Hallendorf labor education camp
The Hallendorf Labor Education Camp in Salzgitter, also known as Camp 21 or Special Camp 21, Watenstedt-Hallendorf Labor Education Camp , was established by the Reichswerke "Hermann Göring" in March 1940 as a prison camp for foreign forced laborers and to deter and discipline the German population near what is now the Hallendorf district built by the city of Salzgitter and made available free of charge to the Gestapo control center in Braunschweig .
planning
At the beginning of March 1940 the management of the Reichswerke "Hermann Göring" planned a prison camp for forced laborers and on March 21, 1940 this matter came on the agenda at the 16th meeting of the executive directors of the Reichswerke. Friedrich Jeckeln , the police chief of the Free State of Braunschweig , who had been entrusted with the control and treatment of Polish workers by Rudolf Jordan , the then Reich Defense Commissioner of the Dessau military district , had announced by decree of March 8, 1940 in a bilingual leaflet that violations the admission to a labor education camp takes place. Jeckeln himself reported:
“In agreement with the Reichswerke Hermann Göring, I set up an education camp for idlers and unruly elements, which had a very beneficial effect. [...] The educational workers must be barracked and completely restricted in their freedom of movement , and they also have to work 12 hours a day. "
camp
As early as the spring of 1940, the Reichswerke made camp 21 available to the Gestapo Braunschweig free of charge and threatened Poles who were unwilling to work in their camp newspaper with more severe punishment. The Reichswerke announced these measures and punishments in the camp newspaper of April 1940 on the front page under the heading "Letter to a loiter" with the salutation "Teurer loiter". With a decree of June 25, 1940, the Reich Main Security Office permitted the establishment of prison camps in the area of the Reichswerke under the direction of the Braunschweig State Police. Initially, the Reichswerke made the camp available to the Gestapo without any contractual arrangement; It was not until the autumn of 1940 that the Brunswick state police chief, Horst Freytag , the board member of the Reichswerke Wilhelm Meinberg and Georg Strickrodt from the Reichswerke legal department signed a retrospective lease in which the Gestapo designated the labor camp as a "Watenstedt special camp" for "police purposes". The prisoners were guarded under the command of the Gestapo from Braunschweig, and the Reichswerke provided some of the guards free of charge. In the spring of 1942, the Braunschweig Gestapo expanded the labor education camp to include a prison camp for women. The labor education camp was renamed camp A for men and camp B for women by decree of the Reich Main Security Office of May 1, 1942 .
In the north-eastern corner of the camp, near the entrance, was a cremation plant. Contemporary witnesses unanimously reported that this included two incinerators - about the size of a double garage - and a tall chimney. This facility is not shown on the site plan from April 10, 1943, but there is an aerial photo of the English Air Force from April 10, 1945 showing the buildings of the crematorium. After the American troops withdrew in April 1945, the crematorium was torn down by workers from the Reichswerke "Hermann Göring" and all traces were removed.
Other foreign and German persons could also be admitted to the Hallendorf labor education camp, which originally served to discipline Polish slave laborers. From 1942 men and women could be sent to this camp without going to court. The reasons for detention were: unexcused absence from work (lack of a doctor's certificate ), refusal to give the " German greeting ", strolling around work (arriving late), listening to hostile radio stations , joking about the Nazi state or contacting foreigners. Numerous political opponents of the National Socialists such as communists, social democrats and Jews were in this labor education camp, some of whom were sent to the Sachsenhausen , Buchenwald , Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. In the so-called Action Grid by the National Socialists, 60 functionaries of the SPD and the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold were arrested and taken to the Hallendorf camp, including Martha Fuchs , Heinrich Jasper , Wilhelm Neddermeier , Heinrich Siems , Rudolf Löhr , Arthur Graef , Otto Bosse , Albert Rohloff a . a. Of the 60 people arrested, only 17 returned.
The Gestapo not only used camp 21 as a labor education camp, but also as a torture and execution site and as a collection camp for transports to the concentration camp. In the guidelines of the Reich Security Main Office it was stated:
“The Watenstedt labor education camp also serves to take in protective prisoners until they are transferred to a concentration camp. Prisoners for whom special treatment is planned are also admitted to the labor education camp. "
Almost a thousand people known by name from the camp were killed using the term “special treatment”. With a few exceptions, the dead in the camp were initially buried in the nearby Westerholz cemetery (near Hallendorf, about 1.2 km southwest of the camp). From the summer of 1943, the then completed Jammertal cemetery was used.
