Sunberg concentration camp external command

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The concentration camp outside command Sonneberg (also known as Sonneberg-West ) was a satellite camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp on the premises of the Thuringian Zahnradwerke mbH Sonneberg , a subsidiary of the Leipzig machine factory GE Reinhardt , in Hallstrasse 39 in the Sonneberg district of Bettelhecken .

history

In September 1944, the company requested prisoners from the Buchenwald concentration camp through the NSDAP district leadership . A barrack camp previously occupied by Soviet prisoners of war was evacuated and converted into the Sonneberg concentration camp external command . On September 14, 1944, the camp, initially occupied by 260 male prisoners, was put into operation on the premises of the Thuringian Zahnradwerke mbH Sonneberg . The number of prisoners rose steadily, so that on January 1, 1945 there were already 445 prisoners, and the number continued to rise afterwards. Until the camp is closed, it can be assumed that there will be 450 to 470 prisoners.

Under inhumane conditions, prisoners in forced labor produced aircraft parts for the Ju 52 and dive bombers as well as sprockets for the VI Tiger armored vehicle and gear wheels for the V weapons . Most of the prisoners were Hungarian Jews , but there were also German political prisoners and prisoners of war. Work was done in twelve-hour shifts, with the night and day shift changing weekly. The food supply was poor and there was brutal mistreatment by the SS . An average of twenty prisoners died every month, who were replaced by other prisoners from the main camp.

Shortly before the camp was closed in April 1945, there was a massacre. When the prisoners were hastily ordered to leave, the night shift protested, who feared they would not receive a ration of food before they left. When some inmates brought a sack of potatoes, SS men shot into the crowd. At least 40 prisoners were killed and many injured.

Death march

Schustershieb memorial, Steinach , for the first eight victims of the death march
Grave site in Eschenthal , in which two prisoners who were murdered on April 4, 1945 are buried
One of the thirteen metal plaques commemorating the victims of the death march. Location: Hallstrasse in Bettelhecken , Sonneberg

On April 4, 1945, the death march of 467 concentration camp inmates from the Sonneberg camp began because the 3rd US Army was approaching. It is said to have been a horrible picture what the Sonneberg residents saw. The prisoners wore blue-and-white striped concentration camp prisoner clothing , each marked with a colored star or triangle, as well as with black numbers on the back and front. They wore wooden shoes on their feet. At the end of the train armed SS men ran with trained dogs . A two-wheeled cart pulled by inmates formed the end of the train. Many prisoners were shot on the march, others died on the march of abuse or the consequences of the hardships. More than half of the prisoners died on the march.

There were two routes. The larger of them led from the camp via the Sonneberg Upper City , to the Schusterhieb and to Steinach , then in the direction of the Laura concentration camp subcamp near Lehesten am Rennsteig until it went back to Sonneberg. From Sonneberg the march passed through the Bavarian cities of Kronach , Wallenfels , Geroldsgrün (April 12 or 13) and Nordhalben and through the Thuringian city of Saalburg . Via Thuringia and Saxony it went to Bohemian and Czech territory. The rest of the train lost its way on May 7th in Praseles, 50 km from Prague , after the SS men had fled the nearby Red Army . The second route probably led via Köppelsdorf and Friedrichsthal to Bad Elster . 111 prisoners are said to have been liberated there by the 3rd US Army .

The first casualties in these marches were eight prisoners, whose bodies were found by women from Steinach at the height of the shoemaker's blow between Sonneberg and Steinach in June 1945. Only poorly buried, they lay in the ditch. Some of the corpses still had their little tin cans with raw potatoes tucked under their arms. All had been shot in the head. Also in the quarry on the outskirts of Friedrichsthal two corpses buried there in prisoner clothing were found. Today the remains of the murdered prisoners lie in the cemeteries in Steinach and Eschenthal . Two prisoners were shot on the Rennsteig, near the Schildwiese, and buried in the Kleintettau cemetery. In Burgstein there are also graves in the cemetery of the Großzöbern district for five Jewish prisoners who were murdered by SS men in April 1945 during the death march in Pirk , a district of the Weischlitz community .

The inmate Ignacy Arthur Krasnokucki, a Polish Jew, is known to have escaped from the death march in April 1945. While resting at a well, he was able to hide in a sewer. A day later, he continued eastward until he met an American army and was safe.

A march of prisoners of war is said to have started from the Sonneberg camp on April 18, 1945, which the US Army liberated on April 23, 1945 near the town of Eichstätt .

Criminal penalties

SS man Heinrich Buuck, April 1947
SS-Obersturmführer Alfred Andreas Hofmann, April 1947

In 1947, ancillary trials in the Buchenwald were held against SS man Heinrich Buuck (he only had an IQ of 67), who admitted in court that he had ordered prisoners to be killed on the evacuation march from the Sonneberg satellite camp. He was sentenced on 14 October 1947 on the death penalty, which was later commuted to 15 years in prison, but he was in the review process under orders granted so that it in 1954 on parole from prison for war criminals Landsberg ( War Criminals Prison No. 1 was released). The obersturmführer Alfred Andreas Hofmann, also Hoffmann (born July 23, 1904), for use in the Buchenwald concentration camp commando leader in Außenkommando Sonnenberg from October 1944 to April 11, 1945, was on 17 September 1947, a five-year prison sentence in prison for war criminals in Landsberg , condemned.

An SS Oberscharführer in the Sonneberg external command was Ernst Fölsche, who was sentenced to two years in prison in an East German trial. Another defendant was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. In West German trials, two defendants were sentenced to two and three and a half years each, and two were acquitted. Their proceedings were discontinued.

