Thil subcamp
The Thil concentration camp in the municipality of Thil near Villerupt in Lorraine (Lorraine in French; southwest of the center of Luxembourg ) was temporarily a satellite or sub-camp of the German Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp (no uniform name) in 1944 than the French Alsace (Alsace) during World War II had been occupied. The area of the Thil concentration camp itself did not belong to the annexed part of France (then Lorraine). However, these jurisdictional limits seem to have no longer played a role in its establishment and its imminent relocation. It was erected by the NSDAP's Schutzstaffel (SS abbreviation; more precisely, the Totenkopf, the concentration camp guards of the Schutzstaffel) in the border area between France and Luxembourg in spring 1944 at the earliest, according to other sources in early summer 1944.
The underground production planned for the production of the V1 (for retaliation weapon 1 , a kind of flying bomb) by the so-called Jägerstab (a committee for securing armaments production) was to be expanded by concentration camp prisoners on an area of over 200,000 m² in existing, former ore tunnels and operated. Due to the invasion and the success of the Allies in June 1944, the forced labor or sub-camp of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp , known in French as Camp de Thil or German Kommando Erz von Longwy-Thil ( Département Meurthe-et-Moselle ), was like others before Start of production cleared. Allied troops reached the area on September 1, 1944. Only a few bullet carcasses were found. At the time, the SS made sure that no concentration camp prisoner could inform the Allies about the preparations there.
Facilities
To camouflage the intended production, it was pretended to be the continuation of the former mine of the "Syndicat de Tiercelet" in Thil. The following names were used: Grube-Erz (code designation), Camp de Travail ore, Minette pit Tiercelet near Longwy-Erz and after a company newly founded in Berlin "Minette GmbH" (projet Tiercelet). This GmbH had a share capital of 10 million Reichsmarks. (Registered in the commercial register on July 12 and 22, 1944 in favor of Hans Riedel, Ferdinand Porsche , Bodo Lafferentz and Anton Piëch ). This company was deleted from the commercial register in 1957.
As the duration in which the concentration camp, possibly other accommodations and underground production in the tunnels were operated, various dates for the start date are specified in written documents, which, however, only start later than the oral tradition:
- July 24, 1944 in Longwy-Thil (according to certificats de décès) by the " International Tracing Service " of the ICRC in Arolsen (There it says about the camp: Longwy Konz.Lager, Kdo. Von Natzweiler works for Deutsche Erzwerke AG)
- In March 1951 another report reads: Longwy-Thil = Add. Kdo. De Natzweiler, first mentioned May 10, 1944, with an average of 800 prisoners (mechanics and technicians for the AEG company) until September 1944, staying in Dernau and Kochendorf.
- A report from 1969 mentions: Longwy-Thil ( Longwy today Meurthe-et-Moselle) France - opening June 21, 1944 (concentration camp files). Evacuated on September 1, 1944 to the Kochendorf Command.
- The arrival of a transport of around 300 prisoners from Tiercelet on September 2, 1944 is reported for the Rebstock satellite camp near Dernau.
According to oral reports, the beginning could be around the beginning or the middle of March 1944.
The hierarchical assignment of the camp is carried out as a command of the Natzweiler concentration camp. The end of the concentration camp operation is apparently beyond doubt due to the advance of the Allied troops. However, the evacuated prisoners may have arrived in the aforementioned camps within a period that begins two days later and extends over 14 days. It is not clear via which intermediate stations they were transported. In some cases, the concentration camp guards also provided the escort team for the transports and remained in the SS in a similar role in the destinations.
Arriving camp inmates
With this underground production it seems to be very difficult afterwards to clearly classify the various groups of prisoners, forced laborers and civilian workers employed in this short period of time. It is about an order of magnitude between 800, 1500 and almost 3000 prisoners who are said to have been used at a given point in time for the preparation of underground production.
Guards, captivity
- The head of the subcamp was an SS-Oberscharführer E. Büttner (1907–1975). He was previously in the Natzweiler concentration camp as a guard and then in the Kochendorf concentration camp as a camp leader, from where he led the death march to the Dachau concentration camp that began on March 30, 1945 . A French military court sentenced him to death in absentia while he was imprisoned in the Soviet Zone / GDR in 1954. After his release from prison in 1956, an investigation was initiated against Büttner in the FRG in 1968 and closed in 1970.
memorial
The cremation furnace, which was brought here by the SS from the slaughterhouse in Villerupt and set up to burn the corpses of the prisoners after they had first been burned in an open fire, was also included in a memorial built by the municipality of Thil in 1946 . This means that the way it is now shown in the crypt does not correspond to the installation by the Germans in the Nazi era. The concentration camp and its remains were classified as such by the French authorities at an early stage. There is also a model of the concentration camp showing its location in the landscape, which was created in 1946 (Ubaldo Marinelli, cf. the aerial photo, presumably from 1944, near the municipality of Thil). This also includes the location of the concentration camp cemetery.
literature
- Comité National du Struthof: Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp. Nancy 1990, 83 pages (official brochure).
- Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps . Editor Angelika Königseder. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-52960-3 . 9 volumes, from 2005 (i. Dr .; table of contents ) Volume 6: Natzweiler and the satellite camps. In: Natzweiler, Groß-Rosen, Stutthof. ISBN 978-3-406-52966-5 .
- Robert Steegmann: The Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp and its external commandos on the Rhine and Neckar 1941–1945. Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-940938-58-9 .
- Moshe Shen: Surviving in fear. Four Jews describe their time at the Volkswagen factory from 1943 to 1945 . Volkswagen AG Corporate History Dept, Wolfsburg 2005, ISBN 3-935112-22-X ( volkswagenag.com [PDF; accessed on October 25, 2016] In this book, Moshe Shen describes his experiences at the Tiercelet concentration Camp and Rebstock Camp .) .
Web links
- " Le camp de concentration de Thil ", at Out of Time (French)
- « Struthof, camp de concentration nazi - 4.3. Le Kommando Thil », in BS Encyclopédie
- « L'usine souterraine de Thil », on the website of Jean Maridor
Individual evidence
- ^ The Rebstock camp 1943/44 - armaments factory and concentration camp in the Ahr valley, Blätter zum Land series, Volume 70. (PDF) (No longer available online.) State Center for Civic Education Rhineland-Palatinate, archived from the original on October 24, 2016 ; Retrieved October 25, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
