Uelzen-Bohldamm refugee camp

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The refugee camp Uelzen-Bohldamm even Notaufnahmelager Uelzen-Bohldamm and Bohldammlager was, from 1945 to 1963, a refugee camp in Uelzen .

History of the emergency room

It was located on the corner of Bohldamm and Von-Estorff-Strasse and existed from September 1945 to March 1963. During this time, around 1.3 million displaced people from the former eastern regions and around 750,000 refugees from the GDR passed through it . These mostly traveled directly by trains with a stop at Bohldamm.

The establishment took place on the orders of the military government and became the central reception point in Lower Saxony. This was where the admission, registration and distribution took place. From 1947 on, until then the camp had been used by the British military government as a control and guidance instrument for refugees, a distinction was made between those who were politically persecuted and other refugees . The refugees were distributed to other camps, such as B. to Camp Reinsehlen .

At the beginning of 1947, the SPD politician and then head of the Lüneburg District Refugee Office , Heinrich Albertz , posed as a refugee and went through the process. His judgment concerned those who had fled from the Soviet zone, denied them their actual refugee status and even saw this group of people as a blockade for the actual refugees from the former eastern regions. Uelzen would be an “institute for the reception of anti-social and criminal elements”. In Die Zeit , Jan Molitor wrote about the camp in 1948 and 1949.

The Uelzen-Bohldamm refugee camp was used from 1950 by the Emergency Admission Act (next to Gießen and later from 1952 Marienfelde ) as one of two federal emergency reception camps for refugees from the Soviet occupation zone and later the GDR .

Initially the refugee camp consisted of tents, but later developed into a complex of around 60 buildings. During the maximum time, 8,000 refugees were cared for, whose care was ensured by up to 450 permanent employees and numerous volunteers. By December 1945, 8,000 refugees had already entered the camp. From May 1946 to September 1947 there were an average of 6,000 refugees per day. With the construction of the Wall in 1961, the number of German refugees fell noticeably.

From June 19, 2019, a memorial plaque will commemorate the refugee camp at the location .

literature

  • Henrik Bispinck, Katharina Hochmuth: Refugee camps in post-war Germany: Migration, politics, memory . Ch.links, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86153-811-0 , p. 190 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Arne Hoffrichter: The Uelzen-Bohldamm emergency reception center in the process of immigration from the Soviet occupation zone and GDR 1945-1963 . Wallstein Verlag , 2018.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rainer Schulze: Troubled Times: Experience reports from the district of Celle 1945-1949 . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2018, ISBN 978-3-486-70815-8 , p. 301 ( google.de [accessed on March 18, 2020]).
  2. ^ Sascha Schiessl: "The Gate to Freedom": Consequences of the War, Politics of Remembrance and Humanitarian Claims in the Friedland Camp (1945-1970) . Wallstein Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-8353-2967-6 , pp. 98 ( google.de [accessed on March 18, 2020]).
  3. ^ DIE ZEIT (archive): Too many question marks at all borders . In: The time . December 9, 1948, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed March 18, 2020]).
  4. ↑ DIE ZEIT (archive): "Those who do not belong to the circle of those ..." In: Die Zeit . November 3, 1949, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed March 18, 2020]).