Hausham subcamp
The Hausham subcamp was a subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp . It existed from July 1942 to April 1945 in Eckart, a district of the Upper Bavarian municipality of Hausham . Although this command was divided into the SS comradeship home in Vordereckart and a branch of the German Research Institute for Nutrition and Catering in the immediate vicinity , the "Versuchsgut" Hintereckart, the two parts were in correspondence from the Dachau concentration camp, in the ITS list and also in the literature published so far is always listed under the common name of the Hausham satellite camp. The two original farms of the Vorder- and Hintereckart settlement are located on a hill south of the road from Hausham to Gmund am Tegernsee and go back to the 17th century.
SS comradeship home Vordereckart
prehistory
The tourist association "Naturfreunde Südbayern" bought the Vordereckart farm in 1924, converted it into an accommodation house and named it after a co-founder of the association " Rohrauerhaus ". After the transfer of power to the National Socialists, the association was banned in 1933. An SA department raided the house and chased away the tenant. A year later, the property was confiscated by the Miesbach district office and came into the possession of the Bavarian state. In early 1935 it was sold to a police sergeant from Munich who opened an inn there. As a result of private circumstances, he soon leased it to the SS, which set up the "SS Comradeship Home Vordereckart" there.
Work commitment of the prisoners
Concentration camp prisoners from the Dachau main camp were used for operation and construction maintenance. According to the ITS list, the satellite camp existed from July 9, 1942 to April 25, 1945, albeit with major interruptions. Most of the prisoners were craftsmen who were assigned weekly or monthly, mostly in groups of ten to twelve men, from the main camp in Dachau for conversion and general renovation work. This is confirmed by reports of changes from the Labor Deployment Department of the Dachau concentration camp and the interrogations of survivors initiated by the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations . In the spring of 1944 a small animal shed was built. Since only war-related buildings were allowed at this time, the administration of the Dachau concentration camp submitted an application for an exception to the construction ban, which was also approved, as the form stated truthfully that prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp would carry out the construction project, as was old material Wood and sand available. Even the quota cement would be available. Towards the end of 1944 a water pipe was laid and the excavation of a tunnel in the rock began, which was to serve as an air raid shelter.
Treatment of inmates
The work was supervised by an SS commando officer, an SS man was enough to guard it. Survivors agreed that the treatment was good, and that there was never any mistreatment or even killing. They would also have had a lot of freedom. The food was sufficient and good. The inmates were accommodated in the farm next door. At the end of the war there were no longer any male prisoners in Vordereckart, there are only reports of the liberation of women from Hintereckart. The last mention of four male prisoners came from the strength report of April 26, 1945, and the next one of April 29, 1945, the day the Dachau concentration camp was liberated , they are missing. The official end date of the existence of the satellite camp, April 25, 1945, obviously results from the fact that on this day work details from the Dachau main camp were deployed for the last time.
Post war history
According to local residents, the property was used as a home for homeless children after the end of the war. During this time, the tourist association "Die Naturfreunde" tried to get their holiday home back, which was successful as reparation from October 1, 1947. In 1965/1966 the old building was demolished and rebuilt as an enlarged new building. Finally in 1974 the house was sold to the state capital Munich , which used it as a school camp under the old name "Rohrauerhaus". Today there is no sign of memory of the presence of concentration camp prisoners on site.
"Versuchsgut" Hintereckart
prehistory
In 1936, a graduate farmer acquired the somewhat neglected Hintereckart property. When he was killed in the attack on Poland , his wife leased the farm to the German Research Institute for Food and Nutrition GmbH (DVA) "to maintain the business for the young heirs". She herself worked as a teacher in Munich during the week. A civilian administrator was employed to manage it.
Work commitment of the prisoner women
As concentration camp women were planned to manage the "experimental property", this subcamp was initially placed under the Ravensbrück concentration camp from October 27, 1943 , although prisoner reports mentioned an initial allocation for January 1942. As part of the restructuring of the sub-camp system for women, the farm was run under the Dachau concentration camp from October 5, 1944. Attempts on cultivated areas or farm animals were not carried out, rather the young cattle of the external detachment “Liebhof”, which were in the immediate vicinity of the Dachau concentration camp, were raised here, and pigs and chickens were kept.
