Bayreuth subcamp

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Memorial stone before the implementation at the site of the former camp

The Bayreuth concentration camp was one of the numerous branch offices of the Flossenbürg concentration camp . It existed from mid-June 1944 to April 11, 1945. Many of the concentration camp prisoners , German and foreign forced laborers , who had to work for armaments in the Bayreuth subcamp of the Flossenbürg main camp, were executed or died as a result of imprisonment or starvation and abuse. Jewish prisoners were not used in Bayreuth.

location

The warehouse was located in a side wing on the area of ​​the New Cotton Spinning Mill in Bayreuth in its southwest corner. It was separated from the street and the main building by a barbed wire-reinforced ditch.

There is currently a hardware store on the site on today's Spinnereistraße.

prehistory

After the failure of the “ blitzkrieg strategy ” and the beginning of the Allied bombings, the development of so-called weapons of retaliation was accelerated. These were in particular the cruise missile Fieseler Fi 103 (V1) and the rocket unit 4 (V2). Both were equipped with automatic flight control systems from the Berlin company Askania owned by Bosch , for which Werner Rambauske worked from 1941 . Due to bottlenecks caused by the war, z. B. in the autumn of 1943 only 30% of the required devices were delivered, which also proved to be very prone to failure.

The V1 was produced in the Volkswagen factory , which was originally built for the construction of the KdF car near Fallersleben (since May 25, 1945: Wolfsburg).

Bodo Lafferenz

Bodo Lafferentz (July 1940), photo by Heinrich Hoffmann

The head of the Reich Main Office of the Organization Kraft durch Freude (KdF), Bodo Lafferentz , was next to Ferdinand Porsche and Jakob Werlin (from 1941 Anton Piëch ) also General Manager of Volkswagenwerk GmbH . In 1939 he became SS- Obersturmbannführer and member of the staff of the Race and Settlement Main Office .

When the foundation stone was laid for the Volkswagen factory in May 1938, Lafferenz spoke the introductory words in front of Adolf Hitler . In the same year he attended the Bayreuth Festival and had contact with the Wagner family for the first time . Richard Wagner's daughter-in-law , Winifred Wagner , was the director of the festival at the time. In December 1943 he married their daughter Verena .

In his function as head of the Reich Main Office of the KdF, Lafferenz worked for the "War Festival" organized from 1940 at Hitler's special request. His involvement in the Wagner family led to occasional private contacts with their duo friend Hitler, who was repeatedly a guest in the Wahnfried house .

After the outbreak of the war, Lafferenz was one of the two managing directors of several “research institutes” within the Forschungs- und Verwertungsgesellschaft mbH, which were mainly located in Berlin and Bayreuth. For example, a group of around forty Ukrainian chemists in Bayreuth dealt with energy storage in accumulators .

Wieland Wagner

Richard Wagner's grandson Wieland was one of the few young men who were released from military service, apparently due to a personal special arrangement by Hitler. The Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels helped him to the position of chief director of the Altenburg Opera House in 1943 , where he staged works by his grandfather. In September 1944 Goebbels closed the German theaters. This ended the work of the 27-year-old Wieland Wagner there, and he ran the risk of being drafted into the Wehrmacht or the Volkssturm . In a personal conversation on December 8, 1944, Hitler suggested that he take over the management of the festival in 1945.

history

Headquarters at the entrance to the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial

In March 1944, mass production of the Fi 103 (V1) flying bomb started at the Volkswagen factory. The lack of accuracy of the Askania control systems led to an order for control devices from Bodo Lafferenz, who was still the managing director of the Volkswagen factory. As part of his Society for Research and Development, the Institute for Physical Research in Bayreuth was established as a branch of the Flossenbürg concentration camp.

On May 26, 1944, Werner Rambauske applied for a permit to set up a work room in the former twisting mill of the New Cotton Spinning Mill and to build a barracks for the SS at Carl-Schüller-Strasse 54. The Reich Ministry of Aviation acted as the second building owner.

tasks and activities

In contrast to radio , the expectations placed on television technology were primarily in the field of armaments research. Remote controllable glide bombs should be steered to the target by means of a television picture . This type of remote control of explosive devices was given priority over other target recognition methods in solving the control problems. The Bayreuth satellite camp was one of the institutions involved in the “TV weapon project” for the “seeing bomb”.

The prisoners worked mainly as draftsmen, on lathes and in the manufacture of precision metal parts. Apparently they did not understand the larger context of their activities.

