Schandelah subcamp
The Schandelah concentration camp , also known as the Schandelah satellite camp, was located in the Wohld district of Schandelah in the Wolfenbüttel district , near Braunschweig in Lower Saxony and was a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp . The concentration camp satellite camp , also known as the external command at the time, existed from May 8, 1944 to April 12, 1945.
It was built as part of the Nazi government's mineral oil security plan in mid-1944, when the war-important fuel industry was partially destroyed by Allied bombing . It was considered the most important facility for the research and production of synthetic gasoline from oil shale in ovens in an experimental plant and was an exception among the concentration camps . As in another seven concentration camps, the concentration camp prisoners had to mine oil shale under inhumane conditions as the basis for gasoline production.
The prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp and the Salzgitter-Drütte satellite camp were used for forced labor under SS surveillance . Steinöl GmbH Braunschweig and the Technical University of Braunschweig , both represented by Solms Wilhelm Wittig, were responsible for the technical implementation .
Efforts to extract fuel from oil shale
When the fuel supply of the Wehrmacht continued to deteriorate due to the bombing of the German fuel plants and the loss of the Romanian oil fields, Edmund Geilenberg, after a personal meeting with Adolf Hitler on May 30, 1944, developed the mineral oil security plan , which was decided with the highest priority and also called Geilenberg Program was designated.
The National Socialists hoped with these measures to eliminate their fuel shortage. As early as October 1943, the Prime Minister of the Free State of Braunschweig, Dietrich Klagges , wrote to the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler for promoting oil production in the State of Braunschweig. In the mineral oil security plan there was the secret enterprise desert , which had the highest priority with the development of oil shale deposits for the extraction of oil. Oil shale contains bituminous constituents that are flammable and, under the influence of heat, small amounts of shale oil can be extracted in a so-called smoldering process.
The Posidonia slate deposit in the south of Wolfsburg , with a length of about 11 kilometers, a width of 2.5 kilometers and almost 40 meters of oil-bearing thickness, was considered to be very important for the mass production of fuel. In addition to the Schandelah concentration camp, as part of the desert program in seven concentration camps in Württemberg , oil shale was extracted from an oil shale deposit from the Lias on the Swabian Alb around Balingen in ten production sites by 15,000 concentration camp prisoners and other forced laborers . Around 3,500 to 4,000 prisoners were killed by SS guards and other guards during the oil shale mining in Württemberg, and around 200 people in the Schandelah subcamp.
Planning for the Schandelah satellite camp
The Schandelah concentration camp was to be built in the Helmstedt and Wolfsburg area. The Braunschweigische Kohlen-Bergwerke AG estimated in 1943 that 75 million tons of Schandelaher shale oil could be extracted. As early as the First World War there were attempts to extract oil from this deposit, and from 1943 the Ministry of Armaments and Ammunition left under Albert Speer . examine whether it is possible to extract oil from oil shale as a fuel that is essential for warfare.
The general director of Deutsche Asphalt AG (DASAG), Solms Wilhelm Wittig , founded a DASAG subsidiary, Steinöl-GmbH Braunschweig , after a meeting with Klagges, which was entered in the commercial register to conceal its actual purpose as the Schandelah lime and cement works . Other participants in this meeting were Oberbergrat Göhlich, Director Borchart and Hans-Joachim Freiherr von Kruedener . The Reich government contractually guaranteed interest on the investments, took a 50 percent stake in the share capital and pre- financed the 7–8 million Reichsmarks required to build an experimental plant for the synthetic production of oil.
With the Geilenberg program in August 1944, the experimental plant became extremely important for the war; It was built immediately, and prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp , from the so-called Schandelah external command , were deployed under inhumane conditions. In the autumn of 1944, Geilenberg personally visited the Schandelah camp together with Wittig and other Steinöl GmbH company employees in the SS barracks there and pushed for the connection to the rail network, the construction of the experimental ovens and wanted to take care of the further provision of concentration camp prisoners.
