Farge – Sandbostel memorial march
The memorial march from the Valentin submarine bunker to the Sandbostel camp was held from July 10th to 13th, 1985. 40 years earlier, prisoners had essentially taken this route when the Farge subcamp was evacuated . This death march began on April 9, 1945 in Blumenthal .
Dissolution of the Bremen camp
In Blumenthal there was a satellite camp of Neuengamme concentration camp since September 1944 , which produced parts for submarines and oil turbines in a factory.
No prisoner was to fall alive into the hands of the Allies , so they were sent on death marches in front of the approaching Allied troops.
“The transport of 2,500 - 3,000 prisoners started marching on April 9th and arrived in Farge in the evening . ... On April 10th, the journey continued via Bockhorn , Schwanewede , Meyenburg , Uthlede to Hagen , where the prisoners slept in a brick kiln behind the city. On April 11 the transport passed Bramstedt and Bokel and stopped at the Stubben station to load all the sick and wounded into wagons. Some of them later arrived in Neuengamme. The march continued to Beverstedt .
“One day a man came and asked for the boss. He told me the following: 'We're going to be passing here on a train of prisoners in three days. Could we rest here in the yard for about an hour? ' Of course I said 'yes'. Then he asked me if we could cook potatoes for the people in our large kettle in the stable. Of course I said yes. 'Three hundredweight?' 'Of course!' You can guess what I was thinking. 'Peel or Boil?' - Then the man said: 'Well, just like that, with Pelle, done.' ... That morning the train arrived, everyone in striped suits and hats, a terrible sight. Some just crawled along like that. The poor people attacked the potatoes like starved animals. And what thirst they were! All of our milk cans were filled with fresh water. ... I had the opportunity to talk to one of the guards and asked, 'What have these poor people done?' He said: 'Most of them nothing. Some came to the concentration camp just because of their honest opinion. ' ... Whenever I think of the terrible war, I experience this terrible story. Something like that must never happen again! Never!"
- A woman from near Beverstedt : Borgsen / Volland (see literature) p. 178From there it went on via Taben , Stemmermühlen , Kirchwistedt , left the main road and stayed in a farm near Horst . On April 12th we spent the night in Barchel , away from the main road. On April 13 and 14, the prisoners marched on the main road to Bremervörde . There they were housed in a Neuengamme satellite camp. The transport took the afternoon train via Stade , Harburg to Winsen (Luhe) , walked from there to Drage and took the ferry to Neuengamme . We stopped in Neuengamme from April 15th to 17th inclusive. "
“The death march of 2,500 to 3,000 prisoners ... leads via Neuengamme to the Lübeck Bay , where the survivors are loaded onto the Cap Arcona , Thielbek and Athens together with other victims of the“ evacuation marches ” . (The ships were sunk by British bombs, most of the occupants were killed). Some of the unfit for transport were left behind in the Sandbostel prisoner of war camp with typhus and dysentery. Over 300 dead were buried in Brillit (Rotenburg district) alone . "
“We marched for four days, from dawn to night, with almost no food. From time to time, especially in the brief moments of stopping, we gathered up as much grass and weeds from the side of the road as we could with our hands; we chewed and ate it to keep ourselves upright. "It means march or die," said the Germans who escorted us. There were many who, passed out and already in agony, let themselves fall to the ground close to the edge of the ditch, alone or in small groups, to die. […] On April 19, we were in Lübeck, where we were allowed to descend into the bilge of two large ships lying on the quay. The hellish time of our entire detention begins. "
Farge-Sandbostel memorial march
History of origin
The anti-fascist working group of the Gustav-Heinemann-Bürgerhaus had dealt with the subject since 1980 and thought about how to make the information that it had gained through questioning contemporary witnesses and studying sources available to a wider public. The idea of following the prisoners' death march from the Valentin bunker to Sandbostel came to the mind of the members of the working group when they heard about similar projects. The educational and leisure center in Hanover-Mühlenberg held a memorial march every year over Isernhagen , Burgwedel , Fuhrberg , Wietze and Winsen / A. carried out to the Catholic Atonement Church of the Precious Blood in Bergen . After a meeting in the document house of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial on January 19, 1984, the idea of holding the Farge – Sandbostel memorial march became concrete. July 10-13, 1985 was decided as the period. That was the week before the start of the summer vacation. The Bremen authorities for education and youth supported the project, Mayor Henning Scherf took over the patronage. Further support came from the Association of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime (VVN)
Stations of the memorial march
63 people from twelve-year-old schoolchildren to pensioners took part in the march on a daily or permanent basis. The press and television also came to the start on July 10th at 9 a.m. The Vegesack local office manager Behrens said goodbye to the participants at the submarine bunker memorial. Already in Schwanewede a contemporary witness offered to report that, as an 8-year-old, he had seen a group of prisoners billeted in a barn in Oerel. In Uthlede there was food from the ASB . Then we went to the brickworks just before the town of Hagen, where the first overnight stay took place. The operations manager reported that at the age of 14, he witnessed a prisoner march.
