DP camp Fritzlar

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The DP camp Fritzlar in the north Hessian town of Fritzlar existed from 1946 to 1949. It was initially with former forced laborers , then by Jewish concentration camp occupied survivors and homeless.

history

The artillery barracks around 1920

After the end of the Second World War , the Watter barracks in Fritzlar and parts of the former Fritzlar air base were used by UNRRA as a DP camp for so-called Displaced Persons (DPs). The DP camp at the air base existed until at least April 1946 and at that time was occupied by around 150 people. When the camp in the barracks opened is not known for certain, probably in the spring of 1946. On April 2, 1946, the first day for which statistical data were available, there were 1,439 DPs in the old barracks, almost all of them former slave laborers . Initially there were no Jews among them. A few days later, the number of inmates temporarily swelled to 1979, but then fell again to 1,481 by April 15. From 1947 the successor organization of UNRRA, the IRO, took over the administration of the DP camps.

In the period from July 1946 to February 1947, more and more Jewish DPs were admitted to Fritzlar. The first Jewish camp residents are documented on June 1, 1946; on February 8, 1947, 1,050 of the 1,069 inmates belonged to this group of people. Until it was closed, the camp was then almost exclusively occupied by Jewish DPs waiting to leave Germany. The total occupancy between March 1947 and March 1948 was between 995 and 918 and decreased only slowly. Only in April 1948 did it fall below 900 and at the end of November 1948 it was still 825. After that, the warehouse gradually emptied and in 1949 it was closed. The dates of the closure are different: February 1949 and August 4, 1949. The IRO had already considered closing the camp in the middle of 1948, as the sanitary conditions in particular were very poor.

Regardless of the poor living conditions, there was a lively cultural life in the camp, especially during the period when the majority of the residents were of Jewish origin. The camp community had a primary school, a Talmud Torah (religiously oriented Jewish primary school for boys) and a Tarbut school . Tarbut schools (Tarbut = Hebrew for “culture”) were secular Zionist schools with Hebrew as the language of instruction, which were established from 1919 primarily in Poland , Lithuania and Romania . There was also a vocational school , initially set up by the camp committee and operated by World ORT from July 1947 , housed in a former stable building, where radio technology, auto mechanics, locking technology and clothing tailoring were taught.

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ Paul Gerhard Lohmann: Jewish fellow citizens in Fritzlar 1933-1949. BoD, Norderstedt, 2006, ISBN 3-8334-4417-7 , p. 98.
  2. ↑ Paul Gerhard Lohmann: Jewish fellow citizens in Fritzlar 1933-1949. BoD, Norderstedt, 2006, ISBN 3-8334-4417-7 , p. 101.
  3. ^ Four Jewish Dp Camps in US Zone of Germany to Close During March, JDC Reports . In: Jewish Telegraphic Agency , March 14, 1949.
  4. ↑ Paul Gerhard Lohmann: Jewish fellow citizens in Fritzlar 1933-1949. BoD, Norderstedt, 2006, ISBN 3-8334-4417-7 , p. 98.
  5. ↑ a b Fritzlar. In: World LOCATION : Displaced Person Camps. Accessed July 2017.
  6. ^ Adina Bar-El: Tarbut . In: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. As of October 25, 2010.

Web links

Coordinates: 51 ° 8 ′ 4.2 ″  N , 9 ° 16 ′ 30 ″  E