Memorial for Nazi victims in Neustadt

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Memorial for Nazi victims in Neustadt
Entrance area with logo and motto of the friends' association

Entrance area with logo and motto of the friends' association

Data
place Neustadt an der Weinstrasse
Client Friends of the memorial for Nazi victims in Neustadt
Construction year 2013
Coordinates 49 ° 20 '30.2 "  N , 8 ° 9' 59.9"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 20 '30.2 "  N , 8 ° 9' 59.9"  E
Memorial for Nazi victims in Neustadt (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Memorial for Nazi victims in Neustadt

The memorial for Nazi victims in Neustadt was set up by a support association on the site of a former barracks in the Palatinate city ​​of Neustadt an der Weinstrasse ( Rhineland-Palatinate ). The memorial has been commemorating the early victims of the National Socialists since 2013 immediately after the so-called seizure of power in 1933. The design of the memorial is the only memorial of its kind in the Palatinate.

geography

The memorial is located southeast of the city center at about 130.5  m above sea level. NHN on the former Kasernenstrasse on the site of the former Turenne barracks . The barracks area has been used commercially as Le Quartier Hornbach since the complete renovation , primarily by the headquarters of Hornbach Holding AG , but also by other companies. The street address of the memorial is Le Quartier Hornbach 13 a / b.

The memorial can be reached over a large area via junction 13 (Neustadt-Süd) of the 65 Ludwigshafen - Karlsruhe motorway , from where federal highway 39 leads towards the city center.

investment

  • Central building of the barracks

  • Prison construction

  • Information board: Camp 1934

The memorial is located in front of the south wing of the Turenne barracks to the southwest and includes the former prison building of around 180 m² in size. The single-storey hipped roof construction has restored cells with barred windows and peepholes in the doors. The largest room was prepared for lectures by the sponsoring association and equipped with the appropriate audiovisual technology . Information boards and dossiers throughout the building provide information about individual inmates and SA guards as well as about the Nazis' persecution measures against those who are politically or religiously unpopular.

The building is owned by Hornbach Holding AG and has been made available to the friends' association, which is responsible for setting up and running the memorial, for at least the next 25 years free of charge. In addition, Hornbach AG took on the costs of more than 20,000 euros for the renewal of windows and doors in accordance with monument conservation criteria; the Rhineland-Palatinate state government and the city of Neustadt contributed a further 75,000 euros in funding. As far as possible, members of the development association carried out renovation work on their own.

  • Prison cell

  • Cell window from the inside

  • Cell window from the outside

history

Construction and initial use

Turenne barracks 2013
Turenne barracks in the 1920s

After the First World War , the Palatinate, like the entire German Rhineland, was occupied by the Allies . In the years from 1920 to 1923 the French occupying forces built a barracks in the east of Neustadt an der Weinstrasse, which was called Neustadt an der Haardt until 1935 . It was named after the French General Field Marshal Turenne (1611-1675). This may have been done with the intention of further humiliating the defeated Germans; because in 1674, during the Dutch War , the French army under Turenne had conquered and devastated the entire Palatinate. From 1919 about 2000 occupation soldiers were stationed in the Turenne barracks. When these had withdrawn at the end of June 1930, the barracks was taken over by the German Reichswehr , which was renamed the Wehrmacht in 1935 . From 1932 to 1936, part of the barracks served as a warehouse for around 200 volunteers from the Voluntary Labor Service (FAD) .

Use as an early concentration camp

SPD parliamentary group leader Gustav Weil (right) is forced to sweep the streets.
Camp regulations from 1933

On March 10, 1933, a good month after the "seizure of power", the National Socialists set up one of the so-called "early concentration camps" in another part of the barracks , which they euphemistically referred to as "protective custody camps".

The commandant was Adam Durein (born September 20, 1893 in Mechtersheim , † January 14, 1948 in Mainz ). He had joined the NSDAP on November 1, 1930 ( membership number 400120) and on September 22, 1932 became SA Standartenführer . Criminal proceedings initiated against him after the end of the Second World War - the allegation concerned crimes against humanity and dangerous bodily harm - was dropped on March 6, 1950 by the Frankenthal Regional Court on account of death. The death was the aftermath of a car accident in 1941.

