House Hardt camp

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The Haus Hardt camp was a camp used by the Hitler Youth near Nörvenich in the Düren district of North Rhine-Westphalia .

In late summer 1944, the Nazi authorities recruited all available men for Schanz service at the Western Wall . On September 2, 1944, the Gauleiter of the NSDAP , Josef Grohé , called on all young people over the age of 15 to do entrenchment duty via radio and the press.

The Düren industrialist Leopold Peill bought the Haus Hardt site in 1910 and had a villa built there, which he lived in from 1914 to around 1943. In mid-1943, the Todt Organization began building an alternative hospital on part of the site, as the hospitals in the cities were very endangered by bombs. In Nörvenich there would have been a privacy screen through the wooded hill. After the supply lines were laid, three stone buildings and nine wooden barracks were built for the staff and patients. A division staff of the Wehrmacht had set up in the Peill villa . When visibility was good, planes were constantly over Haus Hardt, firing at anything that was moving.

After the end of the Schanz action at Herzogenrath , the leadership in Nörvenich began to set up a camp for newly called up young people . Straw was distributed in the barracks as a night camp and the 8th grade girls from Nörvenich were obliged to make sandwiches . Around 600 to 700 young people are said to have been housed in the camp. But the numbers fluctuate. The Düren newspaper speaks in the article Fighter bombers attack barrack camps of September 28, 1994 about 400 young people. The exact number can no longer be determined. There were other storage facilities in the Gohr hall in Rölsdorf and in the Empt inn in Lüxheim .

From Monday to Thursday, September 26th to 28th, 1944, the boys gathered in Düren were marched in batches to Nörvenich . In Nörvenich, the young people were warned not to walk around in the area so that the enemy planes could not become aware of the crowd. The boys were never used to jump.

On Thursday, September 28, 1944, American P-38 Lightning fighter-bombers attacked the Haus Hardt camp. The aircraft belonged to the US Air Force's 9th Tactical Fleet . They could be clearly identified by their double body. Two days earlier, an SS unit had shot down such an aircraft near Wissersheim , which crashed near Gut Ving. At 11:20 a.m., two planes dropped four bombs into the area, which looked like a factory from a height of about 800 m. In addition, they fired their on-board weapons into the barracks, which were immediately blazing as there was a lot of straw in the wooden barracks. The American aviators discovered the area by accident.

Some of the young people were trapped in the collapsed barracks and burned to death. Others ran in panic into the open field and were shot there with the Lightning's on-board weapons. The entire attack lasted about 10 minutes.

It is said that the boys assumed it was a German aircraft. They would then have climbed onto the roofs of the barracks and waved to the airmen. According to eyewitnesses, this is wrong.

As far as they could walk, the injured made their way home on foot. Seriously injured people were brought to the school in Eschweiler via Feld , where a main dressing station was set up. Since the attack had spread like wildfire in the district, some parents came by bike or wagon to take their child home. The parents were not notified of the death of their children.

A few survivors are still alive and today are mostly around 90 years old.

40 young people between the ages of 14 and 18 were killed, contrary to the figures. The deaths are all the registry office Noervenich with the entry ... killed in an air raid in Nörvenich, in Hardt ... to 11.30 pm notarized. The number of injuries is unknown.

The dead came from different places in the Düren district, as can be seen from the list. They were buried in their hometowns.

Today the Bundeswehr barracks Haus Hardt is located on the site .

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Coordinates: 50 ° 48 '8.4 "  N , 6 ° 38' 58.7"  E