Conception and operation by Steinöl GmbH and the SS
Steinöl GmbH with its managing director S. Wittig played a special role in the planning and ongoing operation of the Schandelah satellite camp. Wittig was a civil engineer and held a professorship at the chair for road construction and urban construction at the TU Dresden . From 1941 he was General Director of Deutsche Asphalt AG, based in Eschershausen . The main shareholder of DASAG was the Free State of Braunschweig with 97 percent. He was appointed head of the Research Institute for Natural Asphalt at the TU Braunschweig in April 1944, which was relocated to Schandelah when it was bombed on October 15, 1944. Wittig appointed Hans Detlev Ohlen as his deputy at Steinöl GmbH.
On January 20, 1944, the camp commandant of the Salzgitter-Drütte concentration camp, Herbert Rautenberg, and representatives of Steinöl GmbH met in Schandelah to set up the prisoner camp. At the asphalt institute of the TU Braunschweig, an Otto Hefter worked under Wittig who had been involved in the extraction of oil since 1937. After the bombing of Braunschweig in October 1944, Hefter monitored the experimental furnaces of Steinöl GmbH in the Schandelah subcamp. His salary was still paid by the TU Braunschweig.
Steinöl GmbH was responsible for the division of the work of the concentration camp inmates as well as for the provision of the accommodations, their heating and maintenance. She was also responsible for paying the medication bills, about which she complained in writing about the amount of the bills and refused to sign. In May 1944 it was agreed with Steinöl GmbH that sick concentration camp inmates who were no longer able to work would be sent back to Neuengamme or Salzgitter.
On August 11, 1944, SS-Unterscharführer Ebsen took over command of SS-Oberscharführer Jauch over the Schandelah camp, which was first occupied with around 100 prisoners on May 18, 1944. The number of prisoners rose to around 750 to 800 by November 1944. Most of the camp inmates came from the Soviet Union, Poland, Belgium and France and smaller groups from the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The prisoners were deployed in the oil shale opencast mine, for the construction of the accommodations and the charging of the experimental furnaces as well as in the supply and administration.
The Steinöl-GmbH Braunschweig was responsible for the construction of the accommodation, the heating and the furnishings and the SS was responsible for the guarding of the concentration camp prisoners, transport to and from the camp, food, clothing and medical care. The SS formed columns of convicts (called Kommandos) who worked twelve hours, led by so-called kapos (concentration camp inmates appointed as overseers), who were guarded by SS men armed with carbines and batons. One column each worked either on the construction of a railway line to the Schandelah station or in the oil shale mining. The assignment to the construction of the railway, the so-called State Railroad Command , was feared because the SS guards there were particularly brutal. The oil extraction project grew relatively quickly in the second half of 1944 and the trial operation could be opened from January 1945.
Inhuman conditions of forced labor
In the slate quarry, the rock was broken out with a hoe and loaded into lorries by hand. The prisoners who were employed in the construction of the railroad had to dig out the track bed with shovels and hoes and lay the sleepers and the heavy iron tracks without mechanical help.
The operating staff of the two experimental ovens consisted of 70 men each, who shoveled 24 to 32 tons of oil shale into the ovens in two 12-hour shifts. Around 35 tons of oil shale had to be broken to extract one tonne of heavy fuel oil .
Initially, the accommodation for the prisoners consisted of one barrack and later of four barracks, three of which were used by prisoners and one was for the guards and civilian workers for repair and other work, as well as for the asphalt research institute of the TU Braunschweig, which was outsourced from Braunschweig occupied. The concentration camp was secured against attempts to escape by an electrically charged barbed wire. The prisoners' barracks were overcrowded with between 250 and 500 men in three-story beds. At times, four men had to share a bed. There were three blankets per prisoner, later only two, and a pallet.
