guard house right at the entrance. There was also a guard room, a watchtower, a “bunker” (prison), a delousing bath, a dog pen and - between the barracks - a roll call area.
Bunk beds with straw mattresses were housed in every prisoner barracks. For 1943, a report from one prisoner shows that around 30 people were housed in each barrack. “The shelters were full of lice and other vermin. There was only a washing facility outdoors. There were many foreigners and ten to twelve Jews among the prisoners. "
Most of the 30 or so guards who worked in shifts in the camp came from Heddernheim.
The conditions of detention
The prisoners' staple food was a kind of potato soup made from unpeeled potatoes, water and half a pound of margarine, which was prepared in a large vat. Most of the prisoners worked outside the camp in various companies - for example in the neighboring Heddernheim copper works - and were given some bread and sausage as a daily ration. They were also forced to wear convict clothing outside of the camp. The alternating shifts lasted from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. The companies paid a fixed, very low wage to the camp management. “The camp management was even able to make a profit through rationed catering, which ensured the physical existence of the prisoners. In the judgment against the camp administration, an amount of 300,000 to 400,000 Reichsmarks was named. "
According to the only former prisoner who can still be identified in the 1980s, a man from Poland who was naturalized during National Socialism, he was treated worse in the Heddernheim camp than later in the Dachau concentration camp .
It often happened that the prisoners had to drill in the barracks after dinner. When doing push-ups, the guards often kicked the men's heads on the floor. Prisoners were often flogged on a bench. In a criminal case against Heddernheim security guards, which was reported in the FAZ on January 13, 1951 , one accused largely denied his own mistreatment of prisoners, but admitted: “The camp had fallen into disrepute because another Gestapo office was here Mistreated detainees during questioning. The punishments were sometimes so cruel that he fled the camp because of the screams of the abused. "
A written report by inmate P 14640 (“P” for Poles ) from Buchenwald concentration camp on the first day of his stay in Heddernheim also provides evidence of the existence of the camp. The man who would have wanted to become a journalist after graduating from high school was forcibly brought to Germany for work. In 1976 he reported that he had been arrested in 1943 on charges of sabotage and brought from Wetzlar to Heddernheim: “After the entry formalities, an SS man met me with bamboo canes. I should be taught German order and German discipline. ”The barracks were teeming with vermin, and the following morning he was woken up by hard baton blows on the head, shoulders and arms. The prisoners in a barrack were beaten to the polluted water in the washroom by a line of beating young SS guards and then returned to the barrack with further beatings. After a roll call, during which one of the inmates was deliberately beaten with a stick, there was food: “A piece of bread, maybe 200 grams, and then a ladle full of soup. I choked down my portion, overcoming the disgust at the pungent smell of the 'soup'. ”Then he had to dig trenches in a Frankfurt district. In the evening you had to march back to the camp at a rapid pace, had to run several laps around the roll call area after the roll call and then received the same 'soup' as in the morning. Sundays were off work, but you had to do sports “until you drop”. His conclusion: “We always beat here, from morning to evening, day after day. There is a labor education camp here, so everything has to be done at a run. To wash, to emerge on the dirty latrine, to receive food, you always have to walk. Always and everywhere beatings, shouts, curses. ”After six weeks, the usual length of stay in such a labor education camp, he was taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp as an“ incorrigible ”.
There are a number of letters to the responsible chief finance officer in Kassel, which deal with the legacies (mostly their clothing) of prisoners who died in the labor education camp. Since all of these were young men between the ages of 20 and 35, it can be assumed that not all prisoners survived the hardships and abuse.
Grounds for detention
Most of the men imprisoned in the Heddernheim labor education camp came from areas occupied by German troops in what was then the Soviet Union (including the Baltic States), from Poland, France, the Netherlands and other countries from where they had been brought to Germany for forced labor . They were often taken from the labor camps (community or company camps) to the Heddernheim camp because of minor offenses, for example because they refused to give the so-called German greeting . Some camp inmates were only 15 years old. In addition to forced laborers, German workers, opponents of the regime and Jewish fellow citizens were also sent. The Frankfurt Gestapo was able to decide on admission to the labor education camp itself and without legal or other control.
The contemporary witness, who gave information in October 1984 as part of a local history research, was arrested in 1943 because he had visited the foreign labor camp located in an Eschersheim restaurant on a Sunday and accidentally got caught in a raid by the Gestapo. Despite inquiries from all conceivable authorities and institutions, his family remained without news of his whereabouts for three weeks and only found out more information about the man's whereabouts from a security guard working in the camp who was known to the family, pointing to absolute secrecy and therefore unofficial. After about three months in the camp, during which he was employed in the kitchen column and was allowed to wear his civilian clothes, he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp via the Frankfurt Gestapo headquarters at Lindenstrasse 27. After about nine months of working outside the concentration camp in a factory, he was allowed to go back home without giving any further reason and was drafted into the Wehrmacht shortly afterwards .
Due to the destruction of the majority of the relevant documents shortly before the end of the war, the research encouraged by the Frankfurt Local Advisory Council 8 in the 1980s could no longer provide a complete picture of the reasons for imprisonment. However, there are numerous cards in the Frankfurt Gestapo files relating to the labor education camp. Terms such as “breach of contract”, “strolling around”, “insubordination” often appear in the “Facts” section. Not infrequently, for example in the case of "serious theft", the prisoner in question was sent to the labor education camp in order to be deported from there to a concentration camp.
A transport list for the period between September 1943 and August 1944 has also been preserved. According to it, 151 people were transported from Mainz to the Heddernheim labor education camp. In 94 cases, the column giving the reasons for imprisonment reads “Stapo”. Presumably they were men who had been arrested by the Gestapo on the basis of spying and denunciation . The reason for detention is often “leaving the workplace”, other entries mention “begging”, “driving around” and “theft”, “anti-German propaganda” and “breach of employment contract”. Mostly there are Russian, Polish and French names.
