Harzungen external camp
The satellite camp Harzungen in Harzungen was up to the April 4, 1945 April 1, 1944 from the existing satellite camp first of the Buchenwald concentration camp and from October 1944 the concentration camp Mittelbau for about 4,000 male concentration camp prisoners (November, 1944). This second largest subcamp of the Mittelbau concentration camp was initially run by the camp SS under the cover name "Hans". From autumn 1944 it was designated as the Mittelbau III concentration camp .
Function of the camp and prisoners
The prisoners were housed in a barrack camp that was originally planned to accommodate German skilled workers from the Mittelwerk . The prisoners were deployed in construction projects of the SS command staff, including in the Himmelberg (construction project B 3) in the tunnel expansion. As a result of this project, Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG was supposed to be relocated underground . The prisoners were deployed daily in three eight-hour shifts on the construction sites in Woffleben and Niedersachswerfen , to which they marched every day and were taken by narrow-gauge railway from autumn 1944. Most of the prisoners were of Russian, Polish and French origins and mostly imprisoned for political reasons. The better living and working conditions compared to the Ellrich-Juliushütte satellite camp deteriorated when 1,100 exhausted prisoners were transferred to Harzungen from the Boelcke barracks satellite camp in February 1945 . At least 556 prisoners in the subcamp died while the camp was in existence.
Warehouse management
The first camp leader was SS-Untersturmführer Karl Fritzsch from April to September 1944 and after a provisional management by SS-Hauptscharführer Eduard Hinckelmann, SS-Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Frohne from November 1944 to April 1945. From December 1944 at the latest until the evacuation of the camp was the SS -Oberscharführer Josef Fuchsloch local protective custody camp leader . Fuchsloch was charged in the main Nordhausen trial but acquitted. The camp doctor was the medical officer Herbert Reiher. Wehrmacht soldiers were deployed to guard the camp, which was fenced off with watchtowers and electrically charged barbed wire .
Final phase of the camp
From March 21, 1945, 21 prisoners were transferred to a subcamp in Netzkater , the former Netzkater Quarry Command . On April 4, 1945, the now overcrowded sub-camp was cleared. Of the 6,500 evacuated prisoners, 4,500 were transported by train to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and 2,000 had to go on a death march . It is not known how many prisoners were killed.
post war period
After Harzungen was occupied by the US Army , 27 deceased prisoners were found on the camp grounds and buried in the community cemetery. The camp was then used for displaced persons and demolished at the end of 1945. A memorial stone erected in 1956 and renewed in 1977 commemorates the deceased prisoners in the community cemetery; There are two privately used camp barracks on the former camp site.
literature
- Andrè Sellier: Forced Labor in the Rocket Tunnel - History of the Dora Camp . zu Klampen, Lüneburg 2000, ISBN 3-924245-95-9 .
- Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.): Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945 . Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. Wallstein, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0118-4 .
- Jens Christian Wagner: Nordhausen (Boelcke barracks) . In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 7: Niederhagen / Wewelsburg, Lublin-Majdanek, Arbeitsdorf, Herzogenbusch (Vught), Bergen-Belsen, Mittelbau-Dora. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-52967-2 .
- Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of Death: The Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-89244-439-0 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.): Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945 . Göttingen 2007, p. 190.
- ^ A b c Jens Christian Wagner: Harzungen satellite camp. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The Place of Terror - History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps , Volume 7. Munich 2008, p. 310 f.
- ^ Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of death . the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Ed .: Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation. Wallstein, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-89244-439-0 , p. 688 ( google books [accessed November 26, 2011]).
- ↑ Erhard Pachaly, Kurt Pelny: Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp . on the anti-fascist resistance struggle in the Dora concentration camp from 1943 to 1945 (= history series ). Dietz, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-320-01488-9 , pp. 268 ( google books [accessed November 26, 2011]).
Coordinates: 51 ° 33 ′ 23 " N , 10 ° 48 ′ 14" E
