Fischen concentration camp subcamp

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The Fischen subcamp (also Kottern Command ) was a subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp from November 6, 1944 to April 25, 1945 .

Emergence

After the fighter aircraft manufacturer Messerschmitt in Augsburg became the target of Allied air attacks, armaments production was to continue decentralized and hidden, as here in a small wooded area south of the Fischen station in the Allgäu.

The camp was probably established as early as August / September 1944 as an external command of the Kottern-Weidach camp located 20 km to the north . In presumably four barracks, 250 to 300 prisoners from Germany, Austria, the Soviet Union, Italy, France and Poland produced aircraft frames for Messerschmitt AG in twelve-hour day and night shifts .

Warehouse management

The investigation files initially name SS-Hauptsturmführer Ludwig Geiss as the camp leader , then from December 1944 to April 1945 SS-Unterscharführer (or SS-Untersturmführer) Emil Schmidt , who was previously deployed in the Kempten satellite camp. The guard for Camp Fischen consisted of 18 men, some of whom did not come from the SS, but war wounded from hospitals or pilots who did not have an airplane and were used elsewhere.

Storage conditions

The hygienic conditions for the camp inmates were very poor:

“[...] The camp is still under construction and looks primitive. [...] The lavatory and washing facilities are primitive. The prisoners' area is makeshift. A delousing matter is still missing. [...] "

- Dachau camp doctor : Excerpts from the quarterly report of March 27, 1945 (one month before the camp was closed)

The inmates later reported holes in the roofs of the barracks, dirt, vermin and starvation rations.

The hard work, poor hygiene and inadequate nutrition claimed victims among the concentration camp inmates. However, the chances of survival in the Fischen camp were significantly higher compared to the hellish conditions in the concentration camps around Kaufering / Landsberg or Riederloh II .

Aid actions are also known, such as that of the trained bricklayer Alois Faulhaber, who had to work as a supervisor in the SS labor camp for six months and who, at risk of death, hid a young, malnourished Russian prisoner for several months on his own farm.

crime

Preliminary investigations into a case that was discontinued in 1977 did not reveal any evidence of immediate killing. Survivors reported ill-treatment and the shooting of inmates after food theft and escape attempts. In addition, prisoners are said to have been shot on the evacuation march.

Two Austrian resistance fighters ( Spain fighters ), Franz Storkan and Gustav Teply , who had been arrested in Vienna, were accommodated in the Fischen subcamp ; they were located by the SS, brought to the Dachau concentration camp and hanged there on April 7, 1945 near the crematorium . Teply had been fetched from the infirmary in Fischen by the SS despite an illness.

memorial

memory

In October 2010, about 100 meters as the crow flies from the remains of the camp, the Fischen community unveiled a stele by the artist Andreas Koop from Nesselwang, which is intended to keep the memory of the Dachau subcamp alive.

literature

  • Markus Naumann: Traces in the forest. Messerschmitt / Werkzeugbau Kottern and the subcamp in Fischen. A contribution to the armaments industry and forced labor in the upper Allgäu during the Second World War (=  Allgäu research on archeology and history,  3). Likias Verlag, Friedberg 2017, ISBN 978-3-9817006-6-4 .
  • Edith Raim: Fishing. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel , Angelika Königseder (eds.): The place of terror - history of the National Socialist concentration camps. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52962-3 , pp. 322–323, 377 ( reading sample, accessed September 2, 2019).
  • Gernot Römer: For the forgotten. Subcamp in Swabia - Swabia in concentration camps. Wißner-Verlag, 1996, ISBN 978-3896390479 .

Web links

Commons : Subcamp Fischen  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b see web link Memorial Site Education Bavaria: The subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp
  2. ↑ a b c d see web link Christian Steinmüller: Im Schatten von Dachau as well as literature Gernot Römer: For the forgotten. Subcamp in Swabia - Swabia in concentration camps
  3. ↑ a b c d e see literature Edith Raim: Fischen
  4. ↑ see web link Michaela Schneider: Leather boots sewn out of gratitude
  5. ↑ see web links Spain archive and Alfred Klahr Society about Franz Storkan and Gustav Teply
  6. ↑ see web links image and description of the stele as well as newspaper article Veronika Krull about the memorial stele

Coordinates: 47 ° 26 ′ 45.2 ″  N , 10 ° 16 ′ 31.1 ″  E