During the entire period of existence there were mostly ten women in Hintereckart, all of whom belonged to the Jehovah's Witness community (generally called "Bible Students" during the Nazi era ), two of whom also work in the Vordereckart comradeship home in the kitchen and as chambermaids had to. Six women came from the German Reich, three from the Netherlands and one from Belgium. All of these were imprisoned for practicing their faith and some had already spent several years in prisons and the Ravensbrück concentration camp. The work of the prisoners' wives consisted of looking after the cattle and the chickens, milking the cows and mucking out the stable, mowing with the scythe, making hay and also spreading manure on the steep mountain meadows, general agricultural work and cooking for their comrades. In winter, this included clearing snow and once felling a tree with a hand saw.
Treatment of inmate women
The women were housed in a shared dormitory on the farm, where they slept in beds with straw sacks. The food was brought to the satellite camp at regular intervals by means of a truck led by an SS leader accompanied by a political prisoner from the Dachau main camp and prepared by a resident family from the ranks of the SS. As blood was often added to the food, they refused to eat it in compliance with the biblical commandment to abstain from blood. After complaining to the responsible SS leader, they were allowed to cook for themselves. As the supply from Dachau became more and more difficult, the manager illegally procured food stamps for them to purchase food and when this was no longer possible, he looked after them in other ways, whereby he often made sure that there was sufficient supply by sat at the table with them. They also received some of the milk they had milked. A single SS guard was sufficient to guard her, as Jehovah's Witnesses refused to flee for reasons of faith. Later this was replaced by an older SS man whose profession was a farmer and who helped with the work.
Since the Jehovah's Witnesses refused to work in the armaments industry, their treatment in the concentration camps and their satellite camps was only improved by Heinrich Himmler's instructions from around 1942, as he expressly encouraged employment in war-neutral work and in households. As a result, the prisoner women also had relatively greater freedom in Hintereckart and were usually able to move around without guarding and wear civilian clothes; they received mountain boots for their work. After a complaint by the women about the SS overseer about harassment while working on the land, she was reprimanded during one of the regular visits by the SS leader.
The imprisoned women strengthened their faith by meeting local Jehovah's Witnesses secretly in the forest on Sundays and also receiving "Watchtower" literature from them, some of which also reached the Dachau main camp to the fellow believers imprisoned there. The only public holiday of Jehovah's Witnesses, the Last Supper in memory of the death of Jesus Christ, they could secretly celebrate in the locked bedroom of the farm with red wine and unleavened bread. The administrator behaved cooperatively by tolerating uncensored correspondence with relatives and allowing them to meet secretly with the detainees. When one of the prisoners' wives broke a leg during a forbidden sleigh ride at night, he arranged for her to be admitted to the local hospital instead of the mandatory transfer to the infirmary of the Dachau main camp and obliged all those involved to maintain silence. Even the visitors from the ranks of the SS in the Kameradschaftsheim were extremely friendly towards the prisoner women. Despite their relatively good treatment, they were still working slaves and subjected to the unpredictability of life in a concentration camp, including life-threatening situations. Shortly before the end of the war, one of the women was threatened with shooting because she allowed herself to point out when raising a pile of wood that, because of her small body size, she could not stack the logs so high.
liberation
The prisoner women were cut off from information about the course of the war, so that they were surprised by their liberation by American soldiers on May 2nd. The US soldiers captured the SS members present in the comradeship home. The prisoners' wives left Hintereckart on May 8th because the owner wanted the occupied rooms back. They received a certificate of incarceration as Jehovah's Witnesses from the administrator and material support from the Americans. They temporarily found accommodation with fellow believers in Hausham and then returned to their homeland. Before that, they said in writing to the administrator, “Thanks for the joint cooperation, which made our being here more bearable”.
Post war history
The former "experimental estate" was sold in 1958, the new owner has given up farming. Today nothing reminds us of the forced labor of the prisoner women.
literature
- Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 2: Early camp, Dachau, Emsland camp. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52962-3 .
Coordinates: 47 ° 44 ′ 58 " N , 11 ° 47 ′ 58" E