People who were viewed by those in power as politically or religiously motivated opponents, above all social democrats , communists and trade unionists, as well as church representatives , were locked up in the camp and guarded and harassed by SA men . Prominent victims were, for example, the chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in Neustadt's city ​​council , Gustav Weil (1871–1941), and Oswald Damian (1889–1978), Protestant pastor from Pirmasens who was critical of the regime . A photo that is in the archives of the city of Neustadt shows Weil, who was also a member of the board of the Israelite religious community , forced to sweep the streets under guard.

Although the general persecution of Jews had not yet begun, Jews were among the prisoners , apart from the aforementioned Gustav Weil, for example, the merchants Otto Kahn and Jakob and Salomon Roelen from Rockenhausen (Northern Palatinate) or the doctor Hermann Samson from Kaiserslautern .

Almost 500 prisoners from around 80 Palatinate communities were held in the camp. Up until the 1990s, only about 350 of them from 60 municipalities were known by name. The camp regulations for political prisoners posted on March 18, 1933 bear the name of Commandant Durein and are the oldest known from Nazi camps; it was used as a model in other camps. None of the prisoners died, although torture was common. An example of the brutality exercised is the case of the 24-year-old prisoner Hermann Zahm (born January 17, 1909 in Neustadt; † December 11, 1983 in Erlangen), a typesetter from Neustadt who was imprisoned as a member of the SPD and the Reichsbanner , dealt with in the article on Camp Commandant Durein .

The camp was evacuated in June 1933. Some of the prisoners were released, the rest were distributed to official and national prisons.

Use from 1934

From 1934-1936 people were housed in the barracks, because of rental debt homeless had become. From 1936 until the end of World War II, a Wehrmacht intelligence department was stationed there. In 1945, former forced laborers found shelter in the barracks for a short time before the facility was again used by France for military purposes until 1992 .

From 1993 lived in the buildings asylum seekers , from 1995 Bosnian war refugees, to the area in January 2000 as the entire system was placed under protection and acquired in June of the same year by the Group Hornbach and then rehabilitated. The current name is Le Quartier Hornbach 5–23 .

Support association

For the first time in 1995 private documents became known that referred to the camp in Neustadt; a targeted search also found corresponding documents in public archives. After many years of research, in which the Historical Association of the Palatinate also participated, the Friends' Association Memorial for Nazi Victims was founded in Neustadt on November 4, 2009 . Eberhard Dittus (* 1954) has been the founding chairman as a religious educator and education officer at the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate . One of the founding members is Marc Weigel , at that time an alderman and head of cultural affairs in Neustadt and mayor since 2018. The board of trustees of the association is headed by the former mayor of the city of Speyer , Werner Schineller , his deputy is senior church councilor Gottfried Müller . Members of the Board of Trustees include a. Archive director Hans Ammerich , entrepreneur Albrecht Hornbach from the site owner and the politicians Hans Georg Löffler , Theo Wieder , Dieter Burgard and Dieter Schiffmann .

Hornbach Holding AG, as the owner of the site, provides the association with extensive help. For example, if necessary, additional rooms are made available for conferences and training courses, and rent payments from the friends' association flow back to the association as donations.

Memorial work

Visitor guidance
Justice Minister Jochen Hartloff at the opening in 2013

With the support of the property owner Hornbach AG and the city of Neustadt, the friends' association had the prison building, which had become ailing over the decades, renovated as true to the original as possible and set it up as a memorial.

On March 10, 2013, the 80th anniversary of the operation of the concentration camp, the memorial was opened by the Rhineland-Palatinate Minister of Justice Jochen Hartloff , who represented the patroness , Prime Minister Malu Dreyer , who was unable to attend , and the Mayor of Neustadt, Hans Georg Löffler .

