Steyr-Münichholz subcamp

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The Steyr-Münichholz subcamp was a satellite camp of the Mauthausen concentration camp in the Münichholz district of the city of Steyr in Upper Austria . In the air raid shelter built by the forced laborers under Lamberg Castle in 1943, the permanent exhibition Stollen commemorates the memory of the subcamp.

history

The sub-camp was founded on March 14, 1942 on Haagerstrasse in Münichholz and was one of the first sub-camps for the German armaments industry . The prisoners came from the main camp in Mauthausen . Their labor was exploited in the so-called "Steyr works" of Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG in armaments production. They had to build roads and air raid shelters for the city of Steyr .

Since the spring of 1941, around 300 prisoners from Mauthausen had been employed in the Steyr works for construction work. These were still transported daily by train from Mauthausen to Steyr and back. From autumn 1941, due to the increasing shortage of skilled workers, the company management tried to get technically suitable concentration camp prisoners for the start-up production of aircraft engines and roller bearings in a separate sub-camp. Georg Meindl wrote to Ernst Kaltenbrunner on January 5, 1942 :

"[...] it should, if possible, be metalworkers or people who can be trained for machine work. Bringing these prisoners back to Mauthausen on a daily basis not only requires a greater deployment of guards, but also reduces the prisoners' work performance. "

Memorial at the Steyr Urn Cemetery

The establishment of a subsidiary camp in the Garsten prison was rejected by the judiciary, whereupon a barrack camp was built near the factory premises in the spring of 1942.

Most of the prisoners came from Spain, France, Poland, Italy, Greece, Russia and the Czech Republic. The number of prisoners ranged between 1,000 and 2,000, in April 1945 the highest number of prisoners was reached at 3,090, as several evacuation marches from the Wiener Neustadt concentration camp were led via Steyr.

Many prisoners died as a result of poor nutrition, work assignments in all weathers, the enormous pace of work, unsuitable clothing and the scarce medical care available. The air raids on the Steyr works in February and April 1944 also claimed victims. The exact number of victims of the Steyr-Münichholz concentration camp is still unknown today. However, 226 prisoners are recorded by name in the incineration book of the city of Steyr who were cremated in the Steyr crematorium and whose last whereabouts were the Steyr-Münichholz concentration camp. The sick inmates were usually sent back to the main camp and killed there.

The American air raids on February 23 and 24, 1944 and April 2, 1944 severely damaged the factories, so that the ongoing relocation of production to less endangered areas was forced. Aero engine production was relocated to Vienna, rolling bearing production to Linz, and gun barrels were produced in Gusen.

American troops liberated the camp on May 5, 1945. “Never forgotten” is the inscription on the memorial stone on the Steyr urn cemetery , where the ashes of concentration camp prisoners were buried in 1948.

The last remaining building, the camp canteen, was demolished in 1993 before a documentation center about the camp could be set up there. In 2019, the last remnants that were on private property were removed despite the resistance of the Mauthausen Committee, so that nothing at this place is reminiscent of the camp.

In the Lamberg tunnel in Steyr, an air raid shelter built by concentration camp prisoners, there has been a permanent exhibition on forced labor since October 25, 2013 under the title " Gallery of Remembrance".

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Florian Freund , Bertrand Perz : Forced labor of civilian foreigners, prisoners of war, concentration camp prisoners and Hungarian Jews in Austria. In: Emmerich Tálos et al. (Ed.): Nazi rule in Austria. A manual. Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-209-03179-7 , pp. 672f.
  2. ↑ Hans Maršálek : The history of the concentration camp Mauthausen. Documentation. 3rd, exp. Edition. Edited by the Mauthausen camp community, Vienna / Linz 1995, OCLC 34780155 , p. 87.
  3. ↑ Jana Müller: KZ-Steyr-Münichholz: Commemoration in the new time workshop. ( Memento from June 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) In: Relates to resistance. Journal of the Zeitgeschichtemuseum Ebensee. No. 42, August 1998.
  4. ↑ Instead of a memorial: Traces of the Steyr-Münichholz subcamp completely removed. In: derstandard.at . August 13, 2019, accessed August 13, 2019.
  5. ↑ Permanent exhibition in Steyrer KZ-Stollen from 2013. In: derstandard.at . November 17, 2011.

literature

  • Ruth Gutermann, Brita Pohl, Leonhard Weidinger: The Steyr-Münichholz subcamp. Forced labor for the Steyr works. Video, 38 min (VHS).
  • Bertrand Perz : Steyr-Münichholz. A concentration camp of the Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG In: Yearbook of the documentation archive of the Austrian resistance. 1989, ISSN  1012-4535 , pp. 52-61.

Web links

Coordinates: 48 ° 3 ′ 23 "  N , 14 ° 26 ′ 59"  E