Schermen shaft memorial
Coordinates: 52 ° 13 ′ 30.4 " N , 11 ° 48 ′ 48.7" E
Schacht Schermen memorial is a memorial for ten Polish victims of the National Socialist regime , located in the unified community of Möser , district of Schermen . The memorial is recorded in the local register of monuments under registration number 094 86929.
history
The course of events was reconstructed in 1975 through interviews with contemporary witnesses, as part of a research report by the teacher Herbert Gräb and five students from the " Polytechnic High School Hermann Matern " in Burg .
The memorial, inaugurated in May 1985 on the 40th anniversary of liberation from fascism, commemorates the murder of ten Polish citizens in May 1945 by members of the SS . The victims also included a girl who was only about twelve years old and a doctor. The memorial was built by 14 students from the “ Extended Secondary School Geschwister Scholl” together with the teacher Klaus Möbius. The project was supported by the chief forester Albrecht Müller, the local LPG and the community of Schermen. The memorial consists of a plaque set in the ground and ten large field stones that correspond to the number of those who were murdered. It is located near the bypass of the federal highway 1 of Schermen and only about 20 m from the federal highway 2 . When the motorway was expanded in 1998 and the Pietzpuhler Bridge was demolished, access to the memorial disappeared and a new one had to be built. In 2016 the memorial was renovated with EU funding as part of a LEADER project. The victims were reburied in the Schermen cemetery as early as 1948 and a memorial stone dedicated to them there. The collective grave in the cemetery was also registered as a cultural monument under registration number 094 86928.
Together with the memorial stone on the cemetery in Schermen, they form the only memorials for victims of the Nazi regime in the unified community of Möser.
In 1988 the memorial and the grave in the cemetery were included in the list of historical monuments of the Burg district .
background
In mid-April 1945 Magdeburg and the western bank of the Elbe were occupied by American troops and Soviet troops had reached Ziesar . The eastern bank of the Elbe was still in the hands of the German troops. There was a Wehrmacht reception post on the autobahn near Schermen , with orders to send soldiers who had escaped death in Berlin into a fight to defend the area between the Elbe and Havel . Columns of refugees marched along the Elbe in front of the approaching front, as did columns of surviving forced laborers from the Magda subcamp of the Braunkohle-Petrol AG in Magdeburg-Rothensee and the subcamp of the Ravensbrück concentration camp at Polte-Werke . The surviving forced laborers who escaped and hid in the woods hoped to regain their freedom. Parts of the Wehrmacht and SS were housed on the farms in and around Schermen. A group of Polish forced laborers who had fled and who had been picked up by a patrol built anti-tank barriers in the village .
On May 3, 1945 SS man Erdmann rounded up the forced laborers with the support of Wehrmacht member Müller, with the intention of shooting them. With his pistol drawn, he threatened a local woman who asked him to release the forced laborers with the words " Get out of here, otherwise you will be shot!" Both members of the Wehrmacht and other residents of Schermen wanted to deter Erdmann from the act, but were intimidated by threats of violence. The Polish forced laborers were driven by Erdmann and Müller through the town and over the motorway to the shaft of a gravel pit with butt-pistons and dogs. The women were bitten several times by the dogs. The forced laborers pleaded with Erdmann for mercy, but he could not be softened. Erdmann and Müller shot the ten slave laborers in the shaft.
On May 4th, German troops withdrew further west, and on May 5th, Schermen was occupied by the Red Army .
Inscriptions
There is an inscription on both the memorial site and the grave in the cemetery.
Schermen shaft memorial
The inscription on the plaque from 1985 reads:
At this point,
in May 1945,
Polish citizens
who were forcibly displaced were
shot by members of the fascist SS.
One of these victims was
a girl about 12 years old.
Schermen cemetery
The inscription on the 1948 memorial stone reads:
Here rest
10 unknown victims
who were murdered
by fascists
in
1945
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Small question and answer Olaf Meister (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen), Prof. Dr. Claudia Dalbert (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen), Ministry of Culture March 19, 2015 Printed matter 6/3905 (KA 6/8670) List of monuments in Saxony-Anhalt ( landtag.sachsen-anhalt.de [PDF; accessed on August 8, 2018]).
- ↑ 5.3.1 History of Schermen. In: optischertelegraph4.de. Interest group Optischer Telegraph 4 (Interest group Optischer Telegraph in Preußen Station 4 Potsdam Telegraphenberg, IG4), January 31, 2018, accessed on August 8, 2018.
- ↑ a b Information board on site.
- ↑ Schacht Memorial: Remember not atonement. In: gemeinde-moeser.de. February 29, 2012, accessed August 8, 2018.
- ↑ PM: Schermen Shaft. Press release of the local people's solidarity group Schermen. The Schermen Schacht Memorial will reopen on May 3, 2017. In: gemeinde-moeser.de. May 1, 2017, accessed August 8, 2018.
- ↑ Schermen (cemetery), Möser community, Jerichower Land district, Saxony-Anhalt. In: denkmalprojekt.org. Online project Fallen Memorials, accessed June 16, 2017 (Date of transcription: May 1, 2013.)