Radeberg labor education camp
The Radeberg Labor Education Camp (AEL) was operated by the Gestapo from July 1944 . Until the end of the Second World War , it served the Radeberg plant of Sachsenwerk Licht und Kraft AG Niedersedlitz as a prison camp for (mostly foreign) forced laborers and prisoners of war for the armaments industry.
prehistory
During the First World War , the construction of an armaments factory in Radeberg was scheduled. In December 1915 the Royal Fireworks Laboratory opened in Radeberg . By the end of the war, more than 5,400 employees temporarily manufactured detonators and detonators . After the war, the factory was sold to Sachsenwerk Licht und Kraft AG Niedersedlitz . From 1920 to 1932, civil products such as control panels, but also vacuum cleaners and refrigerators were produced. The company had to close in 1932 due to the effects of the global economic crisis . In the course of the armament of the Wehrmacht , operations were resumed in 1935 and the production of fuses continued. In July 1944, the Gestapo set up the labor education camp on the company's premises to accommodate and discipline the forced laborers and prisoners of war employed in the plant.
Radeberg labor education camp
As early as 1942, up to 800 foreign workers were forced to work in the Sachsenwerk. As the fronts that continued to collapse in 1944 meant that no more workers could be recruited from occupied areas, the AEL was set up on today's Robert-Blum-Weg to accept prisoners for forced labor. Barracks for around 40 to 80 prisoners each and corresponding guards were built. The mostly foreign prisoners had been interned in the camp by the Gestapo for offenses such as black market trafficking or refusal to work in other armaments factories and were now to be disciplined again through the hard work in the AEL for 28 working days (later extended to 56 working days) . The inhumane working and living conditions resulted in numerous deaths among the prisoners. The dead were buried in the city's cemetery at no special expense.
From the end of 1944 the AEL also served as a branch of the Dresden remand prison. Since there was not enough space for the additional prisoners, executions by shooting were carried out from this point on . The victims, which now also included Germans and women, were buried in a mass grave in the cemetery. When the city prisons were destroyed in the air raids on Dresden in February 1945, more and more prisoners came to the AEL Radeberg and were murdered there. In order not to attract too much attention among the Radeberg population, the victims were buried directly on the camp grounds. The executions in the last few months of the AEL have become more and more brutal, some of the prisoners were shot directly in dug mass graves.
At the beginning of 1945 the AEL was to be extensively expanded. Six newly built barracks up to 50 meters long can be seen on aerial photographs taken by American reconnaissance aircraft. The new part of the camp was still under construction at the end of the war and never went into operation.
After the end of the war, a total of 12 mass graves were discovered on the company premises and in the cemetery. Most of the victims there were shot in the head or the neck.
Death march
In April 1945 the remaining prisoners of the AEL Radeberg were forced on a so-called death march . The route via Wallroda , Arnsdorf and Fischbach can be traced on the basis of eyewitness reports and body finds . After the end of the war, residents discovered three murdered prisoners in Wallroda and six near Fischbach.
One of the eyewitnesses of the act was a boy from Wallroda, then eleven years old. In 1998 he wrote about the experience:
“A group of people came over the shallow hilltop from Radeberg with a larger farmer's wagon. When we got closer it became clear to us that they are people in convict clothing who were guarded by armed uniforms. They had to carry a barbed wire fence around them. From the movement of the prisoners we could see that it was visibly difficult for the people to move forward with the car. One of the prisoners fell over about halfway down the open road. [...] One of the guards took hold of the feldspade and hit the head and upper body of the person lying on the ground very forcefully and repeatedly. After a short time the entourage moved on. We children wanted to get out on the street and help the lying person straight away. But our father held us back vigorously ... "
process
On September 25, 1945, five persons responsible for the Radeberg labor education camp in Dresden were brought to justice and charged with their offenses. Due to the too cramped premises of the actual courthouse on Münchner Platz , the trial took place in the Dresden Tonhalle (Glacisstraße), today's Little House . Due to this fact, the process became known nationwide as the Tonhalle process . The People's Court of Saxony , which was set up specifically for this procedure, was the first court convened at short notice in the Soviet occupation zone to prosecute National Socialist crimes . Two defendants were sentenced to death and three to long prison terms.
During the trial, the number of victims of the AEL Radeberg was set at 422 people. Exact lists and evidence for this number do not exist, however. According to witness statements and trial files, around 140 executions by shooting and around 250 dead in the AEL Radeberg are assumed.
Commemoration
Today (as of 2012) three memorials in Radeberg and a memorial stone in the Wallroda cemetery commemorate the victims of the Radeberg labor education camp and the death march .
- The dead buried in and around the camp (a total of 156 victims were found) were exhumed after the end of the war and buried on July 20, 1945 in a special cemetery on Pulsnitzer Strasse . A grove of honor with memorial stones commemorates the crimes.
- A memorial stone is located at the former location of the camp ( Robert-Blum-Weg ), which was inaugurated in 1965 by the former camp inmate and later Lord Mayor of Dresden, Herbert Gute .
- A memorial plaque commemorates the victims of the AEL on the former premises of VEB Robotron-Elektronik .
- Three unknown Soviet victims who were murdered on a nearby road during the death march were buried in Wallroda cemetery. (→ See also: Wallroda village church )
- A street in Dresden was named after the worker functionary and resistance fighter Oskar Mai who was murdered in the labor camp .
Web links
literature
- Radeberger Blätter zur Stadtgeschichte (Volumes 2 & 3), publisher: Stadt Radeberg in cooperation with the working group Stadtgeschichte, Radeberg 2004 & 2005
Individual evidence
- ↑ Report on the death march according to eyewitness accounts. Retrieved October 7, 2018 .
- ^ Documentation Office for the Saxon Memorials Foundation. Retrieved October 7, 2018 .
- ^ History of the district court Münchner Platz in Dresden. Retrieved October 7, 2018 .
- ^ Sächsische Zeitung of October 16, 1987
Coordinates: 51 ° 6 ′ 19.8 ″ N , 13 ° 54 ′ 25.5 ″ E