Hagen
In Hagen, the participants of the march held a vigil in front of the memorial stone for the synagogue. The evening event took place in the town hall hall. After the willingness of Messrs. Heß and Christiansen from the commune to help, there was a heated argument - above all about the historical evaluation of a boulder in the Loher Forest on which a swastika was carved. The next morning a primary school class and a reporter from Radio Bremen came to cover the march.
Stumps
After passing Bramstedt and Bokel, where lunch was taken, the march arrived in Stubben. There - as in many other places along the way - the cemetery was visited, where an "unknown dead" might have been a victim of the march forty years earlier.
Many experienced the most moving moment of the march on Hauptstrasse (Bahnhofstrasse 60). The owner of a wool shop had set up a bucket with water and a ladle in front of her house.
“During the years when so much injustice was done in the name of our people, we came to know feelings such as distrust, hatred, insecurity, guilt and fear. We were burdened, our souls were affected. ... My father and the parents of my friends a few houses down the street had put buckets with water and trowels on the side of the road - and then we saw the men approaching on the main street. From afar one could not yet see that the queue of tired, emaciated, white-faced men in striped suits, dragging their way along so laboriously, would be so endless. ... This was a silent shuffle. The men stared ahead. ... Every now and then a man stumbled and the guards ran to him and pushed him forward. We felt that none of these people could be angry. We felt, as it were, complicit and ashamed of the guard ... "
25 years later, the same contemporary witness told students in Bremerhaven about her terrible memories and gave her full name.
"The prisoners were also led through Stubben on their way to Sandbostel:" When they actually came to us, my father put a bucket of water by the street. We were ashamed when the guards forbade the prisoners to use water. " "
The same woman told another experience from her life - when she and her friend, eight and nine years old, noticed that there were people in a train car in the Stubben train station.
“It was a hot summer day. It was only right next to a car parked there, open at the top, that we noticed that it was filled with men who were standing head to head unprotected in the blazing sun, holding cups over the edge of the car and asking for water. ... But then we decided to fetch a whole bucket full so we could give something to everyone. As we were just turning away, the dreaded village policeman came out of the shadows behind a pile of wood with his stick raised and chased us away. ... We knew that the weak were right and the strong were wrong there. "
The water that she was not allowed to give to those marching by at the time, she now gave to the participants in the memorial march.
“One by one stepped forward to take a sip of water. ... Our friends drank - and they did so very consciously - on behalf of the concentration camp prisoners, who were denied life-giving water at this very point 40 years ago. "
Beverstedt
In Beverstedt I met Pastor Uwe Colmsee and Julius Brumsack . Brumsack was a Jew who many said had preferred to be alone because of his cruel experience. He is considered to be shy of contact after he was the only one of his family - in England - to survive. His relatives were picked up on November 17, 1941. Their tracks were later found in Minsk . Participants in the memorial march spoke to Brumsack at the Beverstedter Judenfriedhof am Stein of the murdered Brumsack family. "A contact-ready Mr. Brumsack was waiting for us. ... It made an overwhelming impression, what he reported from his life and also how he reported it, namely neither paralyzed with grief nor thinking about revenge." The local peace initiative helped to organize the evening in the parish hall of the Beverstedt church. The discussion was about the "right" monuments, e.g. B. Swastikas on tombstones, but also the memorial stone with the inscription " Versailles June 28, 1919 " in Beverstedter Poststrasse was discussed.
Oerel
On the way, the group was watched by civilian police. When she learned a day later that this action had been requested by the Americans, she was appalled. The US soldiers, who at that time operated a radar station shortly before Basdahl , "as professional warriors, had perceived peaceful demonstrators, including children, as a threat, although they probably didn't even know what our desire was". The fact that few people came to the evening discussion in Oerel was attributed to the "village character" of the place.
Sandbostel
The Bremen Senator for Social Affairs accompanied the march from Bremervörde to Sandbostel . Field flowers and stones were collected along the way. With them one wanted to erect a "provisional memorial" at the finish in Sandbostel. As there were two kilometers between the former camp and the cemetery, a memorial was to be erected on the former camp site. For this purpose, stones were set up around a border and the center was decorated with the collected flowers. A wooden cross with the inscription "To the victims from the concentration camps" completed the memorial.
