Subcamp Hamburg-Wandsbek

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Memorial at the site of the former Hamburg-Wandsbek satellite camp

The satellite camp Hamburg-Wandsbek was one of the summer of 1944 existing until the beginning of May 1945 satellite camp of Neuengamme concentration camp for more than 500 female prisoners in today's district of Hamburg-Tonndorf the district Wandsbek . The barracks camp was located at Ahrensburger Strasse 162 at the Tonndorf cemetery and bordered the Drägerwerke site in Hamburg , where the female prisoners had to do forced labor .

prehistory

In 1944, a camp for 200 Eastern workers , which had existed on site since 1942, was expanded to set up a satellite camp for female prisoners. The fenced-in camp finally comprised three barracks with bedrooms for prisoners as well as a laundry and utility barrack .

Function of the camp, inmates and camp management

In the summer of 1944, 500 “political” female prisoners from the Ravensbrück concentration camp were transferred to the Hamburg-Wandsbek satellite camp, most of them from Poland, Russia and the Ukraine. In addition, some of the female prisoners were of Slovenian, German, Czech, Dutch, Belgian, French and Hungarian origins.

In the camp, the female prisoners were monitored by up to twenty concentration camp guards and outside by a guards team, some of which consisted of ten retired male customs officers. While the camp was in existence, three command leaders took over the camp management one after the other: the first camp leader was SS-Unterscharfuhrer Johannes Heinrich Steenbock, then SS-Untersturmführer Max Kirstein and finally Friedrich Wilhelm Hinz until the end of the war.

In alternating twelve-hour shifts, most of the female prisoners had to do forced labor for the Hamburg Drägerwerke as part of the Brandt device program to accelerate arms production . The majority of the women were employed in the mechanical gas mask production at the Hamburg Drägerwerke and, after production was cut back in the spring of 1945, were mainly used to clear rubble.

In March 1945, female prisoners in this satellite camp were subjected to tests by the Drägerwerke in several Hamburg air raid shelters in order to find out "how long people can survive in a gas-tight air-raid shelter without a ventilation system".

As a result of severe abuse, several female concentration camp inmates died while the camp was in existence and two women were "shot while trying to escape". The Russian Raja Ilinauk was hanged on August 29, 1944 in the storage area for "sabotage" after she dropped a mold .

Around April 20, 1945, female prisoners from the Helmstedt-Beendorf satellite camp arrived at the Hamburg-Wandsbek satellite camp in the course of the camp evictions in the end of the war . On May 1, 1945, the Swedish Red Cross was able to bring the majority of the prisoners in the Wandsbek subcamp from Altona station to safety by train via Padborg to Sweden . The other female prisoners were transferred to the Hamburg-Eidelstedt satellite camp, where they were liberated by British troops on May 5, 1945.

Legal processing

The former camp directors Steenbock and Hinz, a security guard and three female guards from the former satellite camp were tried before a British military court in 1947 in a follow-up to the Neuengamme main trial for the mistreatment of concentration camp prisoners . Three defendants were acquitted, among them the former camp manager Hinz. Steenbock received a twenty-year prison sentence , former security guard Dreier received a fifteen-year prison sentence, and a female accused was sentenced to five years in prison.

Commemoration

After the end of the war, the barracks were demolished and instead production halls were built for companies such as Agfa - Gevaert on the former camp site . From May 1988 an information board reminded of the former storage location and after the conversion of the industrial area into a residential area in 2004/2005 there is a small memorial complex with still existing fence posts and a washing trough of the former sub-camp. From 2007 the memorial site was redesigned as there was public criticism of its design by the developer of the residential complex. In addition, this memorial site is still not open to the public as this was omitted as a requirement in the development plan.

Separated by a fence, there is now another memorial right next to the old memorial. This memorial was inaugurated on May 8, 2010 in the presence of three former female inmates. Shortly before the inauguration, the memorial was desecrated with swastika graffiti and was later damaged. On October 30, 2010, the new memorial site was expanded to include a memorial designed by students from Charlotte-Paulsen-Gymnasium, which was selected by a jury. The memorial designed by the students is located in the center of the new memorial and consists of two intertwined stone angles surrounded by chains. This memorial stands in the center of six granite angles set into the ground with screwed-on glass panels that list the names of the victims. For their commitment in this regard, pupils of the art course at Charlotte-Paulsen-Gymnasium were awarded the Bertini Prize on January 27, 2011 .

literature

  • Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-52965-8 , pp. 425-427.
  • Heidemarie Kugler-Weiemann, Jan Kalsow, Martin Harnisch, Stefan Romey: A concentration camp in Wandsbek. Forced labor in the Hamburg Drägerwerk , VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 1994.

Web links

Commons : Subcamp Hamburg-Wandsbek  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Hans Ellger: Hamburg-Wandsbek . Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5, Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. Munich 2007, p. 425 f.
  2. ↑ a b c Detlef Garbe, Kerstin Klingel: Guide to Places of Remembrance from 1933 to 1945, updated second edition, Hamburg 2008, p. 73.
  3. ^ Hans Ellger: Hamburg-Wandsbek . Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5, Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. Munich 2007, p. 427.
  4. ↑ a b c Frank Keil: The memorial controversy of Wandsbek . In: taz of December 20, 2011
  5. ↑ Arbeitsgemeinschaft Neuengamme e. V .: Assault on the newly opened concentration camp memorial in Hamburg , May 20, 2010, on http://www.hagalil.com
  6. ↑ Arbeitsgemeinschaft Neuengamme: The concentration camp in the heart of Wandsbek  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 309 kB)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.ag-neuengamme.de  
  7. ↑ The memorial at the former Wandsbek-Drägerwerk subcamp is inaugurated on http://www.hamburg.de
  8. ^ Stefan Romey: Bertini Prize. I didn't know (PDF; 339 kB). In: hlz - magazine of the GEW Hamburg 1–2 / 2011, p. 48

Coordinates: 53 ° 34 ′ 58 ″  N , 10 ° 6 ′ 31 ″  E