Hunswinkel labor education camp

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stolen memorial in memory of the victims

The labor education camp (AEL) Hunswinkel was about one kilometer south of Lüdenscheid , on the current site of the Versetalsperre . This camp was built in 1932 by the Hochtief company as part of the construction of the Versetalsperre for workers of the voluntary labor service. In 1938 this camp was taken over by the Reich Labor Service . In August 1940 it became the AEL Hunswinkel. At that time it consisted of two barracks for 100 people each and a canteen barrack outside the fence. The barracks had no heating. Germans and foreigners were instructed in this camp, which was run for the sustained deterrent of discipline. During the service, which usually lasted six weeks and worked twelve hours a day, ill-treatment was common. In 1945 the AEL Hunswinkel was also a concentration camp.

timeline

At the end of August 1940, the Reich Labor Service Camp became a labor education camp , which was subordinated to the Dortmund Gestapo, the Düsseldorf Gestapo in 1941 and the Cologne Gestapo in 1945. For the AEL it was ordered: “... The working and living conditions for the inmates are generally tougher than in a concentration camp. This is necessary in order to achieve the desired purpose and possible, since the placement of the individual protective prisoners generally only lasts a few weeks, at most a few months. ”Up to December 12, 1940, 517 prisoners (457 Germans and 60 foreigners) were in custody brought behind. 137 educational prisoners were in the camp at this time. About the working conditions is reported to the inspector of the security police, among other things: “It must be taken into account that those prisoners who have to work on the construction site during the day only have 1/4 hour free time to eat lunch while they are working the rest of the time, have to work on wet and muddy floors from morning until dark. So if the prisoners are not in good health, it is inevitable that they will fall ill sooner or later. "

In the winter months (December 22, 1940 to March 15, 1941), the construction company stopped work on the Versetalsperre. As a replacement, the prisoners had to work in the area for a construction company, a steelworks, a forestry and for the Lüdenscheid office. In addition, for a short time in Altenberge and Münster-Handorf. Branch offices of the AEL Hunswinkel opened.

To increase the capacity, another barrack was built in 1941. On September 30, 1941, the AEL was taken over by the Ruhrtalsperrenverein. and moved to Gladbeck - Zweckel on April 1, 1942 . On May 15, 1942, this camp was closed again by the Gestapo and relocated to Hunswinkel. Apparently under pressure from Hochtief, for whom the inmates worked, the term of imprisonment was extended from six weeks to three months. As one person concerned reported, detention could also last considerably longer.

From May 1942 mainly Soviet forced laborers were assigned. The labor education camp became a labor education camp for foreign workers . From then on, the local population referred to the camp as the Russian camp . The Hühnersiepen cemetery near Lüdenscheid-Piepersloh also became a colloquial Russian cemetery .

In 1943 the Versetalsperre was to be completed as a matter of urgency because of the rupture of the Möhne dam. The capacity of the beds is therefore increased to 600. However, since the other sanitary facilities did not follow this expansion, this soon led to hygienically unsustainable conditions. As a result, typhus spread in this camp.

In September 1944 the AEL Sanssouci was opened in the Hönnetal for the construction of the Schwalbe 1 project (underground production of fuels). Except for a small number, the inmates of the AEL Hunswinkel were brought to this camp. At the end of March 1945, the foreign prisoners from the Sanssouci AEL were to be taken to the Hunswinkel AEL on foot. They never got here.

On April 11, 1945, American soldiers occupied the AEL Hunswinkel, whose guards had withdrawn, taking prisoners with them. The fate of these prisoners could not be determined.

Destruction by the Gestapo

A total of around five to six thousand women, men, children and young people suffered unspeakable agony in the camp until 1945, at least 550 did not survive it.

Since the end of 1942, the camp has also been used regularly for " special treatments " from the area of ​​responsibility of the Dortmund and Cologne Gestapo . The number of people executed is unclear. The numbers are between 100 and 350. Shortly before the end of the war, on February 4, 1945, at least 14 Soviet Gestapo prisoners from Dortmund were executed in the camp as part of end- of- war crimes. The Lüdenscheid doctor Dr. H., who helped to cover up the murders, was later banned from the profession.

Commemoration

Memorial plaque as a memorial for the Hunswinkel camp (until 2014)
Lore as a new memorial (since 2017)
Today's view of the forced labor camp, which was below the Hohkühler Bucht / Klamer Brücke car park, on the left in the picture.

In 1949 a boulder was erected as a memorial stone at the Hühnersiepen cemetery , and a plaque in Cyrillic letters commemorates the victims. The council of the city of Lüdenscheid commemorated the victims for the first time fifty years after the establishment of the labor education camp. In 1993, 25 former prisoners and forced laborers visited Hunswinkel's cemetery and town.

The Hunswinkel memorial was inaugurated on June 21, 1997 by the mayor Lisa Seuster and the city council. It was built next to the Klamer Bridge on the Versestausee , on the bottom of which the camp was located.