Seriously ill or no longer efficient prisoners were separated back to Neuengamme concentration camp or the Salzgitter-Drütte subcamp, and those who were more easily ill were taken to the camp's infirmary. In the Schandelah subcamp there was no medicine, nursing care or qualified nursing staff. There was no doctor and only one paramedic who initially came from the Salzgitter-Drütte subcamp once a week and was supported by an on-site paramedic who was a construction worker. A doctor from the village of Schandelah was only called into the camp to issue death certificates. It is estimated that around 200 concentration camp prisoners were killed, of which 20 men were shot while fleeing and five were killed by SS guards. The exact number of those murdered can no longer be determined.
Pierre Verhaegen, a Belgian concentration camp inmate, testified before the British Military Tribunal in 1947: “ We were woken up in the morning with a beating; at breakfast it went on. It continued on the way to and from work. Even if we were asleep in our beds, we weren't safe from it. "
Georg Walter Adler, a German concentration camp prisoner, reported during the war crimes trial that the food was miserable and never sufficient for the hard work: “ For breakfast at 6 o'clock there was coffee and a slice of bread weighing 100 grams. At 10.00 o'clock we got another two slices of bread weighing 200 grams. It was noon at noon and then there was turnip soup, sometimes with potatoes, mostly without, a total of 1 1/4 liters. Lunchtime was so short that sometimes the prisoners could not eat all of their food and were chased back to work. Our last meal was at 6:00 p.m. and consisted of 250 grams of bread, 10 grams to 15 grams of margarine, and alternating between fish paste, beetroot or sausage. ". Sometimes 20 prisoners often had to share a loaf of bread every day. Not everyone got a lunch soup because not everyone had a bowl.
The barracks could be heated, but no combustible material was allocated and in order to protect themselves from the cold, the concentration camp inmates carried empty paper cement sacks from the building projects under their laundry, which, if discovered, resulted in severe physical punishment with 25 blows of the cane . In September 1944, the third barracks had not yet been completed, so the prisoners had to sleep on straw freezing without blankets.
A pair of pants, a jacket, a pair of wooden shoes and a hat had to be worn in the camp until they were no longer usable and were completely worn out. Lingerie and underwear could not be changed or washed at first. After more than half a year, underwear was only replaced once. As a result, the laundry that had to be carried was dirty and lice. For the first four months there was no water pipe and water was brought into the camp in containers. It was not until February 1945 that washing facilities and running water were available due to technical problems with the construction of the water pipeline.
Relationship to the population in the area
The subcamp was on a public road between Scheppau and Hordorf. The surrounding fields were cultivated by farmers, and the concentration camp prisoners who were involved in building the railway could be seen by the population. Some of the prisoners who fled were betrayed by local villagers. The concentration camp administration bought food and other items in the surrounding villages. The concentration camp must have been known to the population living there. Most of them agreed with the Nazi propaganda that the forced laborers in the camp were criminals who were not entitled to their help. This attitude still had an impact after the end of the war, because in 1965, in response to interviews with a former prisoner in Schandelah, villagers said that there was no concentration camp, only a camp for foreigners outside the village .
To this day, the former existence of the camp and the burial site at the Scheppau cemetery are problematic for part of the population. The annual visits of the few survivors of this concentration camp to the cemetery are ignored by many. Some committed citizens of the village of Scheppau take care of the grave care of the partially unknown dead privately.
In 2005 it was the 60th anniversary of the liberation. Former prisoners as well as a large number of the descendants of the people who died there met and a. at the Scheppau cemetery for a memorial ceremony.
liberation
The concentration camp was occupied relatively constant until April 1945 with 750 to 800 prisoners. At the beginning of April 1945, concentration camps in western Germany were protected from advancing American troops, such as For example, the concentration camps near Porta Westfalica were evacuated, with the result that the Schandelah satellite camp had to accept some of these prisoners and was completely overcrowded with around 1200 to 1300 prisoners. On April 10, 1945, the concentration camp inmates were transported in freight wagons to the Wöbbelin reception camp near Ludwigslust . They did not arrive there until April 13th and were liberated by American soldiers on May 2nd, 1945.
