Elben women's camp

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The "tone hole" today

The Elben women's camp was a forced labor camp run by the Todt Organization (OT) for around 200 German women and girls of Jewish origin. It existed from September 1944 to May 1945 in the north Hessian village of Elben , now part of the city of Naumburg in the Kassel district in Hesse ( Germany ). It was the third of a total of three camps that the National Socialist regime operated in the village during World War II . The painter Ilse Häfner-Mode was one of the inmates .

The first two camps

Even after the attack on Poland in 1939, Poles were for a short time forcibly brought to the town as farm workers. In the late summer of 1940, the first camp was set up under the name “Kommando 680” when 28 French prisoners of war from Stalag IX A in Ziegenhain were housed in the hall of the community restaurant in Elben. They had to do agricultural work in the village.

A second camp was established in 1943 in place when the Organization Todt began, in Hardt head at the "Felsenkeller" studs to drive into the mountain to there as part of the so-called U-shifting a bombproof fabrication plant (the so-called Great Great facility "Sapphire" ) for aircraft engines of the Kassel company Henschel or its subsidiary Henschel Flugmotorenbau GmbH from Altenbauna . The construction companies were Richter and Cronibus from Kassel, and the mining company Hibernia provided the necessary miners . However, the main work was done by forced laborers and prisoners of war from Eastern Europe, mostly Russians, who were housed in a barrack camp on the right bank of the Elbe on the way to Altendorf .

The women's camp in the clay hole

The "Tonloch" 2017, where the women's camp was located
The former "camp in the clay hole", which is now wooded

In September 1944, men and women in East Westphalia, all of them Jewish mixed race of the first degree as well as “Jewish relatives” from so-called privileged mixed marriages , were arrested by the Gestapo (“Sonderkommando J”) and sent to the Todt Organization's forced labor camps. Most of the men came to Zeitz in Saxony-Anhalt, some of the women to Elben, some to Kassel- Bettenhausen . The transport took place by train to Kassel and from there by carts and on foot to Elben.

There the women were first housed in Wehrmacht tents that had been set up north of the village near the clay hole of the former brickworks . The camp was therefore also called "camp in the clay hole". The partially open, but covered outbuildings of the former brickworks were not made available to the women. When, with the late autumn rains, the tents in the pit were increasingly in the water, Elben residents and an OT guide campaigned for better accommodation. The women were then transferred to the Eubel restaurant, where 120 people were housed in the restaurant hall with straw sacks and blankets. There was a single toilet, and a small sink in the feed kitchen was used for personal hygiene and laundry. Soon afterwards the women had to build four wooden barracks and a washing and toilet barracks in the clay hole , and they were moved there again on Christmas Day 1944. The camp kitchen was temporarily located in the Degenhardt restaurant hall.

The rations were meager, and since there were only about a dozen tin bowls available for the entire camp, most of the inmates had to make do with tin cans as eating and drinking vessels. Many were in very poor health as a result of poor diet and hard work. Medical care by a Russian doctor, who is said to have also looked after the local population in part, and by a former community nurse from Scherfede who was housed in the camp was inadequate.

The women had to do the hardest work ten hours a day, both in the construction of their barracks and in the work on the tunnel system. The main work consisted of digging sand, transporting construction material, carrying away excavated material and handwork in the tunnel construction. The wake-up call was at 6:00 am, followed by roll call and assignment to the labor service at 7:00 am. Labor duty was from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and from 1:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. After that, the women were allowed to move around the village until 8 p.m. From 10 p.m. it was quiet. On Saturday they worked part-time.

Both labor camps and their guards were under the OT. The women's camp was not fenced in and probably not guarded at the beginning. The OT staff themselves did not carry out any surveillance, but managed the work. It was only after some time that a French-speaking OT guards were placed in the rectory. It consisted of former French SD or Belgian SS members (the information on this is not uniform) who were no longer fit for front duty because of injuries or other reasons.

The women were able to move relatively freely in the evenings and on Sundays. Some Catholic camp inmates visited the nunnery of the Vincentian Sisters in Naumburg to wash or pray in the Catholic town church. Writing letters and receiving visitors were not prohibited. It was not uncommon for Westphalian husbands to visit their wives in the camp; often they found accommodation in the village. The visible misery of the women soon aroused compassion in the village, and there are numerous testimonies that the village population helped the women as far as circumstances allowed. The women exchanged z. B. Help with the families in the village, especially in the household, or self-made handicrafts for food. They warmed up with the local families, were able to wash and groom themselves.

The Liberation

As American troops drew closer from the south and west, the camp administration was instructed to deport the women east, but that order was no longer carried out. When American troops were already circumventing Fritzlar , a few kilometers further south, on Good Friday 1945 , the camp manager exchanged his uniform for civilian clothes and disappeared with the camp manager at the rock cellar. In the evening a group of SS men came into the village and there were fears for the safety of the women in the camp. Several of them therefore hid in the attics of various houses or in the camp of French prisoners of war. On the morning of March 31, 1945, Holy Saturday, soldiers of the 9th Panzer Division of the 5th Corps of the 1st US Army entered the village from the south. The women were free.

The "camp in the clay hole" existed until May 1945. After the closure, the barracks were sold and for a time served as makeshift apartments or tool sheds.

Current condition

Today the area is afforested. The local branch of the German Federation for Bird Protection has leased it and converted the two older clay holes into celestial ponds as part of the biotope design . The location of the wash barracks is still visible between the two ponds: a concrete slab shows the place where the toilet and wash house were once located.

In 1988, in the course of the local jubilee, information boards were set up, including at the rock cellar and at the clay hole.

literature

  • Volker Knöppel (Ed.): "... I was at home there" - Synagogue community Naumburg 1503–1938 (Yearbook of the Naumburg History Association, vol. 13 = The history of our homeland, vol. 29), Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies e . V. Kassel 1834, branch association Hofgeismar, Hofgeismar, 1998.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information boards (from: Festival magazine Kirchbau and Dorffest in Elbenberg from July 3rd to 10th, 1988 )

Coordinates: 51 ° 14 ′ 16 ″  N , 9 ° 12 ′ 9 ″  E