Kløvermarken refugee camp

The refugee camp Kløvermarken ( Danish Flygtningelejren på Kløvermarken ) was an internment camp in Copenhagen , Denmark . It existed from the end of 1945 to 1949. The location was Kløvermarken , Amager . It was the largest camp on Zealand and housed German civilian refugees who had been brought to Denmark by the German armed forces in the last weeks of the war while fleeing the consequences of the war . Of the 240,000 refugees, around 92,000 were accommodated in 151 camps in the Copenhagen area. Around 19,000 refugees were housed in Kløvermarken.

prehistory

From 1909 to autumn 1945 the area was a small airfield used by the Danes and the German occupying forces. In 1912 the Zeppelin LZ 13 Hansa landed there on its demonstration tour in Scandinavia . Hermann Göring was stationed there in 1919 as a military advisor. In contrast to the larger refugee camp with 36,000 refugees in Oksbøl on Jutland , which was housed in a former military camp of the German occupation forces, the Klövermarken camp was only rebuilt from September 1945 to free the schools in Copenhagen occupied by German refugees.

History of the camp

Aerial view of the Klövermarken camp

By the end of the Second World War , around 238,000 German refugees, mainly from East Prussia and Pomerania , had accumulated in Denmark. On Zealand and Lolland - Falster there were 124,000, the rest were on Funen and Jutland. All hotels, gyms and schools in Copenhagen had been confiscated by the German occupying forces as shelter for the refugees. When, following the hopeless repatriation of the refugees after the end of the war after the summer vacation in 1945, it was not possible for the Danish pupils to take classes in their own schools, the Danish government decided in autumn 1945 to build a barrack camp for 19,000 refugees on the site of the small airfield Klövermarken.

The wood industry in Sweden offered 200 barracks of the "woodcutter" type and the fast delivery of further, larger barracks by mid-1946. In October 1945 2200 people were busy building the barracks. The site in Klövermarken was only planned after the establishment of a camp in Bellahöj in Copenhagen on a cattle market and festival site failed due to violent protests from Danish farmers. Klövermarken had a port for delivering the barracks and a rail connection. The area was sandy and damp, the barracks had to be built on stakes.

Denmark had previously tried to return the refugees to Germany under the heading of “ repatriation ”. These negotiations with the Allies as occupying powers in Germany were unsuccessful. However, Denmark was recognized by the Allies because of the Danish freedom fighters against the German occupation as a victorious power of the Second World War. As a result, the refugees became prisoners of Denmark under international law under the Geneva Convention . They could be interned , but Denmark had to take care of their food. The Klövermarken area was therefore provided with a man-high double barbed wire fence with a walkway for guards. On the eastern edge of the refugee camp, a separate hospital was built for the wounded German soldiers who remained in Denmark.

The construction of the camp began with the leveling of connecting paths and the construction of larger communal barracks, such as a central kitchen, administration, workshops, infirmary and a large number of latrines, "twelve-cylinder", as they were known from the German Volkssturm, before the first residential barracks were built . School, gymnastics, sauna, film and theater barracks were later completed. The first refugees arrived at the turn of the year 1945/46, the entire construction of the camp was not completed until mid-1946. Then almost 20,000 refugees were housed in around 900 barracks in the camp.

On November 2, 1946, the repatriation began from the Kolding camp ; on November 12, 1946, the first of several partial transports with German refugees to the British occupation zone left Klövermarken. Further transports only took place in the spring of 1947 to the American Zone, before further refugees were able to travel to Germany at the end of 1948 and the camp was closed.

In 1949, after the last refugees had left, the Klövermarken camp was completely cleared. There are no more remains that indicate its use as a location for an internment camp.

Life in the camp

Health system shown in the Klövermarken construction plan. The camp was divided into ten blocks. Construction began with blocks 1 and 2 with barracks for 16 beds. Barracks for 60-80 beds followed. The later barracks in the northern area were then smaller again. The latrines were arranged between the blocks with supply routes. The administration barracks and the central kitchen were in the middle of the connecting road from west to east. Marked at the bottom right with Hospital was a military hospital for German soldiers (long-term patients).

