Kaufering IV concentration camp command
The Kaufering IV concentration camp command was a National Socialist concentration camp near the town of Hurlach . It was one of more than 100 subsidiary camps of the Dachau concentration camp and belonged to the complex of satellite camps around Landsberg and Kaufering for German armaments production in the final phase of World War II .
Memorials
Hurlach concentration camp cemetery
After a short distance on the federal road 17 from Kaufering -Nord in the direction of Augsburg , a dirt road branches off at Hurlach at a sign. On the very hidden concentration camp cemetery south of the dirt road , a three-part memorial stone with the Star of David bears the inscription:
You walked through a
sea of suffering
360 concentration camp victims
erected in memory 1950
Now rests
in God and eternity
In this concentration camp cemetery concentration camp Dachau subcamp of the complex Kaufering buried - are in a common grave victims of the camp IV - Hurlach.
The concentration camp cemetery is located on a rare heather area on the Lech .
Part of the war production and discovery of the crimes
The camp existed according to the "Directory of Detention Places under the Reichsführer SS" of the International Tracing Service in Arolsen for women from August 1, 1944 for men from August 25, 1944 to April 25, 1945. It served as accommodation for those who were building underground factories and at the Lechfeld airfield and as sick beds.
On the morning of April 27, 1945, on the orders of camp doctor Max Blancke , the SS set fire to the Kaufering IV concentration camp and the prisoners who were no longer able to walk. The American army reached the camp a few hours later. The liberators found hundreds of dead in this camp too. The camp commandant Johann Baptist Eichelsdörfer and some other responsible persons were brought to justice as war criminals in 1945 and sentenced to death or imprisonment.
Among the American / French liberators was the later world-famous author JD Salinger who wrote his world-famous work The Catcher in the Rye during his military service in Germany . Presumably on April 28th, JD Salinger visited the camp that had just been liberated, as he was assigned to the 4th Infantry Division in his military service. This unit was located near the concentration camp liberated by the 12th Armored Division. JD Salinger never spoke publicly about the events he had to experience around April 27, 1945. Through the remembrance work of the Landsberg Citizens' Association in the 20th century and its chairman, Anton Posset , the historians quickly realized that JD Salinger must have visited the Kaufering IV concentration camp after its liberation. What JD Salinger was able to observe in April 1945 shortly after the liberation of the camp left a lasting impression, as it did with many of the American liberators. Salinger's daughter, Margaret Salinger, published the quote from JD Salinger in 2000:
"You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live" - "You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose, no matter how long you live"
In 2000, the concentration camp gained international fame through the collaboration of Anton Posset with the film team of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks . A faithful replica of the concentration camp Kaufering IV for the film Band of Brothers , Part 9 "Why We Fight" was created in England. The camp could be reconstructed through the pictures of the American / French liberators collected by Anton Posset. In the film, the Kaufering camp is liberated, and not Dachau or Auschwitz, as was the case up to now.
literature
- Anton Posset : The End of the Holocaust in Bavaria - The Kaufering IV concentration camp command
- Anton Posset : The American Army discovers the Holocaust - a picture of horror
- Anton Posset : JD Salinger and the liberation of the concentration camp Kaufering IV
- Eberhard Alsen: JD Salinger in Franconia by Prof. Eberhard Alsen
See also
- Death march
- Band of Brothers - We were like brothers - Episode 9
Web links
- Place of remembrance (website on the history of the Kaufering subcamp complex)
- The Holocaust in the Landsberg area
- Citizens' Association Landsberg in the 20th Century for the Research of Landsberger Zeitgeschichte eV - founded on November 9, 1983 - active for over 35 years in the commemorative work around the concentration camp external command Kaufering / Landsberg
- Homepage European Holocaust Memorial
- Movie
- Original film recording and the liberation of the Kaufering IV concentration camp by the US armed forces on April 27, 1945 by Steven Spielberg's film team (transferred from Anton Posset's archive by a liberator of the 103rd Infantry Division of the Allied US armed forces): KZ -Kommando Kaufering IV (Hurlach) - April 27, 1945: The American army discovers the Holocaust . By order of the US Colonel E. Seiler a seven-minute documentary of which is created in the film of the Band of Brothers by Steven Spielberg was enacted in the year 2000th
Individual evidence
- ↑ See 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 , p. 367f.
- ^ JD Salinger in Franconia by Prof. Eberhard Alsen
- ↑ JD Salinger and the liberation of the concentration camp Kaufering IV
- ^ E. Alsen: JD Salinger and the Nazis . The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison / Wisconsin 2018, ISBN 978-0-299-31570-2 , p. 83.
- ↑ Margaret Salinger: Dream Catcher: A Memoir . Washington Square Press, New York 2000, ISBN 0-671-04281-5 , p. 55.
- ↑ The American Army discovers the Holocaust - from the Anton Posset archive. Citizens' Association for Research into Landsberg Contemporary History, accessed on April 29, 2019 .
Coordinates: 48 ° 6 ′ 9.9 ″ N , 10 ° 50 ′ 42.9 ″ E