Internment camp Girenbad

Girenbad Hinwil

The Girenbad Internment Camp was an internment camp in Girenbad in the municipality of Hinwil , Canton of Zurich , Switzerland , which existed from October 1942 to summer 1945. It is not to be confused with the internment camp that was operated in the Kurhaus Girenbad in the municipality of Turbenthal from 1943.

Camp construction and organization

In the canton of Zurich, even before the outbreak of war, the Association of Swiss Israelite Poor Care (VSIA, later VSJF), a private Jewish aid organization, set up camps for emigrants from Germany and Austria - among others in Girenbad in 1939. Until 1939, the VSJF mainly organized transit in accordance with alien police regulations, and from the outbreak of war in 1939, the stay and care for the refugees.

From October 1942 to summer 1945, the camp was run by Territorial Command 6 as a quarantine and reception camp for civilian refugees, but continued to be financially supported by the VSJF.

The warehouse was set up in the factory building of the former Laetsch cotton weaving mill.

Emigrants and refugees

In Stock Jews were interned before the Nazis had fled and here to a decision on asylum waited. A prominent refugee was the tenor Joseph Schmidt , who died on November 16, 1942 while walking in the nearby Waldegg restaurant , the day before his work permit was issued. The writer, philosopher and individual psychologist Manès Sperber spent three months there, and the communist Rudolf Singer was interned in Girenbad for several months in 1939.

literature

Anna-Regula Meili: Interned soldiers and refugees in Hinwil: the Girenbad camp in World War II . Heimatspiegel July 2010, published by “Zürcher Oberländer” and “Anzeiger von Uster”, Wetzikon 2010