Ellrich-Bürgergarten subcamp
The Ellrich-Bürgergarten satellite camp was a satellite camp in Ellrich that existed from May 17, 1944 to the beginning of April 1945 and was subordinate to the Mittelbau concentration camp . The camp was located in the Bürgergarten restaurant and was occupied by an average of 950 male concentration camp prisoners from SS Construction Brigade IV . Another satellite camp of the Mittelbau concentration camp, the Ellrich-Juliushütte concentration camp satellite camp , was located on the outskirts of Ellrich.
Function of the camp and prisoners
The Ellrich-Bürgergarten satellite camp was initially subordinate to the Buchenwald concentration camp and from October 1944 to the Mittelbau concentration camp . From January 15, 1945, it was formally part of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , which resulted in no practical changes. The Günzerode concentration camp , which was also part of the Mittelbau-Dora camp complex , was placed under the Ellrich-Bürgergarten satellite camp as a sub-camp in September 1944.
The camp was located in the Bürgergarten restaurant , which was on the outskirts of Ellrich at the Frauenbergteich. On May 17, 1944, it was occupied by around 300 concentration camp prisoners from SS Construction Brigade IV, who until then had been used to clean up Wuppertal . They were housed in the banqueting hall of the restaurant, while the rest of the building contained functional rooms such as the guard and the infirmary. The roll call square was in the large courtyard . The restaurant was surrounded by an electric fence. The eight meter high town wall of the medieval town fortifications of Ellrich formed the boundary towards the town. There were wooden watchtowers with spotlights at the four corners of the site. According to the inmates, the accommodation conditions in the camp were said to have been bearable. They described it as the upper camp as a demarcation from the lower camp in the form of the Ellrich-Juliushütte subcamp outside the town. In Ellrich, the prisoners had to do forced labor through track construction work to build the Helmetalbahn . The camp guards were housed in the restaurant on the castle hill. Camp leader was SS-Obersturmführer Otto Diembt until February 1945 and then SS-Untersturmführer Erich Scholz .
Final phase of the camp
When American troops approached, the camp was evacuated before they reached Ellrich on April 12, 1945. The SS carried out the first evacuation on April 6, 1945, during which around 350 sick and Jewish prisoners were transported away in cattle wagons. A death march followed from Mieste , which ended on April 13, 1945 with the massacre in the Isenschnibber field barn . Camp leader Erich Scholz and SS members drove the remaining 700 prisoners across the Harz Mountains on April 10, 1945 in a march that apparently did not result in any deaths . On April 14, 1945 he released the prisoners near Güntersberge .
post war period
After the Second World War , the Red Army confiscated the restaurant building and placed soldiers in it who guarded the border between the Soviet and British occupation zones south of Ellrich . From 1947 the building was used again as a restaurant, the ballroom of which was used as a cinema from 1957. In the 1970s, there was a disco in the ballroom. The restaurant had been empty since the late 1980s; it was demolished in 1998. In 2018 a retirement home was built on the property.
literature
- Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.): Ellrich-Bürgergarten in: Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial . Wallstein, Göttingen 2007, p. 187 ( online )
- Jens Christian Wagner: Ellrich-Bürgergarten (SS Baubrigade IV) , in: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (Hrsg.): The Place of Terror - History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps , Volume 7. Munich 2008, p. 301ff ( online )
- Jens-Christian Wagner: Ellrich 1944/45 - Concentration Camp and Forced Labor in a Small German Town , Göttingen, 2009, Wallstein, pp. 56–58, 176.
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 35 ′ 22.1 ″ N , 10 ° 39 ′ 58.6 ″ E