Conditions of detention
The methods of camp 21 were important beyond the Braunschweig region, where prison sentences and police sentences up to murder were executed. The basis for the briefing of prisoners was the protective custody decree of January 25, 1938 of the Reich Ministry of the Interior and the decree of October 4, 1939 of the Ministry of the Interior, in which the provisional arrests could be extended from 10 days to 3 weeks.
A particularly harsh punishment was the work in the glowing slag in Salzgitter-Drütte , which the prisoners called "Schlacke-Drütte" and feared. Death or severe burns or even gas poisoning were intended during this mission. At least 300 prisoners were killed. The security guard Fritz Panske alone shot 60 prisoners on the Schlacke-Drütte command.
The prisoners were divided into groups according to nationality and, after their civilian clothes had been stripped from them, dressed. The lettering inmate L 21 was applied to the shirt and trousers with oil paint . Later in 1944 there was no longer any prisoner clothing and the prisoners had to wear civilian clothing, although they were not allowed to wear their own coats and jackets against the cold. The prisoners to be executed were recognizable by their blue prison suits, the others by their gray ones.
After being admitted to the labor camp, those inmates who were scheduled for execution were entered on a green form with the note "Special Treatment" on it. In the camp there was a wooden gallows that could be dismantled , which a Polish carpenter and other inmates had to erect in the roll call square, and these inmates put the noose around the death row inmate's neck. The execution usually took place in the afternoon around 2 p.m., with the camp commandant Friedrich Lattmann himself pulling away the support of the trap door. From 1943 onwards, Polish and Soviet prisoners were executed in the Hallendorfer Forst, and in 1944 executions took place on the factory premises, as there were instructions to carry out executions in a hidden location. In addition to these executions, which cannot be precisely counted, there were killings of prisoners who were allegedly shot or killed while trying to escape. After being mistreated, inmates died in the camp grounds from serious injuries. It is estimated that 10 to 15 prisoners died every month. There were numerous suicides among inmates who could not stand the terror of the Gestapo.
The youngest prisoner was 12, the oldest over 80 years old. A doctor, Edmund Schauff , came to the camp for consultation hours twice a week. The political prisoner Hermann Wallbaum was the only camp paramedic who had to follow the doctor's instructions. After 1942 no more doctors practiced in camp 21 and from 1943 the inmate Dr. Ivan Podrygulla as a doctor who, together with the medical prisoners, managed to reduce the death rate to a third of the previous year.
The prisoners were housed in rooms with 24 bed frames each. Because the rooms were overcrowded, many inmates had to sleep on the floor. During 1944, in order to make more space, the bed frames were removed and all inmates had to sleep on the floor. There were only eight blankets per room, the floor was covered with straw. The inmates sewed the blankets together and crawled under them to protect themselves from the cold. The daily rations consisted of two margarine breads and a mug of coffee.
The term ranged from several months to a year. Gestapo officials intimidated, ill-treated and tortured the prisoners in order to extort confessions. Torture legalized by the decree of the chief of the security police of June 12, 1942, a secret Reich matter . Camp commandant Lattmann imposed what is known as bunker detention against those who did not confess, whereby the prisoners were locked in a bunker that was 70 cm wide, 60 cm deep and 190 cm high. The prisoners could not move, sit or lie down, which caused unspeakable pain. Meal deprivation , hourly waking at night, or cold showers every 10 minutes were other torture methods. Guards used paddocks to beat inmates in the showers or toilets, and the guards ran around with riding whips.
Storage locations
The men's camp was planned for 400 prisoners, the occupancy rose to 1,800 by the summer of 1943. From the time the two camps existed until April 1945, the Gestapo subjected around 26,000 to 28,000 men and around 7,000 women to harassment and humiliation, including execution. Today a memorial plaque on the Westerholz cemetery commemorates this camp.
