Blockland murders
The block land murders (including Chapel murders ) are a mass murder in the immediate post-war period in Bremer low block country . They were committed by a group of former forced laborers in November 1945 during a night robbery on the lonely courtyard of Kapelle . Twelve of the residents found there were shot dead. The case received renewed public attention in 1967, when the only survivor despite serious injuries campaigned for a pardon for the perpetrators and their rehabilitation .
Contemporary history background
The end of the war in May 1945 led to the end of the fighting and the dissolution of the Nazi regime, but peace and normality did not return immediately. The police and the judiciary had to be rebuilt according to the rule of law and in some cases were temporarily taken over by the military government of the occupying powers. In addition, as a result of the war and the reign of terror by the National Socialists, many people had become homeless , driven from their homeland or abducted .
In the Bremen area, where during the war slave laborers had worked in several outposts of the Neuengamme concentration camp, among other things in the armaments industry, there were several camps of so-called displaced persons (DP) after the war , including Camp Grohn and the former forced labor camp Tirpitz am Schwarzen Way in Bremen-Gröpelingen . Many DPs were former Polish forced laborers who could not return to their old homeland, but who had no prospects in Germany either. There was hardly any awareness in the German population that they had been wronged, they were still considered “ foreign workers ” and there were numerous prejudices against them.
Under the conditions of economic hardship and the black market, they hardly had any legal income opportunities. According to police statistics, there was a sharp increase in the crime rate of DPs in absolute numbers after 1945. Given the very large number of DPs living in Bremen at that time, today's historians assume that the crime rate of Polish DPs was exaggerated.
Courtyard chapel
The Hof Kapelle - located in the floodplain of the Wümme - was built on a Wurt . The name of the farm, which is mentioned for the first time in the 14th century, refers to a chapel of Dutch moor colonizers , who had been brought to Bremen in the 12th century, which was previously located on this Wurt . The farm was close to the city and relatively central in the blockland, but still with a distance of over two kilometers to the next inhabited house. The farm was managed by Friedrich Wilhelm Flothmeier and Meta Flothmeier, nee. Garbade. The house community included a maid and a servant. During the Second World War , a Serbian slave laborer had worked on the farm, who was still in correspondence with the family afterwards. At the time of the crime, the daughter of the Flothmeiers lived with them with three daughters and a son, her husband and his parents, as they had been bombed out in their house in Bremen-Findorff.
Events on the night of the crime
On Tuesday, November 20, 1945, foggy autumn weather was in the blockland. The house community of Hof Kapelle, with a total of thirteen people visiting, had spent the evening before the day of penance and bed with discussions about the uncertain future, in particular the career prospects of the young granddaughters of the Flothmeiers, before the residents went to sleep at 10 p.m.
Shortly before midnight they were woken up again by noise in the hall and already suspected an attack by "Russians or Poles". In fact, the Flothmeiers' son-in-law, Wilhelm Hamelmann, met ten Poles armed with pistols, whose leaders spoke perfect German. At gunpoint he forced Wilhelm Hamelmann to fetch all the residents of the house and bring them to the Flothmeiers' bedroom, where one of the Poles was guarding them. In the meantime, the Poles had cut the phone lines and began collecting groceries and valuables. Wilhelm Hamelmann gave them to understand that they could take anything with them as long as they left the house residents in peace, and faced them with rough treatment from his parents.
Finally, there was unrest among the former forced laborers and as a result, the leader asked the residents to go into the basement, which was only stooped. After the residents of the courtyard initially thought that they should be locked up in order not to prevent the perpetrators from escaping, the leader and three other Poles suddenly opened fire and shot the residents' heads and temples. Wilhelm Hamelmann was hit first in the lungs, then in the forearm, foot and buttocks. After the perpetrators had fired the shots, they initially disappeared, with the leader returning several times to make sure that none of the victims were alive. Twelve people died in the attack, including Hamelmann's underage children and a 15-year-old servant. Only Hamelmann himself survived because he - not fatally hit - pretended to be dead.