On the left the smaller barracks, in the middle the open space with the latrines and on the right the larger barracks. The long barrack standing transversely on the left was the administration with storage facilities, the long barrack standing transversely on the right was the central kitchen. At the bottom of the picture is the double barbed wire fence with a walkway for guards.

Memory sketch of the woodcutter type barrack for 16 beds with other interior fittings. (They are the smaller barracks on the left in the picture above.)

In the camp there were mostly women with children and a few elderly people. All of them had previously been to makeshift camps in Copenhagen and were used to camp life. Despite the crampedness and lack of privacy in the barracks, trauma caused by the flight, loss of relatives and prescribed idleness, the coexistence was unanimous. However, the camp management occasionally had to relocate in order to separate conflicting parties. The approximately one square kilometer area allowed modest freedom of movement. In contrast to many smaller camps in Denmark, the feeling of being locked in and running up against the fence did not arise immediately. Sleep was ordered from 10 p.m., and walks were then no longer allowed.

Life in the camp was completely independent. Except for a few special cases, there was no exit from the camp. Hardly 20 able-bodied men had found employment with the Danes or were employed by the German mine clearance service, which cleared mines from the waters around Denmark on behalf of the English. There was a Danish warehouse manager, an administration with an attached "Housing Office", a medical care system with an infirmary and a separate jurisdiction. Violations of the camp rules, thefts, assault in the camp and offenses against the fraternization ban were tried and judged here. The Danish government delivered food every day, which was stored in a camp barrack, processed in the central kitchen and distributed to the camp inmates. At set times, the food was transported in buckets on handcarts to the distribution points, where the portions were collected. The food in the camp was sufficient and balanced, but monotonous. The adults were divided up into kitchen work and cleaning tasks.

From the spring of 1946, the individual families were allocated a small piece of garden land between the barracks, where they could grow vegetables and potatoes. The seeds for flowers and tobacco were given out by the administration. Garden tools were borrowed from central depots. From the spring of 1946, the post and letter block was lifted and letters, but censored and written in capital letters with 25 words, could be sent between the camps and to Germany.

From mid-1946, lessons were held in the school barracks with German teachers from the camp and “auxiliary teachers” trained by them. There were gym barracks as well as gym classes. Services, baptisms, confirmations, communions and funeral ceremonies took place in the three church barracks. Films were shown in the event barracks and theater groups performed plays. Doctors practiced in their barracks, as did a dentist. There was a home for the blind and the elderly and a hairdressing salon, to which the camp residents had to register with waiting times. There were bath and sauna barracks, to which access was divided several times a week.

Life in the barracks was spartan and without privacy. We slept in four-person bunk double beds. In the smaller woodcutter barracks there were 16 beds, but mostly more people. Children under six years of age had to sleep in twos in one bed, infants with their mother, if they did not have their own stroller. The bedding consisted of straw-filled mattresses and pillows filled with chaff, both of which were made of sturdy, brown crepe paper. The coverlet was also made of this crepe, but with layers of paper inside, quilted thinner. These sets were renewed every 8–12 weeks. The smaller barracks only had a cannon stove, a table and two benches. Tea was made on the cannon stove. In the larger barracks for up to 100 people there were accordingly more cannon ovens and more tables and benches. The main heating material was peat, occasionally coal and wood. The wood came mainly from tree trunks that were excavated in Denmark and imported from all over Scandinavia . This partially phosphorus-containing, decomposed wood glowed in the dark.

There were no washing facilities with a water connection in the barracks. Since there were no toilets, latrines had to be used outside the building. Morning hygiene was limited to washing the cat with a damp cloth. Water was available from central taps. Occasionally, toothbrushes and a toothpaste were given out. Nurses went through the barracks and gave the children cod liver oil.