War crimes trial
On January 2, 1947, a war crimes trial against Solms Wilhelm Wittig (Director General DASAG), Dr. Otto Hefter (Head of the Research Institute for Natural Asphalt at the TU Braunschweig ), and Hans Delev Ohlen (Deputy Managing Director Steinöl-GmbH Braunschweig), who took four weeks until the verdict was announced.
The accused of the SS guards were Friedrich Ebsen (camp commandant), Carl Truschel (deputy camp commandant), Erich Arnold Jahn (kitchen manager in the camp), Johann Heitz (SS dog handler), Arthur Große (Kapo of the dreaded State Railroad Command ) and Herbert Schiefelbein ( Kapo ).
During the trial, the witnesses reported the inhumane treatment, some of which led to the deaths of the inmates. The defendants Solms Wittig, Friedrich Ebsen, Carl Truschel, Johann Heitz and Arthur Große were sentenced to death by hanging . Wittig's sentence was not carried out, but was commuted to a 20-year prison sentence in March 1947. His pardon took place in May 1955. Ebsen, Große, Truschel and Heitz were executed on May 2nd, 1947 in the Hameln penitentiary . Ohlen was sentenced to 10 years and Schiefelbein to 2 years in prison. Ohlen’s sentence was shortened to seven years: he was released in August 1950. Hefter and Jahn were acquitted.
It is noteworthy that the Schandelah subcamp was a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp, but the SS personnel were subordinate to the camp commandant Hauptscharführer Max Kirstein of the Braunschweig subcamp Schillstrasse , who acted as base manager in the region and was never brought to account.
Final failure of the plans, today's use of the former concentration camp facilities
Steinöl-GmbH initially continued to exist after the end of the war, but the British showed no interest in this form of oil production and the company filed for bankruptcy in 1946. The experimental facility with the ovens and the administration's wooden barracks north of Wohld were dismantled after the end of the war, except for the so-called concrete skeleton. The stone barracks were bought by private individuals and converted into houses. The area of the prisoner camp was south of the state road 633. Today there is a farm there. The former open-cast mine for oil shale mining, which is connected to the Wohlder memorial to the north and overgrown by trees, filled with water and is now a biotope. Later attempts to extract fuel from the deposit also failed.
Burials, graves and memorials
The first place of burial for the murdered prisoners was in the north of the concentration camp, where the bodies were merely buried. In May 1946, the British military government ordered these dead to be reburied by German prisoners of war and workers from Büssing AG and Luther . They excavated 113 murdered slave laborers, who were placed in coffins and duly buried in a new memorial.
In July 1954, the city of Königslutter transferred the dead to the Scheppau cemetery, and the memorial site established by the British was abandoned. The city had a memorial stone erected there on May 1, 1995 with references to the dead and the Schandelah-Wohld satellite camp. Other prisoners who were buried outside the honorary resting place in Scheppau were reburied in Scheppau in the 1960s. Since not all concentration camp prisoners could be identified by name, some gravestones remained unnamed.
All war graves and graves of victims of the National Socialist tyranny must be preserved for posterity in accordance with legal requirements, which is why the cemetery holder of the Scheppau cemetery receives state subsidies for the care of the graves .
When members of the Green List of Citizens erected a wooden cross on the former camp site to commemorate the Schandelah satellite camp in 1982, the citizens of Schandelah-Wohld protested. It was removed again on the instructions of the Wolfenbüttel road construction authority. After the Green Citizens List and the Belgian Amicale belge de Neuengamme (brotherhood of the former Neuengamme concentration camp prisoners ) intervened for a long time, the municipality of Cremlingen and the district of Wolfenbüttel left in front of the western entrance to Schandelah-Wohld and on the north side of the state road 633 between Hordorf and Scheppau erect a memorial with an inscribed boulder. It was opened to the public on May 6, 1985. Since 1982, commemorative events of the Amicale belge de Neuengamme have been held here every year on May 6th .
At the end of September 2004 the memorial was sprayed with National Socialist symbols and a commemorative plaque was stolen. The investigation remained without result. The smears were removed and the plate replaced.