After a while, Hamelmann went to get help from the next farm. To do this, he took the only bike that the perpetrators had left behind in the yard, a "little girl's bike". Despite his serious injuries, he managed to cover the two kilometers, leaning on the bike, and on arrival he said: “I have no parents, no wife and no children anymore. I have nothing left. ”Hamelmann was brought to the deaconess hospital in Bremen-Gröpelingen by an attack squad , where he stayed for the next three months.
Immediate public reactions
Politics and media
The brutal action of the perpetrators led to a great deal of insecurity among the population and made the defenselessness against crime clear. In response, politicians campaigned for an improvement in public safety and called on the American occupying forces to support the German police in fighting crime against “foreign elements still in the country”. The Bremen police chief Helmut Yström announced a catalog of "measures against the Polish plague" just one day after the murders. Mayor Wilhelm Kaisen , who himself had settled as a farmer in the Wümmeniederung during the Nazi era, spoke of the "terror of the Poles" and reported in a Senate meeting of efforts to "get the Poles back to work". Yström demanded that the Poles “no longer be let out” of their camps and that volunteers in rural areas should be given guns. The occupying power responded to the second demand, so that it came to an organization of farmers in "rural self-protection departments".
The Bremer Weser-Kurier reported in detail on November 24, 1945 under the heading “Horrific robbery murders”; on November 28, under the title “Help the police”, the population was asked to help. Ultimately, however, resistance can only be guaranteed through the rapid rebuilding of the criminal police and reinforcement of the protective police. A Polish liaison officer criticized that the reporting in the local press was one-sided and an expression of “a hostile attitude towards the Poles”, which, given the terrible experiences of Poles in German prisons and concentration camps, would not lead to an improvement in their plight and international relations. The trade unions called for minutes of silence, the SPD and KPD to attend the funeral in Wasserhorst, at which around 600 people from Bremen appeared. There - much to the displeasure of the Blocklander peasantry - red flags and banners were shown, which put the acts in relation to Nazi war crimes. In his funeral address the pastor alluded to the responsibility of the occupying power, which had released the Poles from forced labor: "Idleness is and remains the beginning of all vice!"
Police and judiciary
The strong political pressure led to the perpetrators being prosecuted quickly and effectively. The former Tirpitz forced labor camp in Gröpelingen, which was still used for DPs, was surrounded and the perpetrators were requested to be extradited. In fact, nine former Polish forced laborers were caught, and the leader had fled that night.
In a comparison with Wilhelm Hamelmann, he first stated that all nine arrested Poles had taken part in the attack. The following night, however, he had doubts about one of the inmates, which he immediately reported to the investigating authorities. Since this prisoner could also be exonerated from other sources, he was released. It later emerged that the ninth perpetrator had fled with the leader. He was arrested in Munich a few months later.
After just two weeks, a court hearing took place in the hospital in order to be able to record the testimony of the still seriously ill Wilhelm Hamelmann.
The actual trial began in the spring of 1946 before an American military tribunal. The previous history of the accused - all of them were Polish forced laborers, two of whom were only 21 and 22 years old - was hardly discussed, although this had been warned by a Polish lawyer.
According to one of the defendants, the leader had told the other perpetrators after the attack: “I took revenge for my parents. They were shot by the SS in Poland. I now have satisfaction. "
The Poles were found guilty of multiple murders committed jointly . The act was cruel, insidious, committed out of greed and base motives and to cover up a crime. Four of the Poles and - in their absence - the fugitive leader were sentenced to death , one offender was given a 40-year prison sentence, the other offenders life imprisonment . Three of them were given amnesty by the Americans in 1963.
Penal system
The four main perpetrators were executed by shooting on the Neuenlander Feld on July 13, 1946 . Three perpetrators were imprisoned in Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel until 1967, but were then pardoned at the instigation of Wilhelm Hamelmann, among others.