In the camp, the Deutsche Nachrichten, a weekly newspaper for the refugees in Denmark, was distributed through donations from outside - the refugees were not allowed to have Danish money and could not have bought the newspaper - as were announcements and short addresses over loudspeakers distributed in the camp. As a result, the camp inmates had a good knowledge of the conditions in Germany, which promoted satisfaction in the camp. Despite all internment and other restrictions, there was no hunger and struggle for daily existence in the camp as was common in the occupation zones in Germany at the same time.

The camp had a Red Cross missing person tracing service . Telephone calls to Denmark or abroad were prohibited. Adult clothes or shoes of the children were collected from the clothing store and exchanged for suitable ones. Clothing donated by Danes was given to adults and children against a means of proof. There was a tailor's workshop, where you could change or repair your own clothes or those assigned by the clothing store. This was also done with shoes and a shoemaker's workshop. A locksmith and carpenter's workshop took care of the preservation of the barracks and interior fittings, and repaired the eating containers or other items of the camp inmates.

The current of the lamps in the barracks was switched off at 10 p.m. There were no additional electrical connections in the barracks. There was resistance to the frequent vaccinations that were supposed to prevent epidemics. The guards between the barbed wire fences should not be approached less than 50 meters. There were actually warning shots at camp inmates once when a guard felt provoked.

In mid-1946, individual German families who had lived in Denmark and had been convicted as collaborators were expelled from their houses / apartments, including household items and with their own cars, and interned in Klövermarken.

Discussions were caused by the latrines arranged between the barracks blocks, which at first were freely visible and only got a privacy screen in mid-1946. The buckets in the latrines were emptied daily so that the unpleasant smell was kept within limits.

Special

To the north-east of the camp, a pond for extinguishing water was dug and the excavation was piled up to form a "mountain" about two to three meters high. This mountain was named "Sehnsuchtshügel" (hill of longing) in the camp, because from it one could look at the passing ships in the Öresund .

On foggy days a foghorn howled and showed the ships the way to the port of Copenhagen. The foghorn was named "manatee" in the camp and annoyed not only the camp inmates at night, but also the Danes in the vicinity of the camp.

On the eastern edge of the camp lay the Strickers Batteri . The historic coastal battery, built during the Napoleonic Wars 1801–1808 according to plans by Ernst Peymann, was not accessible and was specially fenced. The coastal battery was named after First Lieutenant Justus Alexander Stricker (1775–1841). From here he defended the port of Copenhagen against the Napoleonic troops. The boys in the camp longed for this facility as an adventure playground, but were not allowed to go there. Strickers Batteri was blown up in 1954 and was not considered worth preserving.

The only two-story brick building in the camp was the former flight control building. The former entrance portal to the airfield was bricked, which was decorated with two royal crowns and carried the iron lettering "Fligtningelejr".

Because the camp was rebuilt, there were hardly any vermin in Klövermarken, not even a plague of mice or rats, as reported from other camps in Denmark. Nevertheless, many cats, illegally cherished and cared for by the camp inmates, joined the people. Their living space was the space under the barracks, which stood on 10-30 cm high posts above the ground.

The youths in the camp dug large cave castles in the loose sandy soil under the barracks to be among themselves. In robber games with other "castle crews", opposing cave castles were also destroyed.

For better orientation, the barracks had been painted in the colors blue, yellow, green and the typical Nordic red. Blocks 1 and 2 were blue, followed by a shade of yellow in blocks 3 and 4. This scheme was later abandoned, the barracks in area 9 were each painted differently. The existing paint was used up.

literature

Cajus Bekker: Escape across the sea. Baltic Sea, German Destiny 1945 . Ullstein, 1983, ISBN 978-3-548-33024-2 .
Arne Gammelgaard: Uninvited guests. East German refugees in Denmark 1945-1949 . Verlag Rautenberg, Leer 1994, ISBN 3-7921-0314-1 .
Karl-Georg Mix: German refugees in Denmark 1945-1949 . F. Steiner, 2005, ISBN 3-515-08690-0 .
Henrik Havrehed: The German Refugees in Denmark 1945-1949 . Boyens & Co, 1989, ISBN 3-8042-0483-X .