Bietigheim transit camp
The transit camp in Bietigheim was set up in Bietigheim (today part of Bietigheim-Bissingen ) in 1942 as a transit camp for deported prisoners of war and civilians, especially from Russia. The main camp was located in the immediate vicinity of the Bietigheim train station , an epidemic camp in Pleidelsheim was attached to the camp from 1942 to the beginning of 1943 and the sick camp in Großsachsenheim from mid-1943 . For slave laborers deployed in Bietigheim, there were additional accommodations at various locations in the village. In Bietigheim and in another transit camp in Ulm, the majority of the forced laborers who had been deported to Württemberg were checked for health and transferred to their workplaces. In addition, the Bietigheim camp was also a collection camp for seriously ill forced laborers who were left to their fate there or in the associated epidemic camps or who were deported to the eastern regions on return transports.
location
The Bietigheim transit camp was built about 200 meters south of the Bietigheim train station on the property in Laiern at the corner of Industriestrasse and Tammer Strasse instead of a former shooting range. With the exception of the access area in the northern corner, it had an almost rectangular floor plan of around 150 × 200 meters and an area of around 3.6 acres initially , which was later expanded.
management
The transit camp in Bietigheim was under the direction of Theodor Pfizer , a senior official of the Deutsche Reichsbahn and responsible for freight traffic in the south-west, which also included the supervision of forced labor camps in Ulm and Plochingen. The freight trains were used not only to supply weapons but also to deport people to concentration camps in the east.
history
Outbreak of war
Immediately after the start of the Second World War with the attack on Poland , Polish prisoners of war were deported to the German Reich as forced laborers. From the end of October 1939 up to 70 Polish forced laborers were employed in the forestry sector in Bietigheim. The Poland decrees of March 1940 gave these prisoners of war civil status and, like compulsory Polish civilians, as so-called “civil Poles” ( civil workers ), under strict conditions, were mostly housed with farmers. After a prisoner of war attacked the son of the local farmer leader with a knife in July 1940 , all Polish prisoners from Bietigheim were transferred to the punishment company in Münsingen , after which the city was assigned a new contingent of 70 Polish prisoners of war
The camp is set up
After the start of the campaign in the West in May 1940, prisoners of war initially came to the German Reich from the West. At the beginning of the Russian campaign, the prisoners of war planned for extermination there were housed in mass camps behind the front until the end of 1941 the "large-scale operation for the needs of the war economy" was specifically requested by Russian forced laborers. Since most of the Russian prisoners were exhausted or ill due to the catastrophic situation in the mass camps, only around 5% of them could be used to work until March 1942, whereupon the Military Economics Office Group requested 2 million civilian Russian workers to be deployed in the Reich territory in April 1942, which should be divided equally between the war economy and agriculture . The first civilian Russian forced laborers in Württemberg arrived in the spring of 1942 via transit camps in Heilbronn and Ulm , at the same time the construction of a transit camp (planned in January 1942) began in Bietigheim. The choice of location was due to the proximity to a railway junction and the available free space near the railway systems and away from civil settlements. The warehouse operation began before the warehouse was fully completed.
Warehouse operation
In the camp, the 500 to 1000 people expected daily in accordance with the requirements of the Military Economy Office were checked for their state of health, deloused and then distributed to workplaces. The camp in Bietigheim, together with the camp in Ulm, should be able to handle most of the incoming forced laborers. It stretched from northeast to southwest and was divided in the middle. The southeast half was reserved for the deloused , the northwest half for the deloused . The delousing facility was located in the extreme southeast corner of the camp, as well as an isolated area for sick people and those suspected of being ill, as well as for the admission of pregnant forced laborers. The hygiene measures should help prevent the transmission of contagious diseases to the German population. On average, the forced laborers stayed in the transit camp for 24–36 hours. In addition to forced laborers, concentration camp prisoners who had been assigned to set up satellite camps were also smuggled through the transit camp for delousing.
The delousing facility in the transit camp was already defective at the end of 1942, and several forced laborers fell ill with typhus immediately after passing through the camp . In the course of time, the sick barracks were partly occupied by healthy people, so that from 1943 the sick prisoners were transferred to a sick barrack at the city hospital. On the instructions of the employment office in Ludwigsburg , whose prisoner-of-war placement department was responsible for requests and inquiries regarding the prisoners, this barrack was cleared again in July 1944.
From the beginning, the transit camp in Bietigheim was also intended as a so-called collection point for returnees , to which severely ill and no longer able to work forced laborers were deported from the factories. For this purpose, a separate barrack was set up, in which the seriously ill languished until death or were deported to extermination camps or other transports to the eastern regions. Shortly after the camp began operating in May 1942, the collective barracks were already overcrowded, and the first deaths occurred. From June 1942 to the beginning of January 1943, a separate epidemic camp was set up in nearby Pleidelsheim in an already existing highway construction barrack camp, after which the camp in Bietigheim became a collection point for the seriously ill again. The deaths increased there, and the improvised small burial place behind the camp was soon occupied with 50 burials, so that the establishment of a larger "Russian cemetery" south of the camp was considered. In order to prevent this, the mayor of Bietigheim urged the "cremation of the future dying Eastern workers". Finally, in the spring of 1943 at the airport in Großsachsenheim the sickbed Großsachsenheim with five major and several small barracks and a private cemetery established. On average, between 500 and 600 patients were interned in this sick camp, many of whom died. The cemetery was expanded as early as the summer of 1944, although the burials last only took place in collective graves for four dead. A memorial stone names the number of 667 Eastern European forced laborers buried there, the death certificates show the deaths of 653 people, and the literature sometimes names 668 or 680 dead.