Later work-up
Hamelmann: "Forgive instead of reward"
The only survivor of the blockland murders, 43-year-old Wilhelm Hamelmann, was a pharmacist's assistant from the working-class district of Walle . Although he had lost his wife, children, parents and other relatives in the crime, he advocated a pardon for the perpetrators and their rehabilitation in order to break the cycle of guilt and retribution . By his own admission, he was a born again Christian and had his daughters confirmed in the Wilhadi congregation in Walle, which was close to the Confessing Church . He also saw himself as an anti-fascist and probably had contacts with social democrats and communists. In any case, after the war Hamelmann became chairman of the Bremen-Walle Workers Aid, which later became the Workers Welfare Organization.
The situation of being robbed of his family and lying in the cellar close to death led Hamelmann to an existential crisis that put his faith in God to the test. At the same time he experienced it as an hour of revelation in which the unconditionality of divine grace and the power of his love became clear to him.
In strong internal struggles, which he describes in a field report, Wilhelm Hamelmann decided against an attitude that reacts with hate and retribution to the injustice he had experienced, and for love:
"Here happened one of the greatest miracles that I was able to experience in my life: The Lord immediately gave me love - His love - for these poor people who were seduced by Satan."
Hamelmann held on to this idea of replacing retribution with forgiveness until his death in 1979. Even before the funeral of his relatives, when he was still in the hospital, he asked that the funeral service should not be used to incite hatred against certain sections of the population. One should not hold a whole people responsible for the actions of some of their relatives. At this funeral, which he was unable to attend because of his injuries, he had a “greeting to the mourners” read out, in which he wrote, among other things: “The whole people are suffering and are on the lookout for those who are capable, in fact of love and not of hate. "
Before the trial, he persuaded the American prosecutor, who wanted to demand the death penalty for all ten perpetrators, to maintain this only for the leader and the three main perpetrators and to demand prison terms for the remaining perpetrators. The public prosecutor then left the sentence to the court.
In 1967 Hamelmann wrote handwritten appeals for clemency to the US Embassy for three perpetrators imprisoned in the Fuhlsbüttel detention center after he learned about their whereabouts from the press.
Wilhelm Hamelmann describes the reactions of the two Poles when they first met in prison - a third, who was apparently mentally ill in the meantime, had refused to contact him:
While one of the two made it clear to him, almost abruptly, that he did not give Hamelmann's request for her pardon any chance, the other appeared contrite and suspicious at the same time. He, who, according to Hamelmann's memory, “had particularly distinguished himself on the negative side that night”, wanted to know from Hamelmann what he wanted from him. He has had "the most sleepless nights of his life" since the announcement of his visit. Hamelmann took his time with the two of them, however, and convinced them of his good intentions, so that they finally came to trust him.
Finally, after they were released from custody, he picked them up in a private car. In his memoirs, Hamelmann points to the helplessness of those just released when they were confronted with him in an unfamiliar environment in a motorway service station. He first brought her to Wildeshausen, where he had meanwhile opened a nursing home. However, due to anonymous threats, he had to move her to another location after a while.
The leader's whereabouts later became known to Hamelmann, but he said he refrained from retaliation.
Hamelmann's position was discussed in the media and aroused admiration but also incomprehension at the end of the 1960s.
Traveling exhibition on the blockland murders
In 2012, the journalist Helmut Dachale, in cooperation with the educational institute of the Evangelical Church in Bremen and the Walle cultural center, created the traveling exhibition “Reconciliation on your own. The Blockland Murders, November 1945 ”. It has so far been shown in Bremen municipalities, cultural centers and a courtyard café in the Bremen Blockland.
family
Wilhelm Hamelmann met his future second wife in the hospital and started a new family. His granddaughter from this connection, the journalist Lilli Heinemann, worked on her family history in an article in ZEITmagazin in 2019. An English version of the article was published in 2020.
