Belzig satellite camp

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Belzig satellite camp (according to other sources also the Roederhof satellite camp ) was a satellite camp in Belzig, Brandenburg , from August 1944 . It was subordinate to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and from autumn 1944 to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . In it, women had to do forced labor for the Kopp & Co. Roederhof plant.

history

In 1943/44, local construction companies built a barrack camp near the already existing Roederhof forced labor camp, into which the first women prisoners moved in August 1944. There were four residential barracks, a utility barrack with a bunker, an infirmary and toilets with a washing facility, all of which were enclosed by an electrically charged barbed wire fence. The facility was designed for 750 prisoners. At the first occupancy, 250 Polish women, 200 women from the Soviet Union, 140 Belgian women, 75 French women and individual women from the Czech Republic, Yugoslavia, Italy, Hungary, Great Britain and the German Reich came from the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Outside the fence was a barracks for the SS guards, which consisted of 6 SS men and 20 SS guards. The SS Oberscharführer Gerhard Lehmann was in charge of the satellite camp from October 1944.

The women had to work twelve-hour shifts for the Roederhof ammunition factory. This belonged to the metal goods factory Treuenbrietzen of the Kopp & Co. Group in Berlin. The main products were ammunition for the 2 cm quadruple anti-aircraft guns , as well as for aircraft and anti-tank guns.

Memorial stone on the green ground

The number of deaths can no longer be precisely determined. In an interrogation carried out after the war, the former camp manager stated that around 50 to 60 women had died of weakness and illness. The dead were brought to the crematorium in Brandenburg an der Havel. From January 1945 the deceased were buried in the Belziger Gertrauden cemetery. Between 150 and 200 women prisoners were buried there alone. Every two to three weeks new inmate women came from the main camp to replace the deceased.

On April 24, 1945, due to the approaching front, 600 women prisoners were supposed to march to the mental hospital in Brandenburg-Görden, leaving 72 sick people behind. Due to the exhaustion of the women, however, they only got as far as the Altengrabow military training area . After most of the female SS guards headed west, American soldiers arrived in Altengrabow on May 3, 1945.

The Cologne public prosecutor's office investigated the former camp manager Gerhard Lehmann in 1974, but dropped the case. Margot Pietzner, who worked as an SS overseer, sentenced a Soviet military court to death. The District Court of Halle converted this sentence into a ten-year prison sentence. In 1956 she was released after an amnesty. In March 1993, on application, she was recognized as a victim of Stalinism and received compensation of 64,350 DM. In 1996, the notification of recognition was revoked and the money demanded back.

A memorial stone has stood on the former camp site, which is now partly forest or open space, since 1965.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel, Angelika Königseder, p. 78.
  2. ↑ a b c Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel, Angelika Königseder, p. 79.
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel, Angelika Königseder, p. 80.
  4. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of July 24, 1996 , accessed on May 13, 2014.

Coordinates: 52 ° 9 ′ 5 ″  N , 12 ° 33 ′ 36 ″  E