Golden Mile (POW camp)

A soldier of the US armed forces guards German prisoners in "Camp Remagen"

The Allied prisoner-of-war camps Remagen and Sinzig were on the Golden Mile in 1945 .

Historical classification

Towards the end of the Second World War , the American troops set up prison camps for German soldiers along the Rhine . When the Rhineland was conquered, 250,000 German soldiers were taken prisoners of war, and after the Ruhr basin was broken up , another 325,000 were added. From mid-April 1945 around 660,000 Germans were held captive in these camps.

After the collapse of the Western Front , the Americans - themselves affected by supply shortages - felt obliged to house and care for German prisoners of war in addition to their two million soldiers. The " Rheinwiesenlager " were to serve as a transit camp for the temporary accommodation of the prisoners. The “Golden Mile” was one of these camps.

The warehouse

Aerial view of the Remagen camp

Organizationally, the warehouse consists of two warehouses. The official names of the camps were:

• Prisoner of War Temporary Enclosure A2 (Remagen)
• Prisoner of War Temporary Enclosure A5 (Sinzig)

Camp A2 extended on the Rhine from Remagen to Kripp . Camp A5 south of the Ahr, which flows into the Rhine near Kripp, up to Niederbreisig .

The camp, which the prisoners built themselves for the most part, was surrounded by barbed wire and thus divided into two separate areas. The village of Kripp was located between the camps. Both camp areas were bordered in the east by the Rhine and in the west by the railway line of a railway line

The camps were very overcrowded. On May 2, 1945, 170,000 prisoners were housed in Remagen. In Sinzig up to 118,000 prisoners were interned at times.

Within the camp, individual “cages” were separated from each other by barbed wire, each of which housed 5,000 to 7,000 prisoners. There were special areas for women and young child soldiers .

Supply and accommodation in the camp

Sinzig camp

The care and accommodation of the prisoners was extremely poor. In the beginning there were neither wooden barracks nor shelters nor appropriate hygienic facilities. Few prisoners were allowed to keep a canvas or a coat. The rest were exposed to the rigors of April weather, when it rained on numerous days. With primitive tools, some inmates dug holes in the ground to take shelter from the rain. Many died in the makeshift dwellings or were buried alive when their holes collapsed. Food was distributed once a day. It was barely enough to survive at first. Only after weeks did the prisoners' meals improve. The drinking water supply was also a problem at first. The camp inmates had to stand in line for hours to get some heavily chlorinated Rhine water.

Dissolution of the camp and consequences

On July 11, 1945, the camp was taken over by the French, who finally disbanded it on July 20. Many of the prisoners who remained in the camp were transferred to other camps or to France and some were only released one or two years later. During the time the camp existed, 1247 inmates died of dysentery , malnutrition and exhaustion. In addition, some were shot trying to escape. Despite this comparatively low death rate of less than one percent, many survivors returned from captivity traumatized.

Places of remembrance

The Black Madonna Chapel in Remagen

Memorial stone in Sinzig

Ehrenfriedhof Bad Bodendorf in autumn

Today the prisoners are remembered by the Black Madonna chapel in Remagen, a memorial stone in Sinzig , the Bad Bodendorf cemetery of honor - a war cemetery for the deceased in the prison camp, and an exhibition room in the Remagen Bridge Peace Museum .

Extreme right events

Attempts are made to instrumentalize the memory of the deceased in the Rheinwiesenlager by right-wing extremists . As a form of historical revisionism , they speak of a systematic murder of Germans in the Rhine meadow camps. Since 2009 demonstrations by the neo-Nazis have been taking place here on the Saturday before Memorial Day . Until 2012, they were organized by the Mittelrhein Action Office, which has now been closed .

Counter-events take place at the same time every year.

further reading

• R. Gerrit Hübner: The camp: only those who believe will see miracles . 2nd Edition. Daniel-Verlag, Lychen 2007, ISBN 978-3-935955-37-9 .
• Wolfgang Gückelhorn: The end on the Rhine: End of the war between Remagen and Andernach . Helios, Aachen 2005, ISBN 3-938208-06-6 .
• Karlheinz Grohs: The Black Madonna of Remagen - 1945: Prisoners of War on the Rhine - Commemoration and Remembrance . Ed .: Friedensmuseum Brücke von Remagen e. V. Grohs, Remagen 1993, ISBN 3-9803143-1-6 .
• Arno Münnich: The golden mile of Remagen: German soldiers in American captivity in 1945 . Frieling, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-8280-1966-8 .
• Rüdiger Overmans : The Rhine meadow camps 1945 . In: Hans-Erich Volkmann (Ed.): End of the Third Reich, End of the Second World War. A perspective review . Piper Verlag , Munich / Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-492-12056-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rüdiger Overmans : The Rhine meadow camps 1945 . In: Hans-Erich Volkmann (Ed.): End of the Third Reich, End of the Second World War. A perspective review . Piper Verlag , Munich / Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-492-12056-3 , p.  260 .
2. ↑ Map of the Remagen and Sinzig camps. (JPEG) NS Documentation Center Rhineland-Palatinate, accessed on October 30, 2016 .  
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Remagen and Sinzig. NS Documentation Center Rhineland-Palatinate, accessed on October 30, 2016 .  
4. ↑ Kurt Kleemann: Planned death in the Golden Mile? The Remagen / Sinzig prisoner of war camp in 1945 . In: Kreisverwaltung Ahrweiler (Hrsg.): Heimatjahrbuch des Kreis Ahrweiler 1995 . Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler 1994 ( aw-online.de ). Planned death in the Golden Mile? The prisoner of war camp Remagen / Sinzig 1945 ( Memento of the original from June 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ^ Remagen: Neo-Nazis are planning another memorial march. ZEIT ONLINE, November 17, 2015, accessed October 30, 2016 .  
6. ↑ Five events in Remagen confirmed. (No longer available online.) Ahrweiler district administration, October 28, 2016, archived from the original on October 30, 2016 ; accessed on October 30, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   

swell

• Wolfgang Gückelhorn: The end on the Rhine - end of the war between Remagen and Andernach , Aachen 2005.
• Karlheinz Grohs: The Black Madonna of Remagen - 1945: Prisoners of War on the Rhine - Commemoration and Remembrance , Remagen 1993.

Web links

• Kurt Kleemann: Planned death in the Golden Mile? The prisoner of war camp Remagen / Sinzig 1945 , in: Kreisverwaltung Ahrweiler (Ed.): Heimatjahrbuch des Kreis Ahrweiler 1995 , Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler 1994, p. 107.
• Leonhard Janta: The "Golden Mile", a field of misery in the spring of 1945. The prisoner of war camp between Remagen and Niederbreisig and the poet Günter Eich , in: District administration Ahrweiler (Hrsg.): Heimatjahrbuch des Kreis Ahrweiler 1983 , Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler 1982, P. 79.
• rheinwiesen-lager.de Documentation of the state center for political education Rhineland-Palatinate .
• Eckart Probst: The liquidation of the prisoner-of-war camp Goldene Meile 1945 A contemporary witness remembers. In: Heimatjahrbuch 2004. Ahrweiler district, accessed on October 27, 2016 . 
• Short film - The Remagen-Sinzig prisoner-of-war camp in 1945. Ahrweiler district administration, accessed on October 30, 2016 . 

Coordinates: 50 ° 32 ′ 45 ″  N , 7 ° 16 ′ 26 ″  E