Inscription:

Between 1940 and 1945, the Hunswinkel labor education and concentration camp was located below this point in the Valley of Verses. Of the many thousands of prisoners from the Soviet Union, Germany, Poland, Belgium, France, Italy, Yugoslavia and the Netherlands, at least 550 were killed by starvation, hard labor, beatings and shooting.

At the end of September 2014, the shadow of the past memorial created by the Lüdenscheid artist Heinz Richter for the city of Lüdenscheid was allegedly stolen by metal thieves . As a temporary solution up to a permanent replacement of the memorial, the city of Lüdenscheid put up a plexiglass plaque that has been intended to keep memories alive since November 28, 2014; it is also an expression of the city council's condemnation of theft. The memorial was redesigned in 2017.

literature

  • Stefan Kraus: Nazi unjust sites in North Rhine-Westphalia. A research contribution on the system of tyranny 1933–1945: Camps and deportation sites (= We in North Rhine-Westphalia. 56). New edition. Klartext, Essen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89861-922-6 .
  • Gabriele Lotfi: Gestapo concentration camp. Labor education camp in the Third Reich. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart et al. 2000, ISBN 3-421-05342-1 (also: Bochum, Ruhr-Universität, dissertation, 1998).
  • Matthias Wagner: "Work makes you free". Forced labor in Lüdenscheid. 1939-1945. Heimatverein, Lüdenscheid 1997, ISBN 3-9804512-2-4 .
  • Matthias Wagner: The labor education camp Hunswinkel / Lüdenscheid 1940–1945. In: Märkischer Kreis: "... and I came home to Ukraine in 1950 ..." Documentation on the history of forced labor in the Märkischer Kreis. Märkischer Kreis, Altena 2001, pp. 112–128, ( digitized version (PDF; 173 MB) ).
  • Forced laborers in Lüdenscheid and prisoners in the Hunswinkel labor education camp. In: Heiner Bruns, Hans-Werner Hoppe, Dieter Saal, Matthias Wagner, Gerhard Großberndt, Dieter Hohaus: Lüdenscheider memorial book for the victims of persecution and the war of the National Socialists. 2nd revised and expanded edition. Alliance for tolerance and moral courage - against violence and xenophobia - Friedensgruppe Lüdenscheid, Lüdenscheid 2007, p. 25 ff., ( Digitized version (PDF; 9.1 MB) ).
  • LG Dortmund, April 21, 1952 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal convictions for Nazi homicides 1945–1966, Vol. VIII, edited by Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann, HH Fuchs, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1972, No. 313 pp. 557–569 Participation in the first of the mass shootings of Gestapo prisoners carried out by the Dortmund Gestapo towards the end of the war, in which at least 14 Russian Gestapo prisoners were shot

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kraus: Nazi unjust sites in North Rhine-Westphalia. 2007, p. 56.
  2. ↑ Kraus: Nazi unjust sites in North Rhine-Westphalia. 2007, p. 21.
  3. ↑ Dietmar Simon: Factory, Association and "Class Struggle". Workers 'life and workers' organization in Lüdenscheid from 1820 to 1950 in pictures and documents (= research on the history of the city of Lüdenscheid. Vol. 5). Culture Department of the City of Lüdenscheid, among others, Lüdenscheid 1996, ISBN 3-929614-19-7 , p. 25 f.
  4. ↑ Kraus: Nazi unjust sites in North Rhine-Westphalia. 2007, p. 57 ff.
  5. ↑ Kraus: Nazi unjust sites in North Rhine-Westphalia. 2007, p. 52.
  6. ↑ Kraus: Nazi unjust sites in North Rhine-Westphalia. 2007, p. 59.
  7. ↑ Kraus: Nazi unjust sites in North Rhine-Westphalia. 2007, p. 58.
  8. ↑ Lotfi: Gestapo concentration camp. 2000, p. 100 ff.
  9. ↑ Gisela Schwarze (Ed.): The language of the victims. Letter reports from Russia and Ukraine on forced labor as a source of historiography. Klartext, Essen 2005, ISBN 3-89861-484-0 , p. 269.
  10. ↑ http://www.plettenberg-lexikon.de/bergbau/mk/schwalbe1/witte.htm
  11. ^ Kai Olaf Arzinger: Stollen in the rock and oil for the empire. The secret project "Schwalbe 1". 2nd Edition. Mönnig, Iserlohn 1997, ISBN 3-922885-70-5 , p. 59.
  12. ^ Ralf Blank : Hagen in the Second World War. Bomb warfare, everyday war life and armaments in a Westphalian city 1939–1945. Klartext, Essen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8375-0009-7 , pp. 74 and 392.
  13. ↑ https://www.come-on.de/luedenscheid/kleiner-festakt-mahnmal-lore-ziel-8411058.html

Web links

Commons : Hunswinkel Memorial  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 11 ′ 20 ″  N , 7 ° 41 ′ 4 ″  E