The close interweaving of the history of the development of television as a medium with National Socialist armaments research is almost completely unknown to the public.

The guards

The SS guards consisted of an average of 14 men and were under the command of the Flossenbürg concentration camp. The first camp leader in Bayreuth was Adolf Nies, previously head of the execution squad as well as arrest and brothel administrator in Flossenbürg. After two prisoners escaped from Bayreuth on November 2, 1944, he was transferred to another prison sentence. His successor, Arno Schmidt, had been a security guard in Sachsenburg concentration camp as early as 1937 . In the winter of 1944, an SS dog handler with a service dog was posted to Bayreuth.

The prisoners

As early as May 24, 1944, 33 concentration camp prisoners from different nations were transferred to Flossenbürg from the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg . In Neuengamme they had already been selected for their work in Bayreuth based on their professional qualifications as technicians and draftsmen. The first prisoners arrived at the Bayreuth satellite camp on June 13. On July 3, 1944, it was mentioned with 38 prisoners in the directory of the International Tracing Service Arolsen . Former prisoner Ernst Hoyer named the number of around 60 prisoners from ten nations for February 1945: seven Germans, two Dutch, one Belgian, eight French, one Ukrainian and an unspecified number of Italians, Poles, Czechs, Yugoslavs and Russians.

Since those responsible had an interest in maintaining the prisoners' workforce, the food situation and the hygienic conditions were apparently somewhat better than in other satellite camps and the main camp. A Czech prisoner cook was transferred to Bayreuth on the first transport, followed by a French prisoner doctor on November 11th. At irregular intervals, the prisoners were allowed to receive parcels from relatives and occasionally send postcards written in German. Presumably, the prisoners did not wear striped camp clothing, but civilian clothing with the letters "KL" painted on a large area with oil paint. These clothes may have come from Jews murdered in Auschwitz and Majdanek . At least some of the prisoners kept the blue and white striped suits they had in other concentration camps. B. during visits to the doctor accompanied by the SS, could also be seen in public.

For a prisoner skilled worker, the Forschungs- und Verwertungsgesellschaft mbH was charged six Reichsmarks per working day. Harsh punishments were carried out on prisoners in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, to which sick prisoners were also taken. Although everyday excesses of violence were "rather rare" as in the main camps, there were still punishments such as stick beating and torture of alleged confidants after attempting to escape. In particular, Dr. According to a former prisoner, Rambauske “treated the prisoners badly”.

The transports of prisoners to Bayreuth can be reconstructed beyond any doubt:

  • June 13, 1944: 33 prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp (via Flossenbürg) and 5 prisoners from the Flossenbürg main camp
  • August 8, 1944: 2 prisoners from Neuengamme concentration camp
  • August 17, 1944: 3 prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp
  • September 12, 1944: 1 prisoner from the Groß-Rosen concentration camp
  • November 6, 1944: 20 prisoners from the Groß-Rosen concentration camp (including 12 electricians, 2 technical draftsmen, 2 lathe operators, 2 tailors or shoemakers, 1 electrical mechanic, 1 mechanic; with one exception Poles and Russians)
  • November 11, 1944: 1 prisoner from the Flossenbürg main camp
  • February 3, 1945: 20 prisoners from the Flossenbürg main camp (including 8 Italians)

A total of 85 people from nine nations were imprisoned in the Bayreuth satellite camp. Detailed memory reports are available from Ernst Hoyer (Dutch, prisoner number 17566), Henri Clément (French, prisoner number 10399) and Pierre Sourisse (French, prisoner number 10334). The prisoner numbers were assigned by the Flossenbürg main camp.

The conditions of detention

The prisoners spent the nights in the basement of the building. After the morning roll call at 6:30 am, they were sent to their workplaces. Further roll calls took place at 12:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on the premises in front of the entrance to the basement.

The meal was prepared by the Czech prisoners, at noon there was soup or jacket potatoes, sometimes a little sausage or cheese. In the evening the prisoners were given a piece of bread with a little margarine or a spoon of jam. The rations became smaller over time and were often completely canceled in the spring of 1945. There is evidence that a dog and a cat were also processed.

The French doctor treated mild illnesses, and prisoners accompanied by the SS were brought to a doctor in the city (an ophthalmologist and a dentist visit are documented). Since severe illnesses threatened to be transported back to the main camp, prisoners tried to conceal tuberculosis infections, for example.

The civilian staff (the ladder, a secretary, two engineers and dressmakers on the upper floors) did not appear until the inmates had started work and disappeared before they finished. Since the “boss” (presumably Dr. Rambauske was meant) occasionally left a newspaper lying around, the prisoners were largely informed about the advance of the American troops.