According to Eberhard Dittus, chairman of the association, the building will serve the public, especially schools and pupils, as a history workshop with the motto “remember - commemorate - learn”; guided tours can also be arranged. Board member Ruth Ratter , teacher at the Kurfürst-Ruprecht-Gymnasium Neustadt and a former member of the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament , is responsible for the educational concepts .

The opening speech by Albrecht Hornbach is published on the website of the Förderverein, as are two speeches that the future Lord Mayor Marc Weigel held at the memorial on September 7 and November 9, 2013;

Since 2016, the Friends that Germany's only effort monument for a NS -Mörder, the former Reich Governor Josef Bürckel from Neustadter main cemetery to have it removed. Bürckel had u. a. 1940 ordered the deportation of thousands of Palatinate Jews to southern France to the Gurs camp , where many of them died; most of the survivors were murdered in concentration camps in 1942 . Bürckel's stone tomb , which has since been abandoned and which the vernacular calls "Schandmal", was classified as a " historical monument " by the monument authority in Mainz, without it being able to be assigned any significance as a work of art . On October 22, 2016, the 76th anniversary of the deportation of Jews, the name on the Bürckel memorial was covered with a white cloth and a red ribbon with the names of the 58 Jews deported from Neustadt was wrapped over it. The initiators of the development association wanted to "symbolically erase the name of the thousandfold murderer and give the victims their names back in return."

Events

The friends' association started its public events in the memorial during the Neustadt cultural festival in early June 2013 with an exhibition "Auschwitz - yesterday and today". The Palatinate dialect prizewinner Albert H. Keil, from the Neustadt district of Mußbach , presented literary memories of a “later-born contemporary witness” of the lost future of blood relatives whom he was never allowed to get to know under the Palatinate title “Zwelf Ve'wandte never known”.

On September 7, 2013, the “ Open Monument Day ”, which takes place across Germany on the 2nd Sunday of September, opened for Rhineland-Palatinate in the memorial. On the 2013 motto, “Beyond the good and the beautiful: uncomfortable monuments”, Doris Ahnen , then Rhineland-Palatinate Minister for Education and Culture , spoke - in addition to representatives of the Friends' Association, Hornbach AG and the city of Neustadt .

On February 4 and 21, 2018, Albert H. Keil and the Neustadt historian Gerhard Wunder gave lectures on the subjects of "The" brown plague "in Neustadt using the example of the district of Mußbach" and "Dispossessed and robbed - the Aryanization campaign in Neustadt" .

