Saulgau subcamp
The Saulgau satellite camp was a satellite camp of the Dachau concentration camp and existed from August 1943 to April 1945 in the Upper Swabian town of Saulgau in what is now Baden-Württemberg .
The approximately 400 inmates of the subcamp , which was run by the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company , produced individual parts of unit 4 ; a missile that became known under the propaganda name "Retaliation Weapon 2" .
history
Creation of the sub-camp
The Saulgau satellite camp was established in August 1943 as part of the relocation of war-important operations from Friedrichshafen , a center of the armaments industry of the National Socialist German Reich . The decision to relocate armaments production was presumably made in the second quarter of 1943 and was likely to have been accelerated by a British air raid on June 21, 1943, which also hit the Zeppelin works in Friedrichshafen. The Zeppelin factories produced individual parts of unit 4, since June 1943 also with the use of concentration camp inmates who were housed in the local subcamp .
The rural Saulgau, located almost 50 kilometers north of Friedrichshafen, was selected as the new location for the production of individual parts for Unit 4. The resident harvest Maschinenfabrik Bautz had the "Binder Hall," a production hall for 1942 binding mowers , built that appeared suitable for the production of missile parts. The Bautz management initially opposed the reallocation of their company, but then gave in to pressure from the Gestapo , its own chairman of the supervisory board, local NSDAP officials and the Zeppelin works. From the perspective of the National Socialist regime, the relocation of production to Saulgau was successful: The use of the factory in Saulgau for rocket production escaped British aerial reconnaissance; until the end of the war there were no air raids on Saulgau.
In August 1943 the first 50 prisoners were transferred from the Friedrichshafen satellite camp to Saulgau. Initially engaged in renovation work in the Binderhalle in Bautz, the prisoners were deployed a few weeks later to build the satellite camp in Saulgau. The warehouse, designed for a capacity of 600 prisoners, was built in the immediate vicinity of the Bautz plant between two arterial roads. Four barracks were built on a rectangular site as accommodation for the prisoners, a kitchen barrack, a laundry room and a coal store. The camp was fenced in with double barbed wire that was sometimes electrically charged. In the four corners were 4.5 meter high watchtowers, on which armed guards were constantly. Outside the camp, a barracks was built for the SS guards . The construction of the camp was finished in December 1943.
Detainees, guards and conditions of detention
In the production phase between January 1944 and March 1945 there were around 350 to 430 concentration camp prisoners in Saulgau. According to a list dated January 13, 1945, of the 433 prisoners, 364 were in “protective custody” for political reasons ; The SS classified 34 prisoners as " anti-social " and another 35 as "criminals". A third of the prisoners came from the Soviet Union, a quarter were German citizens, and a fifth came from Poland. 48 prisoners were prison functionaries who were used by the SS as overseers on work assignments or for other control, order and administrative tasks with regard to fellow prisoners.
The guards consisted of a maximum of 30 members of the SS, 40% of whom were probably ethnic Germans . There were also four guard dogs . Protective custody camp leader was SS-Obersturmführer Georg Grünberg , who performed the same function in the Friedrichshafen satellite camp and later in the Überlingen-Aufkirch satellite camp and was only present in Saulgau on a daily basis. As Oberscharführer, Hans Nikol Sengenberger was camp leader. Sengenberger's leadership style was characterized by personal harassment and intimidation, according to later statements by prisoners; in the camp hierarchy he promoted criminal inmates. In December 1944, Sengenberger was replaced by SS-Untersturmführer Ludwig Geiß. Geiß is described by prisoners as an exception in the SS and characterized as “correct”, “compassionate”, “highly decent” and “humane”. On arrival in Saulgau, he forbade the guards to engage in any brutality or harassment; In the following years he bought additional groceries and got medicines for the prisoners.