At the end of the memorial march, the moor soldiers sang the song in front of the temporary memorial and a resolution was passed.
Memorial and gravestones
During the memorial march, gravestones and memorial stones were always cause for reflection. Vigils took place in front of the memorial stones for the Hagen synagogue and the perished members of the Jewish families in Beverstedt. In Hagen there was an argument about a stone in the Loher Forest with a swastika on it. In the cemeteries along the march z. For example, in Blumenthal, Meyenburg, Hagen, Bramstedt, Stubben, Volkmarst and Oerel , tombstones were seen showing swastikas and iron crosses . Under the heading "Secondary results of the search for the graves of victims - graves of fellow travelers? Or of perpetrators?" they were put together on a double page of the book about the memorial march. Critical thoughts were sparked by the name of the tombstone for a tank gunner who was fatally injured in Africa and a teacher who had died "through enemy action".
Between Volkmarst and Basdahl, farmer Johann Dücker (Basdahl) had a memorial stone set up on the road next to his farm in 2006. In the field behind it, as a nine-year-old, he had to watch how guards shot two escaped prisoners who were part of the death march from Farge to Sandbostel. As an adult, he was unable to find the bodies of the two of them, so he didn't put the stone on the grave, but on the street. Two benches invite you to quietly remember those who were shot.
“We left the camp on foot, ragged, exhausted from tiredness and hunger in long, pitiful columns. We marched for four days from dawn to night with almost no food. ... Many - passed out or in agony - dropped to the side of the road to die there. "
Conclusion at the end of the march
The purpose of the memorial march was not to make accusations. Rather, one wants to warn against a repetition of those incidents that happened in Germany at the time of fascism: "The memory must not flatten", so the warning of the participants in the march.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The text on the memorial at the submarine bunker Valentin reads: With this memorial, the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen commemorates the inhumanity of the German fascists . The army of millions of concentration camp prisoners had to toil and die for the German war machine. In the Farge subcamp, which belonged to the Neuengamme concentration camp , and in other camps, the German fascists kept more than 10,000 work slaves between 1943 and 1945 to build the "Valentin" submarine bunker. most of them came from the Soviet Union, Poland and France. German resistance fighters were also among them. Thousands of them were killed during the construction of the submarine bunker. Abuse, malnutrition, illness and inhumane working conditions filled the mass graves of Farge. After the end of fascism, these dead found their final resting place in the Osterholz cemetery. Former prisoners, relatives of the dead from Farge, the representatives of the "Amicale Internationale de Neuengamme" and Bremen citizens gathered here on September 17, 1983, 40 years after the construction of the bunker began, in front of the memorial created by the Bremen artist Friedrich Stein To vow: never again fascism, never again war - every effort for peace in the world.
- ↑ This map of the death march was drawn by Belgian prisoners who went along with it. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Borgsen / Volland, see literature, p. 173, here also other references to the Himmler order
- ↑ A photo of the barn in which the train stayed in Barchel is printed in Borgsen / Volland (see literature) p. 179.
- ↑ Borgsen / Volland, see literature, p. 174
- ↑ On the so-called evacuation marches see also Borgsen / Volland, see literature, pp. 172–196.
- ^ Francois Hochenauer: In the port of Lübeck. (1947), in: Christoph Ernst, Ulrike Jensen (ed.): Hope died last. Reports from survivors from Neuengamme concentration camp. Hamburg: Rasch and Röhring 1989, p. 125
- ↑ Internet representation of the Gustav Heinemann community center in Bremen-Vegesack
- ↑ Internet presentation of the "International Peace School in Bremen" in the Gustav-Heinemann-Bürgerhaus in Bremen-Vegesack
- ^ Concentration camp in the Hanover region
- ↑ The memorial march from Hanover to Bergen-Belsen took place for the first time from 12-14 April 1985 and ended with a memorial service on the site of the former concentration camp , see Frankfurter Rundschau from April 15, 1985 and Antifaschistische Rundschau from March 1985.
- ↑ Another suggestion came from memorial educators who had installed information along the route of the death march of the inmates of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
- ↑ Antifascist working group ..., see literature, p. 3
- ↑ According to Gerd Meyer (the director of the Gustav Heinemann-Bürgerhaus Bremen Vegesack (1979-2005) and the Peace School Bremen), the VVN Bremen also supported the memorial march. See VVN Bremen and International Peace School Bremen .