literature

  • Eberhard Dittus: Jewish New Town on the Wine Route . Invitation to a tour. Verlag Medien und Dialog, Haigerloch 2009, ISBN 3-933231-40-X .
  • Gerhard Wunder: The social democracy in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse since 1832 . Verlag Neue Pfälzer Post, Neustadt 1985, ISBN 3-923505-02-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Memorial for Nazi victims inaugurated in Neustadt: the only one of its kind in the Palatinate. Pfalz-Express, March 11, 2013, accessed on April 17, 2013 .
  2. ↑ Map service of the landscape information system of the Rhineland-Palatinate nature conservation administration (LANIS map) ( notes )
  3. ↑ Directions. Förderverein Gedenkstätte, accessed on March 12, 2014 (with street map and site plan).
  4. ↑ a b c Eberhard Dittus, Chairman of the Friends' Association: Opening speech of March 10, 2013.
  5. ↑ a b Förderverein Gedenkstätte (Ed.): Information board with photo from the city archive . 2013.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h Förderverein Gedenkstätte (ed.): Information boards, some with pictures . 2013.
  7. ^ Förderverein Gedenkstätte (Ed.): Information board with a copy of the copy from the city archive . 2013.
  8. ↑ a b c Durein, Adam / 1893–1948. Rhineland-Palatinate personal database, accessed on October 13, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Gerhard Wunder: The Social Democracy in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse since 1832 . 1985, p. 58 .
  10. ↑ Pirmasens. Förderverein Gedenkstätte, accessed on April 12, 2013 (list of victims).
  11. ^ Rolf-Ulrich Kunze : The church struggle in the Protestant-Evangelical-Christian regional church of the Palatinate, 1933-1945. Retrieved April 12, 2013 .
  12. ↑ Rockenhausen. Förderverein Gedenkstätte, accessed on April 10, 2013 (list of victims).
  13. ↑ Kaiserslautern. Förderverein Gedenkstätte, accessed on April 10, 2013 (list of victims).
  14. ^ The early Neustadt concentration camp. Friends of the memorial, accessed on March 11, 2014 .
  15. ↑ Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel, Angelika Königseder (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. tape 2 : Early camp, Dachau, Emsland camp . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52962-3 , p. 173, 174 ( Google Books ).
  16. ↑ Eberhard Dittus, Martina Ruppert-Kelly: The memorial for Nazi victims in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse . Eds .: State Center for Political Education Rheinland-Pfalz (=  leaves to the country . No. 76 ). Mainz 2017, p. 4 ( online [PDF]).
  17. ↑ In the Weimar Republic 1918–1933. (No longer available online.) SPD City Association Neustadt, archived from the original on May 19, 2015 ; accessed on March 17, 2014 .
  18. ^ Landesarchivverwaltung Rheinland-Pfalz : Landesarchiv Speyer .
  19. ↑ Informational directory of cultural monuments - district-free town of Neustadt an der Weinstrasse. (PDF; 1.4 MB) General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate , March 14, 2011, p. 9 , accessed on June 7, 2013 .
  20. ^ Memorial for Nazi victims in a former barracks. (No longer available online.) Evangelical Church of the Palatinate, January 25, 2010, archived from the original on February 26, 2014 ; Retrieved April 11, 2013 .
  21. ↑ The association. Friends of the memorial, accessed on February 21, 2014 .
  22. ↑ Heike Klein: Against forgetting . In: The Rheinpfalz , Mittelhaardter Rundschau . Ludwigshafen March 11, 2013, p. 21 .
  23. ↑ Heike Klein: In the footsteps of grandfather . In: The Rheinpfalz , Mittelhaardter Rundschau . Ludwigshafen March 12, 2013, p. 16 .
  24. ↑ Ruth Ratter : A Review: Open Monument Day. An experience report. Friends of the memorial, accessed on February 21, 2014 .
  25. ^ Research - Lectures - Speeches. Friends of the memorial, accessed on October 26, 2018 .
  26. ^ Letter to the editor: Monument Bürckel-Grab . In: The Rheinpfalz , Mittelhaardter Rundschau . Ludwigshafen October 16, 2016.
  27. ↑ Annegret Ries: Bürckel debate rekindled . In: The Rheinpfalz , Mittelhaardter Rundschau . Ludwigshafen October 13, 2016.
  28. ↑ Ingrid Heyer: Everyone is responsible . Silent march on the anniversary of the deportation of Palatinate and Baden Jews to Gurs. In: The Rheinpfalz , Mittelhaardter Rundschau . Ludwigshafen October 24, 2016.
  29. ↑ Local editorial office: briefly noted . In: The Rheinpfalz , Mittelhaardter Rundschau . Ludwigshafen May 31, 2013, p. 17 .
  30. ↑ Open day at the memorial for Nazi victims. In: Main events of the 2013 Culture Festival. Neustadt City Administration, accessed on August 16, 2013 (reading with Albert H. Keil: “Zwelf Ve'wandte never geknown” ).
  31. ↑ Annegret Ries (ann): Uncomfortable often also means: expensive . In: The Rheinpfalz , Mittelhaardter Rundschau . Ludwigshafen September 4th 2013.
  32. ↑ Annegret Ries (ann): "To be uncomfortable" . In: The Rheinpfalz , Mittelhaardter Rundschau . Ludwigshafen September 9, 2013.
  33. ↑ Editorial report (red): Reading: Mußbach and the "brown plague" . In: The Rheinpfalz , Mittelhaardter Rundschau . Ludwigshafen February 1, 2018.
  34. ↑ Kathrin Keller: "Human Tragedies" . In: The Rheinpfalz , Mittelhaardter Rundschau . Ludwigshafen January 26, 2018.