See also
literature
- Georg Garbade: home history of the blockland . Heimatverein Blockland, Blockland 1995, ISBN 978-3-9804586-1-0 , pp. 74-77.
- Hans-Joachim Kruse: On the history of the Bremen prison system: 1945–1972. Volume 4, 2004, BoD, pp. 101-104, ISBN 978-3-8334-0762-8 .
- Wilhelm Hamelmann: Forgive instead of reward. A gripping factual report. CGV-Missionsverlag Niedenstein, Mülheim ad Ruhr 1995, ISBN 3-923649-14-2 .
- Helmut Dachale: Single-handed reconciliation. The blockland murders in November 1945, their history and the consequences of the BEK / Kulturhaus Walle, Bremen ( online , PDF, 6 pages, 719 kB).
Web links
- Church messenger from May 2, 2012: Bremer forgives the murderers of his family by Anja Todt.
- Helmut Dachale: corpses in the basement . In: Journal of the Street, No. 13 - Blockland, 2014
Individual evidence
- ^ Stefan Mörchen: Black Market. Crime, order and morality in Bremen 1939–1949. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2011, p. 378 ff. ISBN 978-3-593-39298-1 (also dissertation at the University of Bremen , 2009).
- ↑ So at least Wolfgang Jacobmeyer: From Forced Laborers to Homeless Foreigners: The Displaced Persons in West Germany 1945–1951 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985, ISBN 3-647-35724-3 , p. 49.
- ↑ See also - with reference to statements by the Bremen social scientist Renate Meyer-Braun, Helmut Dachale: Reconciliation in single-handedly . P. 3.
- ↑ Hamelmann: Forgiveness instead of reward. P. 16.
- ↑ Radio Bremen: mass murder in the low bloc country . From the series As Time Goes By. The Chronicle. November 20, 2005.
- ^ For example, a report by the police and criminal police to combat the black market from winter 1945/46, Mörchen: Schwarzer Markt. P. 379.
- ↑ Helmut Dachale: reconciliation alone. , P. 2.
- ↑ a b c Helmut Dachale: reconciliation alone. , P. 4.
- ^ Mörchen: Black Market. P. 379.
- ↑ Blockland - Corpses in the Basement , in: Zeitschrift der Straße ( Memento from November 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Hamelmann: Forgiveness instead of reward. P. 45.
- ↑ Hamelmann: Forgiveness instead of reward. P. 21.
- ↑ a b Radio Bremen: July 13, 1946: Execution of the Blockland murderers. From the series As Time Goes By. The Chronicle. July 13, 2011.
- ↑ Helmut Dachale: reconciliation alone. , P. 5.
- ↑ There are indications that during the war he was in contact with the KPD member and RFB functionary Walter Oldehoff , who continued to operate illegally after his release from the Esterwegen concentration camp in 1936 and with his wife and like-minded people in Waller Feldmark Helmut Dachale organized shelter and support for prisoners of war and forced laborers: single-handedly reconciliation. , P. 5.
- ↑ Hamelmann: Forgiveness and Retribution. Pp. 21 f., 25 ff.
- ↑ Radio Bremen: July 13, 1946: Execution of the Blockland murderers. From the series As Time Goes By. The Chronicle. July 13, 2011.
- ^ Wilhelm Hamelmann: Forgiving instead of rewarding. P. 41.
- ↑ Hamelmann: Forgiveness instead of reward. P. 36 f.
- ↑ Hamelmann: Forgiveness instead of reward. P. 33 f.
- ↑ Cf. the reactions in the letters to Wilhelm Hamelmann, Hamelmann: Vergabe statt Vergelten. P. 48 ff.
- ^ Lilli Heinemann: My grandfather's whole family were murdered - but he found a way to forgive the killers . Sat 11 Jan 2020 10.00 GMT
Coordinates: 53 ° 8 ′ 20.7 " N , 8 ° 47 ′ 49.4" E