- ↑ The course of the march from Farge to Sandbostel described here was not the only one, another ran through Hambergen . A contemporary witness reports in the book by Barbara Hillman, Volrad Kluge, Erdwig Kramer: Lw. 2 / XI - Muna Lübberstedt - Forced Labor for the War . With the collaboration of Thorsten Gajewi and Rüdiger Kahrs. Edition Temmen, Bremen 1995, p. 89: It was the end of April. An evacuation train of prisoners from Bremen Farge came through Hambergen on the way to the camp in Sandbostel. The train was accompanied by guards. They made quarters on a farm in Hambergen-Bullwinkel. The prisoners were so starved that they attacked turnips and sacks of grain. Three prisoners hid in the hayloft. In the morning one of the prisoners - a Polish hairdresser - tried to escape from a window. But a soldier jumped after and shot him with the pistol. The deceased was buried on the spot. In the morning the evacuation train continued its sad march. The two remaining prisoners then left the property and fled to the Hamberger Feldmark. There they waited for the war to end, hidden in a beet heap. In Lübberstedt , prisoners from the misery train ran into a house on the street and stole a bowl of potatoes from the table.
- ↑ After Julius Brumsack's death (born January 19, 1915, † October 22, 2011), the Beverstedt community published an obituary on November 26, 2011 in the Nordsee-Zeitung: The deceased was one of the two long-established Jewish Brumsack who were highly regarded in Beverstedt -Families whose 6 members were expelled from our community on November 17th, 1941, deported to Eastern Europe and murdered by fascists there. Julius Brumsack ... returned after the war ... back. 'I was homesick for Beverstedt,' he confessed. ... He founded his family in Beverstedt, successfully ran a textile business for decades and stayed until old age ... in Beverstedt. Julius Brumsack stretched out his hand in reconciliation when he returned to Germany, now we are saying goodbye to an old man from Beverstedt with deeply felt grief, gratitude and respect. Martin Bensen, Mayor of Beverstedt; Ulf Voigts, community director. (Julius Brumsack was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Beverstedt - according to a report from November 4, 2011 in the Nordsee-Zeitung.)
- ^ Antifascist working group ..., see literature, p. 24.
- ↑ Radar images were part of NATO's air surveillance
- ↑ Antifascist working group ..., see literature, p. 25
- ↑ The resolution to conclude the memorial march had the following wording: We took part in the memorial march from Farge to Sandbostel. At the destination of our route, in front of this warning cross, we once again mournfully remember the concentration camp prisoners who lost their lives on the route we followed or here, on the edge of the former prisoner of war camp Sandbostel. At the same time, we demand that what happened then not be forgotten and suppressed, and therefore that memorials be erected to commemorate the participants in the evacuation marches of April 1945. We are ready to participate. Finally, we greet the survivors of the evacuation marches. We are also filled with hope for a life in peace. Let's work together for a world in which there are no more warehouses! - Sandbostel, July 13, 1985, the participants in the memorial march.
- ↑ Antifascist working group ..., see literature, p. 22 f.
- ↑ The gravestone in Volkmarst had the inscription under an iron cross with a swastika. Here lies my dear husband, our good father, the teacher of Jhs. vd Knesebeck, * September 15, 1886 † November 10, 1942 by enemy action . Johannes von dem Knesebeck was a teacher, headmaster and local chronicle in Westerbeverstedt . He was killed when an air mine fell on the Westerbeverstedter school in the evening hours of November 9, 1942. (See "Chronicle 100 Years of the Voluntary Fire Brigade Lunestedt 1902 - 2002", p. 14 - as well as the online version of the Lunestedt Chronicle ) Since Volkmarst was his hometown, he was buried there and was given a tombstone that corresponded to the taste of the time.
- ↑ "A memorial stone for murdered prisoners - Johann Dücker: He was shot as a child", in: Nordsee-Zeitung, February 10, 2006
- ↑ Bremervörder Zeitung of July 15, 1985, printed in. Antifaschistischer Arbeitskreis ..., see literature, p. 92.
literature
- Antifascist working group of the Gustav Heinemann-Bürgerhaus Bremen-Vegesack (Hrsgb.), "We knew that the weak were right and the strong there was wrong" , 1987
- Werner Borgsen, Klaus Volland: Stalag XB Sandbostel. On the history of a prisoner of war and concentration camp reception camp in Northern Germany 1939–1945 . Verlag Edition Temmen, Bremen 1991, ISBN 3-926958-65-0 (4th edition with an appendix. Ibid 2010, ISBN 978-3-926958-65-5 ).