Executions
On March 24, 1944, several Italian military internees were shot "for looting" on the orders of the Higher SS and Police Leader Wiesbaden. There were also other executions in the camp for which it is not clear who ordered them. In at least one case an inmate was "shot while trying to escape".
"Evacuation"
In March 1945 the camp was closed and the prisoners had to march on foot towards Vogelsberg. On March 25, an Italian prisoner was shot near Lindheim on the orders of the camp commandant for allegedly stealing bread. The camp commandant had to answer for this crime in 1951 before the Frankfurt Regional Court and was sentenced to five years and six months in prison.
The knowledge of the neighbors
At the end of the 1970s, the existence of a former labor education camp in the Heddernheim district was almost unknown, even among politically active people. Only inquiries from the SPD and the Greens parliamentary groups of the local advisory council and the targeted search for contemporary witnesses brought the knowledge that was still available in the mid-1980s back to life. For example, a woman who had lived in Zeilweg since her youth reported that she often saw columns of prisoners near her parents' house at the time. Individual men had to be carried, all of them wore striped prisoner clothing and carried a food tender with them on the way to and from work. As a teenager, she repeatedly looked through the knotholes of the wooden fence and could remember seeing inmates walking around in circles, carrying mattresses over their heads - probably as a punitive measure. Other elderly Heddernheim citizens also reported that prisoners often marched through Hessestrasse, for example, on their way to work in the nearby tram depot.
The verbal report of the former prisoner shows that the residents of the Oberschelder Weg had an unobstructed view of the camp, at least from the top floors of their houses.
memorial
Signs at the confluence of the Zeilweg in the Dillenburger Straße and on the Zeilweg at the level of the subway station of the same name point the way to a memorial in the immediate vicinity of the houses Oberschelder Weg 10 to 12. The area has been in a depression for decades Most of the former camp was built over with a tennis hall, a dormitory and several residential buildings that were built shortly after the war. A small memorial has been located at the far edge of the former camp since 1986. Text panels remembered from January 1987 to mid-2012, the fate of the detainees, "Here they were constantly threatening with poor nutrition and corporal punishment be 're-educated' through forced labor, and also the ' extermination through labor ' was accepted. Many of them were deported from here to concentration camps. "
After years of deliberation, the memorial was redesigned in autumn 2018. Since then - on a brick plinth - a three-sided steel pyramid by the Frankfurt artist Inge Hagner has been a reminder of the camp, on one side of which Article 1 GG is quoted: "Human dignity is inviolable." Inside the barred room at the rear end of the memorial The original function is unclear, an LED text conveyor designed by the artist Bernd Fischer was installed, which provides detailed information about the history of the place.
literature
- Petra Meyer: The Heddernheim labor education camp, taking into account other labor camps, based on archival documents and reports from contemporary witnesses. Frankfurt am Main, June 1986, OCLC 75013158 .
- Henri Braun: Henri Braun, President de l'Amicale des Rescapés of the Labor Education Camp (AEL). In: Bernard Garnier, Jean Quellien, avec la collaboration de Françoise Passera: La Main d'oeuvre francaise exploitée par le IIIe Reich. Colloque International, December 13-14-15 2001, Mémorial de la Paix à Caen. Caen, Center de Recherche d'Histoire Quantitative, 2003, ISBN 2-9519438-0-6 ; Full text version (in French) .
Web links
- Data collection on the "AEL" at LISA
- Torture in the "Kull": The Frankfurt-Heddernheim labor education camp. Text and audio for a broadcast of the Hessischer Rundfunk
Individual evidence
- ↑ The first prisoners were admitted at the end of March 1942 (file of the Gestapo Frankfurt am Main, can be viewed in the Hessian main state archive in Wiesbaden and at the ITS).
- ↑ a b according to the text board at the memorial; See memorial plaque: Heddernheim labor education camp. ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ quoted from: Petra Meyer, p. 10
- ↑ Petra Meyer, p. 20
- ↑ Petra Meyer, p. 26
- ↑ quoted from Petra Meyer, p. 24
- ^ In: The Ettersberg bell, bulletin of the Buchenwald-Dora camp community. No. 65, 3/1976; quoted on the basis of a photocopy in Petra Meyer, p. 40
- ↑ Hess. Main State Archives, HHStaW 519-2-1364
- ↑ File of the Gestapo Frankfurt am Main, can be viewed in the Hessian Main State Archives in Wiesbaden and at the ITS
- ↑ File of the Gestapo Frankfurt am Main, can be viewed in the Hessian Main State Archives in Wiesbaden and at the ITS
- ↑ Hess. Main State Archives, HHStaW 409-4-28 u. a.
- ^ "The labor education camp (AEL) could be imposed by the Stapo leader independently, i.e. he did not need the approval of the RSHA for this." (Heinrich Baab: Memories of the time 1937–1945, Frankfurt City Archives (S5 / 184), p. 7)
- ↑ File of the Gestapo Frankfurt am Main, can be viewed in the Hessian Main State Archives in Wiesbaden and at the ITS
- ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau of January 13, 1951
- ^ Frankfurter Rundschau of February 16, 1951
- ↑ "It was a hell." A newly designed memorial now reminds of the largely overbuilt "labor education camp" of the Nazi era. In: Frankfurter Rundschau of November 19, 2018, p. F8
- ↑ Paper presented at a conference in Caen in December 2001
Coordinates: 50 ° 9 ′ 51 ″ N , 8 ° 38 ′ 25 ″ E