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857 VICTIMS OF THE NATIONAL |
Men's camp
Camp A for men was about 300 meters from the Hallendorf- Bleckenstedt road. It was in the shape of a rectangle and had a roll call center inside. The prisoner barracks were surrounded by a double mesh and barbed wire fence with a moat in between. The camp could only be entered through an entrance that was always guarded by a gate post. Two crew barracks were initially on the north and south sides. There were only windows and doors to the inner courtyard. In the first few years, the rooms on the east and west side served as laundry, clothing and disinfection rooms as well as a kitchen and administration room. After 1942 the administration room was moved outside the rectangle and the rooms that were released were either occupied by prisoners or used as functional rooms for the camp guard, material, clothing, disinfection, showers, toilets and for work. The plant security building outside had 20 cells for bondage and dark detention . There were also craftsmen's rooms, a residential building for the camp commandant and one for the administrative staff, a garage, a horse and cattle barn, a swimming pool and an emergency water pond.
Women's camp
Camp B, planned for 800 women, was rented to the Gestapo on July 1, 1942 by the Reichswerke. It was located southwest of the men's camp and resembled it in its structure. The barrack on the east side was used by the female guards. There were cells for the detention center, hospital room and kitchen. Outside the camp was the living quarters for the female police personnel.
Camp Hessen am Fallstein
In mid-1944, labor education camp No. 1847 was opened as a satellite camp of camp 21 in Hesse am Fallstein in Bahnhofstrasse . a. Polish slave laborers were housed. This camp, which was first mentioned in mid-January 1945, was, like the Hallendorf camp, subordinated to the Braunschweig State Police.
Current condition
When the American troops advanced on the city area at the beginning of April 1945, the inmates of the camp were brought to Helmstedt together with those of the camp in Hesse am Fallstein, where they were then "released". The women's camp was completely destroyed in a bomb attack on March 29, 1945, the barracks of the men's camp were demolished by late summer 1945 and the bunkers were blown up by American pioneers in 1949. Some of the administration buildings were used as living space until the late 1950s. Today (2018) the area is overgrown by forest and only a few remains of concrete remind of the former warehouse.
literature
- Gudrun Pischke: "Europe works at the Reichswerke". The National Socialist camp system in Salzgitter (= Salzgitter Research . Volume 2 ). Archives of the city of Salzgitter, Salzgitter 1995, DNB 964471264 .
- Karl Liedke: Faces of Forced Labor. Poland in Braunschweig 1939–1945 . Working Group Other History, Braunschweig 1997, ISBN 3-929778-05-X , p. 160-163 .
- Gabriele Lotfi: Gestapo concentration camp. Labor education camp in the Third Reich . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-596-15134-1 , pp. 75-79 .
- Ulrich Oertel: Labor education camp and air raid protection in the Braunschweiger Land . The forgotten air raid shelter in the former camp 21 near Salzgitter-Hallendorf. Salzgitter 2008, ISBN 978-3-00-025400-0 .
Web links
- Gedenkstaette-Salzgitter.de: Labor education camp Hallendorf - camp 21. Archived from the original on September 30, 2013 ; Retrieved April 6, 2014 .
- Polish war graves in the Federal Republic of Germany. (PNG file) Site plan Sonderlager XXI. Retrieved April 6, 2014 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Watenstedt-Hallendorf labor education camp. Retrieved on August 12, 2012 (inclusion in the EVZ Foundation's list of places of detention, according to the decision of March 27, 2001)
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Gerd Wysocki: Work for the war: mechanisms of rule in the armaments industry of the "Third Reich" . Labor, social policy and state police repression at the Reichswerke “Hermann Göring” in the Salzgitter area from 1937/38 to 1945. Ed .: University of Oldenburg. Steinweg, Braunschweig 1992, ISBN 3-925151-51-6 , p. 318-369 (dissertation 1991).
- ↑ Jörg Langenberg: The Waldschänke (= Bürgererverein Bleckenstedt eV [Hrsg.]: Bleckenstedter views . Volume 4 ). ProArt, Salzgitter-Thiede 2016, p. 55-56, 59 .
- ^ Pischke: Europe works at the Reichswerke , pp. 246–248.
- ^ Pischke: Europe works at the Reichswerke. Pp. 257 and 293-294.
- ^ Pischke: Europe works at the Reichswerke , pp. 257–258
- ↑ Oertel: Arbeitsserziehungslager und Luftschutz , pp. 64–65
Coordinates: 52 ° 10 ′ 0.8 ″ N , 10 ° 22 ′ 55 ″ E