The camp elder, the highest position that a prisoner could achieve, was a watchmaker born in 1911 who, after several previous convictions, had been sentenced to five years in prison in 1935 for theft and was imprisoned as a criminal prisoner in Dachau concentration camp from 1940 . There he was a test subject in the malaria experiments of the concentration camp doctor Claus Schilling . As a camp elder, he enjoyed special privileges such as his own spacious room. Covered by the SS, the camp elder was able to establish a brutal regime in Saulgau; in prisoner reports he is held responsible for many cases of caning orders.
Parts of the two fuel tanks and the so-called half - shells of unit 4 were produced in Saulgau . Two half-shells served as the outer cladding of the middle section of unit 4. Civilian workers and concentration camp prisoners alike worked in the Binderhalle under the supervision of industrial foremen from the Bautz company. The Friedrichshafen Zeppelin factories retained production responsibility. From January to the end of September 1944, 1179 half-shells were produced, and half-shells from Saulgau were probably used for around half of the V2 rockets. The rocket parts produced in Saulgau were transported by train to the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp , where the final assembly of unit 4 took place. According to a list dated January 13, 1945, 372 concentration camp prisoners were used in production, of which 213 were unskilled workers and 159 skilled workers, mostly in metalworking professions. During the eleven hour shifts in the Binderhalle, the prisoners were beaten by kapos and guards or mistreated with the use of guard dogs; the production manager slapped the prisoners or denied them a snack. Lack of material temporarily interrupted the production of the rocket parts. During these times, the prisoners were used for other work, especially construction work for the city of Saulgau, but also in the search for duds after air strikes in the area around Saulgau.
According to interviews with contemporary witnesses, the locals were familiar with arms production. The concentration camp prisoners transported rocket parts on handcarts through Saulgau, as the parts were stored decentrally to protect against air attacks. The sub-camp was not surrounded by a wall, so that there were also two access roads to view the roll call area. Appeals lasted up to three hours with constant attention, even in continuous rain or high summer temperatures. Two women from Saulgau maintained dead mailboxes , with the help of which concentration camp prisoners could send messages to their relatives without them being subject to post censorship .
The documents received about the Saulgau subcamp do not give a clear picture of prisoners' attempts to escape. Presumably there were about ten attempts to escape, some of them successful. According to consistent reports from contemporary witnesses, a crowd of farmers, Volkssturm , women and schoolchildren found an escaped prisoner in a forest near Boos in 1944 . The prisoner evaded arrest by suicide ; he had previously been injured in the foot by a shot fired from the crowd.
The prisoners' diet was characterized by monotony, insufficient portions and inferior, sometimes rotten food. Breakfast consisted of 200 grams of bread per prisoner and tea; in the morning there was a snack in the Binderhalle with some sausage and margarine; Lunch was usually turnip soup , while dinner was alternating between soup and cold snacks. Because of hunger, prisoners seized the watchdog's feed or potato deliveries destined for Bautz's company kitchen. Bautz employees tried, in some cases illegally, to give the prisoners additional food. Despite better sanitary conditions than in other concentration camps, it was not possible in Saulgau to bring the plague of lice and bedbugs under control in the prisoners' barracks. By March 1945 six prisoners had died in Saulgau, the cause of death being illness or accidents at work. Compared to the Friedrichshafen and Überlingen-Aufkirch satellite camps, but also in those of the Desert Company on the Swabian Alb, the conditions of detention in Saulgau are considered somewhat more favorable. The cause is seen as the importance that the National Socialist regime attached to "weapons of retaliation":
“The importance that the regime accorded the new weapon required a fast and undisturbed production process. Loss of prisoners due to illness or high death rates would have severely disrupted the continuity of production. The few deaths during the production phase confirm this. The somewhat more favorable circumstances in Saulgau were not caused by particularly human behavior on the part of the SS, but rather the undisturbed exploitation of the prisoners for the rapid deployment of Unit 4 was the decisive factor. "
Known inmates
Ivan Matijašić was born in Croatia in 1916. Because he had given Yugoslav partisans medical help, he was arrested in his hometown of Pazin in autumn 1943 and was sent to the Dachau concentration camp via Trieste on January 16, 1944 and to Saulgau in June. Here he succeeded the deceased inmate doctor. He was able to save the lives of many prisoners. After the camp was liberated on April 23, 1945, Dr. Matijašić appointed chief physician at the Saulgau district hospital. In August of the same year he returned to his Croatian homeland.