In the future, almost all pregnant forced laborers in Großsachsenheim were admitted to forced abortion or, in the case of very advanced pregnancies, to childbirth . 245 children were born there. Nevertheless, at least 24 children from Russian women and one child from a Polish woman were born in the Bietigheim transit camp. As usual, a so-called foreign children foster home was attached to the camps , in which an attempt was made to destroy the babies there due to a lack of basic supplies. At least 51 small children were killed in the Bietigheim transit camp; in Großsachsenheim the deaths of at least 27 children under the age of five are documented.
Forced labor
At the end of May 1942, the city of Bietigheim was assigned the first 25 civilian Russian workers, most of whom were accommodated in the city to build a siding for the SWF company and in the forestry office for forest and field path construction and various auxiliary work, while two women remained in the transit camp for camp service . The Bietigheim prisoners were housed in the separate urban forest camp. Since the forced laborers in the armaments factories were given preferential treatment over the forced laborers who had come to the municipalities, the Bietigheim forced laborers lacked clothes and shoes, so that the mayor of Bietigheim, after the municipal council in May 1942 still had "good and appropriate accommodation for the Russians" had confirmed, already in July 1942 complained to the district administrator about their "miserable condition".
In addition to the town of Bietigheim, various companies in Bietigheim were assigned forced laborers, who were also quartered in the town's Forst camp , so that it was quickly full. Although the city was not obliged to build shelters for forced laborers from the factories, it had an interest both in trade tax revenues and in the choice of the location of such camps and therefore began building a new community camp in the Comradeship House in July 1942 . The Deutsche Linoleum-Werke set up their own warehouse of ten barracks for almost 500 forced laborers on the sports field on Wilhelmstrasse. The accommodation barracks were partly supplied by the armaments office GmbH, which could only insufficiently meet the requirements. The city of Bietigheim had ordered eight such barracks, but the mayor had already doubted in August 1942 whether even a single one could be delivered. Since 100 additional Russian forced laborers were expected and now also the camaraderie house was full, also Kameradschaftshaus and forestry in the coming winter were not heated and job losses were feared by diseases, the mayor asked the HJ , the youth house in the Fritz-Kroeber Road to the establishment of an Eastern Labor Camp . After the forest and the Kameradschaftshaus had been cleared in October 1942, a total of 128 Eastern workers , men and women, were quartered in 13 rooms .
The housing and supervision of the forced laborers in the Bietigheim city camps was initially moderate. The strict security requirements actually planned could often not be met due to a lack of staff. Some of the forced laborers even took part in film screenings and church services, whereupon in October 1942 the state police in Stuttgart issued a warning to comply with the applicable regulations. The way the population treated the forced laborers is described as "indifferent", with several Germans selling the needy forced laborers mainly alcohol at exorbitant prices.
In July 1944, 210 forced laborers were housed in the House of Youth , with which up to 16 people had to share a room. In August 1944 the house was occupied by 186 people, including six children. After the sickness of the German security guard who had been responsible there until then, at the end of August 1944 the guarding of the building was assigned to a forced laborer described as “quite German-friendly”, which led to conflicts with the Russian men housed in the camp.
The total number of forced laborers deployed in Bietigheim is not completely clear. A list in the city archive of Bietigheim-Bissingen names a total of 1286 Russians and 217 Poles, which can be explained by the high throughput of workers and the preferential treatment due to the accommodating nature of the transit camp. A list from March 22, 1944 names two Polish workers at the Neckarwerke and 202 “Eastern workers” from Russia. The following companies had employed slave labor in March 1944: Schuhfabrik C. Fritz (23 people), special factory for car accessories SWF (32), tube factory Kienzle (13), Klumpp and Aretz (16), Rotnahtkragen (10), city of Bietigheim (7), Forestry Office Bietigheim (4), shoe sole factory Rau (1), G. Staudt & Söhne (1), Wagenfabrik Schumacher (4), abrasive works Fr. Elbe (19), furniture factory Bock and Link (9), worsted spinning mill (9), Mächtle ( 3), Orgelbau Steirer (2), Reichsbahn-Güterstelle (34).
The DLW's “Russian camp” on the sports field was used to accommodate displaced persons after the war. The House of Youth later became the Youth House.
Individual evidence
- ^ Andreas Löscher: The biographical gap , Südwestpresse of March 22, 2012
literature
- Annette Schäfer: Forced labor in Bietigheim 1939–1945 and the establishment and function of the “transit camp”. In: Sheets on the city's history. Issue 14, Bietigheim-Bissingen 1999
Coordinates: 48 ° 56 ′ 40.8 " N , 9 ° 8 ′ 11.1" E