In June 2012 the bronze plaque was stolen again.
literature
- Marc Buggeln: Schandelah. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): 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 , p. 550 ff.
- Diethelm Krause-Hotopp (ed.): The concentration camp Schandelah-Wohld 1944-1945. A satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp. Einert & Krink, Schellerten 2020, ISBN 978-3-947803-06-4 .
- Diethelm Krause-Hotopp: The rediscovered cemeteries of the Schandelah-Wohld concentration camp. In: The Tetzelstein. Volume 10, No. 18, 2016, pp. 9–12.
- Bernhard Kiekenap : The SS and the slate at Schandelah. In: SS Junk School. SA and SS in Braunschweig. Appelhans, Braunschweig 2008, ISBN 978-3-937664-94-1 , pp. 107-114.
- Ursula Krause-Schmitt, Marianne Ngo, Gottfried Schmidt: Local history guide to places of resistance and persecution 1933–1945. Volume 2: Lower Saxony I: Braunschweig and Lüneburg administrative districts. Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1985, ISBN 3-7609-0930-2 , pp. 59-60.
- Jürgen Kumlehn: The concentration camp on the doorstep. In: Homeland book for the Wolfenbüttel district. 29th year, 1983, pp. 70-79.
- Karl Liedke: Braunschweig (Büssing). In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): 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 , p. 358.
- Heike Petry: "Re .: Use of concentration camp prisoners in Schandelah" - forced labor for the shale oil project of Steinöl GmbH. In: Gudrun Fiedler , Hans-Ulrich Ludewig (eds.): Forced labor and war economy in the state of Braunschweig. 1939–1945 (= sources and research on Braunschweig national history. Vol. 39). Appelhans, Braunschweig 2003, ISBN 3-930292-78-5 , pp. 237-258.
- Heike Petry: The DASAG group with special consideration of the Schandelah concentration camp. In: Detlef Creydt (Hrsg.): Forced labor for industry and armaments in Hils 1943–1945. Volume 4, Holzminden 2001, pp. 31-56.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Directory of the concentration camps and their external commandos in accordance with Section 42 (2) BEG : No. 1292 Schandelah, Braunschweig district.
- ↑ Buggeln: Schandelah. 2007, p. 522.
- ↑ Bundesarchiv NS 19 No. 1386, quoted from Petry: “Re .: Use of concentration camp prisoners in Schandelah”. 2003, p. 237.
- ↑ Jurassic Alb. ( Memento from June 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) At www.wissen.swr
- ↑ who at the same time held the office of general inspector for German roads, fortifications, water and energy.
- ↑ Petry: "Re .: Use of concentration camp prisoners in Schandelah". 2003, p. 240.
- ^ Searching for Nazi traces in the state of Braunschweig. Schandelah concentration camp. Prehistory.
- ↑ Bundesarchiv NS 3 No. 823, written report by Kruedener on September 19, 1944, quoted from Petry: “Re .: Use of concentration camp prisoners in Schandelah”. 2003, p. 244.
- ↑ Petry: "Re .: Use of concentration camp prisoners in Schandelah". 2003, pp. 240, 242, 245, 246, 248.
- ^ Searching for Nazi traces in the state of Braunschweig. Schandelah concentration camp. War crimes trial. 2nd day of the process.
- ^ Searching for Nazi traces in the state of Braunschweig. Schandelah concentration camp. Everyday life in the concentration camp.
- ↑ Petry: "Re .: Use of concentration camp prisoners in Schandelah". 2003, p. 365 f.
- ↑ Buggeln: Schandelah. 2007, p. 523 ff.
- ^ Liedke: Braunschweig (Büssing). 2007, p. 358 ff.
- ↑ Documentation on the discussion of the desecration of the memorial in 2004
- ^ Report of the Wolfenbuetteler Zeitung
Coordinates: 52 ° 17 ′ 46.4 " N , 10 ° 42 ′ 40.7" E