Final phase as a hospital camp
The transfer of 151 prisoners from Saulgau to the Überlingen-Aufkirch satellite camp on February 25, 1945 led to a decline in the number of rocket parts produced in Saulgau. Production was finally stopped on March 30th. On April 4, 254 prisoners were to be transferred by train to the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp. Because of air raids, this train was diverted to the Dachau concentration camp, where it arrived on April 8th. Many prisoners from Saulgau took part in the death marches from Dachau towards Tyrol, and some managed to escape.
On April 5, a transport of 214 seriously ill prisoners from the Überlingen-Aufkirch satellite camp arrived in Saulgau. The prisoners were used there to build an underground tunnel system into which the Friedrichshafen armaments factories were to be relocated. Work accidents, poor nutrition and catastrophic hygienic conditions resulted in numerous deaths and a high level of sick leave in Überlingen. Upon arrival in Saulgau, the “prisoners from Überlingen [...] were completely emaciated, almost starved, torn down and completely lousy. Most of them could barely walk. ”Two prisoners died in freight wagons during the train journey, several others were hypothermic. The prisoners who remained in Saulgau brought those unable to walk on wheelbarrows and flatbed trucks to the subcamp and cared for them for the next two weeks. The lack of medicine, heating material and clean clothing made it difficult to treat the prisoners from Überlingen. By April 22nd, 20 prisoners on the transport had died.
After the liberation
On April 22, 1945 , units of the 1st French Army liberated Saulgau without encountering substantial organized German resistance. Shortly before, camp leader Geiss had ordered an "evacuation" of the ambulatory prisoners. The march to Friedrichshafen was canceled shortly outside of Saulgau; the prisoners returned to the subcamp. The SS guards fled before the arrival of the French armed forces in civilian clothes; Likewise, some of the prisoners, predominantly of German nationality, left the camp. On April 23, the French army confiscated the Saulgau hospital for the sick prisoners; the previous inmate physician became provisional chief physician. By the end of August 1945 another 17 of the liberated prisoners had died as a result of their imprisonment. A total of 35 prisoners were buried in the Saulgau cemetery. In 1946 the city erected a wooden cross on the graves with the inscription “35 victims of fascism 1945 rest here”.
Even before the French troops marched in, there were looting in Saulgau, in which both Germans and concentration camp prisoners, liberated prisoners of war and forced laborers , and later French soldiers, took part. Contrary to the representation in older local historical literature, the proportion of concentration camp prisoners in the looting is low; 26 of 535 reported looting cases are attributed to them. The majority of the concentration camp prisoners should have left Saulgau by September 1945. Some prisoners settled temporarily or permanently in Saulgau.
The four prisoner barracks of the subcamp were burned down on April 28, 1945 at the instigation of the prisoner doctor and approved by the French authorities because of the risk of epidemics. The kitchen barrack of the subcamp went up in flames in July 1950, presumably due to a lightning strike. A shopping center was built on the site of the sub-camp in 1968; in the process, the existing laundry room and the foundations of the barracks were removed.
Between July and September 1946, the French occupation authorities transported almost 300 of the half-shells that had remained in Saulgau at the end of the war by train to Puteaux near Paris. A good 100 of the half-shells produced by the prisoners remained in the Saulgau area and were used, among other things, in agriculture or in allotments, for example as weather protection for piles of wood or as the roof of gazebos. Half-shells were given to museums in the 1990s.
