Kaltenkirchen subcamp
The Kaltenkirchen satellite camp was a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp ; also known as the Kaltenkirchen concentration camp external command .
The Kaltenkirchen concentration camp memorial is located in the Springhirsch district of the municipality of Nützen in the Segeberg district in Schleswig-Holstein (between Quickborn and Bad Bramstedt ) and not in the urban area of Kaltenkirchen .
History of the camp
At the instigation of the Wehrmacht, in this case the Luftwaffe , the SS leadership of the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg set up the Kaltenkirchen external command in the summer of 1944.
The concentration camp prisoners from the Netherlands, France, Poland, the Soviet Union and other occupied territories were supposed to upgrade the runways of the Kaltenkirchen military airfield for a jet-powered fighter (jet fighter ME 262 ). They were brought to Kaltenkirchen station by freight trains and had to march 10 km from there to the camp. Since there were already completely exhausted prisoners among the concentration camp inmates during these transports from Neuengamme , some of them did not survive this march from the train station to the camp on their own.
Between August 1944 and the “evacuation” of the camp on April 16, 1945 to the Wöbbelin satellite camp , between 500 and 700 prisoners were probably beaten to death. The burials took place in different places, which are no longer known today. Dead prisoners are buried with 180 Soviet prisoners of war in a mass grave (Lage) in Moorkaten, 2 km away . In 1951 the bones of 3 Dutch and 68 French were transferred to their home countries.
memorial
In 1997 an excavator came across the remains of the washing and latrine barracks of the Kaltenkirchen concentration camp external command. That gave the impetus for the creation of a memorial, which has been in constant expansion ever since. The sponsoring association of the Kaltenkirchen Concentration Camp Memorial in Springhirsch was founded in 1999.
The document house (two information containers) and the outdoor area of the memorial are available to the pupils of the sponsored schools and visitors every day as a “learning place of history”.
The concentration camp memorial is located 35 km north of Hamburg directly on federal highway 4: Approx. 2 km north of Langeln and 4 km south of Lentföhrden .
literature
- Gerhard Hoch : main place of exile. The Kaltenkirchen concentration camp external command. 12 found years of Kaltenkirchen 1933–1945. Wäser, Bad Segeberg 1979, ISBN 3-87883-002-5 .
- Gerhard Braas: "Kaltenkirchen will not be forgotten!" The first Kaltenkirchen-Springhirsch POW camp 1915–1920 . In: Informations zur Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitgeschichte (ISHZ) 59 (2019), pp. 6–87.
Web links
- Kaltenkirchen concentration camp memorial in Springhirsch
- “Kaltenkirchen” on the Neuengamme Memorial website
Coordinates: 53 ° 50 ′ 3.5 ″ N , 9 ° 53 ′ 9 ″ E