There was hardly any contact with the local population; it can be assumed that the existence of the camp and the prisoners only became known in the course of the bombing and the subsequent clean-up work. After all, the concentration camp was on the outskirts of the city behind two converted large spinning mills in which foreign workers worked for armaments.

Compared to the main camp in Flossenbürg, which a former prisoner described as "the most horrific camp one can imagine", the conditions in Bayreuth seem to have been more bearable. Ernst Hoyer reported that his fellow inmate André Jooris “thanked God that he was in this detachment”. Former inmate Henri Clément wrote "there were no blows with rubber truncheons" and "there were ... no kapos here ". Hoyer, however, led a German Kapo, whom he described as "not unsympathetic".

The escapes

On November 2, 1944, two German prisoners managed to escape. Both were seized, Walter Bahlig was brought back to Flossenbürg on December 11th. Werner Ohmacht was arrested on February 6, 1945 and also brought to Flossenbürg.

The Russian prisoner Viktor Vladimirov also managed to escape on December 21, 1944, but was not caught again. As a result, 18 prisoners were transferred back to Flossenbürg the next day, of whom the Pole Zelislaw Stochnial was murdered on January 4, 1945. Twelve from this group came to the Kamenz aircraft engine plant of Daimler-Benz AG , a satellite camp of the Groß-Rosen concentration camp , on January 26, 1945 , of which two (Georges Gueriteault and Fernand Degroot) did not survive. Three other former Bayreuth prisoners perished in the Dachau concentration camp: Grigorij Telitschko on April 17, 1945, Gawril Lubanez and Stanislaus Kubika after the camp was liberated in May 1945 as a result of their imprisonment.

Wieland Wagner

In mid-September, Wieland Wagner, who was protected from being called up by his brother-in-law Lafferenz, began his service in the camp. Since the original documents of his extensive private correspondence are not accessible, his activity there is largely unknown. The historian Brigitte Hamann describes him as the “Deputy Civil Director of the Institute”.

The bombings

The first American bombing raid took place on the morning of April 5, targeting the adjacent premises of the FC Bayerlein spinning mill , where control systems for fighter planes were manufactured. From that day on, prisoners from the subcamp were deployed in small groups to clean up and defuse duds in the urban area. They were guarded by SS men and occasionally by the Volkssturm.

The death marches

During the third and final air raid on the city on the afternoon of April 11, the New Cotton Spinning Mill was also hit. That evening the Bayreuth subcamp was closed and the remaining 61 prisoners were driven to Flossenbürg on a three-day death march in which an Italian prisoner was killed after being kicked and hit with a butt. Neither the place of death nor the place where the forty-year-old Pietro Sanna was buried has so far been determined.

The Polish prisoner Tadheusz Wojciechowski managed to escape from a barn on the march to Flossenbürg. Camp leader Schmidt ordered the other prisoners to lie down; every third (or fifth; the witness is not sure) would be shot in retaliation for their escape. The announced executions then did not take place. On April 14, the prisoners reached Flossenbürg after walking 80 kilometers.

The liquidation of the Flossenbürg camp began on April 16, 1945. On April 20, most of the former Bayreuth prisoners had to march towards the Bavarian Forest . The death marches from the Flossenbürg concentration camp claimed almost 5,000 lives; There is evidence that some of the prisoners who were interned in Bayreuth did not experience his liberation:

  • André Jooris (Belgium), murdered April 22, 1945
  • Alexander Pruszko (Poland), on the death march towards Cham
  • Jarro Magrini (Italy), presumably left terminally ill in the camp; probably died on the day of the liberation of the Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 23, 1945

More deaths

  • Nikolaj Prinowski, who was transferred to the Flossenbürg concentration camp on March 21, 1945 because of tuberculosis , died there on March 30, 1945

After 1945

  • In the denazification process in 1948, Bodo Lafferenz was classified as “guilty” (Category I of the Baden State Ordinance).
  • As head of the execution squad in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, Adolf Nies was sentenced to four years in prison in 1955 and denied his civil rights for three years.
  • Dr. Werner Rambauske was important to the Americans because of his knowledge of control systems. They continued the research in Neudrossenfeld Castle until October 1945 under his direction. As part of Operation Paperclip , he was brought to the USA and worked there for the US Air Force.
  • Arno Schmidt could not be proven to be involved in acts of killing. In the 1950s he acquired one of the former SS officers' houses of the Flossenbürg concentration camp.
  • In the denazification process in 1948, Wieland Wagner was classified as a “fellow traveler” (category IV) and sentenced to a “compensation” of 100 DM.