The legal processing of the concentration camp crimes took place in the American occupation zone in the Dachau trials . Seven members of the Saulgau security personnel were charged in Dachau, including camp leader Sengenberger. Sengenberger was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, the other defendants received imprisonment between 18 months and three years. The Tribunal Général de Rastatt , the military court for the French occupation zone, sentenced three other SS members working in Saulgau to imprisonment between five and nine years. In 1970, the German judiciary initiated an investigation against members of the security team at the Friedrichshafen subcamp. In 1973, the central office of the state justice administrations for the investigation of National Socialist crimes in Ludwigsburg separated the investigative proceedings into the Saulgau satellite camp from the Friedrichshafen proceedings. A total of 70 witnesses were heard from both satellite camps, almost exclusively prisoner functionaries and members of the SS. The investigation into Saulgau was closed in October 1975 because there were no indications of homicides.
Five former Saulgau concentration camp prisoners, including the camp elder, were defendants in 1951 in a trial before the Ravensburg Regional Court . The total of 17 accused were accused of participating in 47 burglaries with a loot of 100,000 DM within four years. The camp elder was sentenced to four years in prison on June 25, 1951. In reaching its verdict, the court took into account the economic hardship of the post-war period and the living conditions of the former prisoners, who would have tried in vain to return to a normal life after the liberation. The extensive reporting in the regional media about the largest trial of the post-war period in Upper Swabia made the existence of a satellite camp in Saulgau known to a broad public for the first time. The image of the concentration camp prisoners conveyed in the process determined their public perception in some cases as early as the early 1990s.
A shopping center was located on this site of the warehouse until 2019. The site was bought by Claas Bad Saulgau, the successor to Bautz AG. A memorial on the edge of the parking lot commemorates the victims.
"In memory of the
CONCENTRATION CAMP DACHAU
EXTERNAL STORAGE SAULGAU
1943 - 1945
•
On this site was from 1943-1945 one of the
163 sub-camp of Dachau.
After air raids on Friedrichshafen, the production
of parts of the so-called retaliatory weapon V2 was relocated to Saulgau
and the warehouse was set up. At times over 400
prisoners who were housed in wooden barracks were
used in production from August 1943.
A total of 43 prisoners fell victim to the National Socialist
war policy here - 37 of them alone as a result of a
prisoner transport from Überlingen to Saulgau in April 1945.
When the French marched in on April 22, 1945, the
camp was dissolved and the remaining 239 prisoners liberated. "
literature
- Albert Knoll: Saulgau. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): 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 , pp. 477-481.
- Georg Metzler: "Secret matter of command". Missile armor in Upper Swabia - the Saulgau satellite camp and the V2 (1943–1945). Eppe, Bergatreute 1996, ISBN 3-89089-053-9 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Knoll, Saulgau , p. 477.
- ^ Numbers in Knoll, Saulgau , p. 479, and Metzler, Kommandosache , p. 77f.
- ↑ Metzler, Kommandosache , pp. 141f.
- ↑ Metzler, Kommandosache , p. 143.
- ↑ Metzler, Kommandosache , p. 115f.
- ↑ Figures in Knoll, Saulgau , p. 478, and Metzler, Kommandosache , p. 198ff.
- ↑ Metzler, Kommandosache , pp. 191f.
- ↑ Metzler, Kommandosache , pp. 145ff.
- ^ Numbers in Knoll, Saulgau , p. 479f, and Metzler, Kommandosache , p. 146.
- ↑ Metzler, Kommandosache , p. 158.
- ↑ Metzler, Kommandosache , p. 166f.
- ↑ Metzler, Kommandosache , p. 150ff.
- ↑ Metzler, Kommandosache , p. 148f.
- ^ Information board 2811 in the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site ; August 2013
- ↑ Testimony in the investigation of the Central Office of the State Judicial Administrations to Solve National Socialist Crimes, quoted in Metzler, Kommandosache , p. 215.
- ↑ Metzler, Kommandosache , p. 216f.
- ↑ Metzler, Kommandosache , p. 228.
- ↑ Metzler, Kommandosache , p. 248. For the proceedings against Sengenberger, see also entry ( memento of the original from September 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in justice and Nazi crimes .
- ↑ This assessment in Metzler, Kommandosache , p. 252.
Coordinates: 48 ° 0 ′ 33 ″ N , 9 ° 30 ′ 15 ″ E