Memorial stone

Memorial stone after his transfer

In 2000, Dieter Mronz , the then Lord Mayor of the city, unveiled a memorial stone on the periphery of the site. It bears the inscription "In memory of the prisoners in the Bayreuth satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp June 1944 April 1945". In autumn 2014 it was moved about 120 meters and is now even further away from the former warehouse. This measure, which was not previously communicated, is controversial. After all, it is more conspicuous at the chosen location near a street crossing and will soon be supplemented with an information board.

Forced laborers in other companies

Forced laborers were also used in other factories in the city, but they were not concentration camp prisoners. In the neighboring F. C. Bayerlein spinning mill, the Aero company had control systems for combat aircraft manufactured. On January 1, 1943, part of the production of the electric motor plant of Siemens-Schuckertwerke was relocated from Berlin-Siemensstadt to the mechanical cotton spinning mill in Bayreuth , where five hundred forced laborers manufactured contact regulators. The Schatz leather goods factory in Sankt Georgen was a relocation company of the Nuremberg Siemens Schuckertwerk , also there with forced laborers.

In the immediate vicinity of the concentration camp, there were barracks for the forced laborers on the grounds of the new cotton spinning mill. At least twenty-nine babies died in a “day care center” for the children of forced laborers. The mothers had to go back to work sixteen days after giving birth, the babies were left to their own devices, and their deaths were planned and calculated.

literature

  • Albrecht Bald / Jörg Skriebeleit: The Bayreuth satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp . C. and C. Rabenstein, Bayreuth 2003, ISBN 3-928683-30-6 , pp. 172 .
  • Peter Engelbrecht : The war is over. Spring 1945 in Upper Franconia . Späthling, Weißenstadt 2015, ISBN 978-3-942668-23-1 , pp. 95-105 .

Web links

Commons : Memorial stone for the Bayreuth subcamp  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rainer Trübsbach : History of the City of Bayreuth , p. 337.
  2. ^ A b Albrecht Bald / Jörg Skriebelein: The Bayreuth satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp , p. 118.
  3. ^ Albrecht Bald / Jörg Skriebelein: The Bayreuth satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp , p. 53.
  4. ↑ Peter Engelbrecht : Secret weapons for the Nazis. War research in Upper Franconia . Späthling, Weißenstadt 2018, ISBN 978-3-942668-49-1 , p. 37 .
  5. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 348.
  6. ^ Albrecht Bald / Jörg Skriebelein: The Bayreuth satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp , p. 51.
  7. ^ Albrecht Bald / Jörg Skriebelein: The Bayreuth satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp , p. 113.
  8. ^ Albrecht Bald / Jörg Skriebelein: The Bayreuth satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp , p. 88 ff.
  9. ^ Albrecht Bald / Jörg Skriebelein: The Bayreuth satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp , pp. 115–116.
  10. ↑ Peter Engelbrecht: Secret weapons for the Nazis , p. 38 f.
  11. ^ Albrecht Bald / Jörg Skriebelein: The Bayreuth satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp , p. 108.
  12. ↑ Brigitte Hamann : Winifred Wagner or Hitler's Bayreuth , pp. 479-484.
  13. ^ Albrecht Bald / Jörg Skriebelein: The Bayreuth satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp , p. 111.
  14. ↑ Peter Engelbrecht: Secret research in the castle , Nordbayerischer Kurier of September 13, 2016, p. 17.
  15. ^ Albrecht Bald / Jörg Skriebelein: The Bayreuth satellite camp of the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp , p. 10 (foreword by Brigitte Hamann).
  16. ↑ Measured with BayernAtlas .
  17. ^ The wandering memorial stone in the North Bavarian Courier of November 7, 2014, p. 13.
  18. ^ Albrecht Bald / Jörg Skriebelein: The Bayreuth satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp , p. 52.
  19. ↑ Axel Polnik: The Bayreuth fire brigades in the Third Reich . Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2011, ISBN 978-3-8423-9563-3 , pp. 538 .
  20. ↑ Forced labor: 29 babies died a gruesome death at nordbayerischer-kurier.de on December 7, 2012, accessed on October 10, 2017.

Coordinates: 49 ° 57 ′ 5.3 "  N , 11 ° 34 ′ 11.1"  E