In September 1945, a total of twelve people from Sonneberg, some of whom were brought into connection with the satellite camp or the connected production facilities, had to answer before a Soviet military court as part of a collection process. All four of those sentenced to death had been involved in the exploitation and control of forced laborers from the camp, or had benefited from forced labor themselves as the owners of a manufacturing facility. The engineers Erich Schubert and Johannes Friedrich - both in leading positions in the cogwheel factory - were found guilty and executed. The local blacksmith Hermann Schindhelm was employed there as a master. Schindhelm, who was born in 1908 and who lived in Mürschnitz in July 1945, was described by surviving prisoners as particularly cruel. He was charged with numerous brutal abuse. He is also said to have taken part in a hunt for escaped Soviet prisoners of war. Among the camp inmates, Schindhelm was known as the "Black Blacksmith" because of the frequent attacks and his hostile attitude towards the forced laborers. The fourth convict was Ernst Heubach from Köppelsdorf. Heubach, 57 years old, owned a porcelain goods factory in Köppelsdorf that employed around 200 forced laborers of various nationalities. Membership in the NSDAP since 1937 and his rank as SA-Obersturmführer are likely to have been taken by the judges as further evidence against the accused. All convicts were executed on September 29, 1945.

Commemoration

Every year in the days of the GDR in September, thousands of citizens commemorate the victims of fascism with a march to commemorate these victims. Even in the time of the FRG , the victims were remembered annually. In 1977, a memorial was erected for the eight victims of the death march found there. Since 1982, thirteen metal plaques have been commemorating the victims of the death marches along the two routes in Sonneberg and the surrounding area.

There is a three-part memorial complex next to the Sonneberg town church St. Peter . It consists of an obelisk that commemorates the fallen from the Franco-Prussian War , concrete walls with names of fallen and missing persons from the First World War and a stone slab that covers a pit with brass urns. The brass urns are filled with earth from the former location of the Sonneberg concentration camp and from the shoemaker's blow , where the eight murdered prisoners were found. In July 2014, the memorial complex was cleaned by men from the Sonneberg reservist comradeship , who had taken on the sponsorship. When the stone slab was lifted, it was found that the urns had been destroyed and the earth was scattered across the bottom of the pit. Research revealed that the memorial for the prisoners was probably desecrated by young people as early as 2006.

At the exit of Pirk there is also a memorial stone for five Jewish prisoners who were murdered by SS men on the death march in Pirk in April 1945 .

literature

Movie

  • Zahnradwerk - The forgotten concentration camp , 2007 SON-Film eV, DVD and Blu-Ray

Web links

Commons : KZ Außenkommando Sonneberg  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Exact date and number of prisoners under Sonneberg
  2. ^ Gerhard Stier: Sonneberg-West . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): Der Ort des Terrors , Volume 3, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-52963-4 , p. 578.
  3. ↑ Information on the Sonneberg camp
  4. ↑ a b Schmidt van der Zanden, Christine, Sonneberg West, in: Megargee, Geoffrey, P., (Ed.), The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Volume 1, Bloomington, Indiana, 2009, pp. 420
  5. ^ Report of a prisoner of war ( Memento from April 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) who was in Sonneberg
  6. ^ Gerhard Stier: Sonneberg-West . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): Der Ort des Terrors , Volume 3, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-52963-4 , p. 578.
  7. ↑ Elkind, Lucien, Caporal Dick, Paris 1997, p. 186
  8. ^ Gerhard Stier: Sonneberg-West . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): Der Ort des Terrors , Volume 3, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-52963-4 , p. 578.
  9. ↑ New insights - and new questions . In: Neue Presse , July 27, 2018, p. 13
  10. ↑ Geroldsgrün , on digitalcollections.its-arolsen.org
  11. ↑ a b Quote from a book on the Sonneberg story ( Memento from January 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ Death marches through the homeland
  13. ↑ Ignacy Arthur Krasnokucki ( memento from January 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) escaped from the death march.
  14. ^ Report ( memento of April 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) by a prisoner of war
  15. ↑ Heirich Buuck , Minutes, PDF file (English)
  16. ↑ Alfred Andreas Hoffmann , Minutes, PDF file (English)
  17. ↑ Listed in the Federal Archives , number DY 55/68
  18. ^ Justice and Nazi crimes ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), German / German proceedings
  19. ↑ Weigelt, Andreas, overview of case groups and indexes. Guide to biographical documentation, in: Weigelt, Andreas / Müller, Klaus-Dieter / Schaarschmidt, Thomas / Schmeitzner, Mike, (ed.), Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947): A historical-biographical study, Göttingen 2015 , Pp. 159-415, p. 275
  20. ↑ Weigelt, Andreas, overview of case groups and indexes. Guide to biographical documentation, in: Weigelt, Andreas / Müller, Klaus-Dieter / Schaarschmidt, Thomas / Schmeitzner, Mike, (ed.), Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947): A historical-biographical study, Göttingen 2015 , Pp. 159-415, p. 275
  21. ↑ Weigelt, Andreas, Hermann Schindhelm, in: Weigelt, Andreas / Müller, Klaus-Dieter / Schaarschmidt, Thomas / Schmeitzner, Mike, (eds.), Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944-1947): A historical-biographical study, Göttingen 2015, p. 159–415, p. 600 (on GoogleBooks )
  22. ^ Weigelt, Andreas, Ernst Heubach, in: Weigelt, Andreas / Müller, Klaus-Dieter / Schaarschmidt, Thomas / Schmeitzner, Mike, (eds.), Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944-1947): A historical-biographical study, Göttingen 2015, pp. 159-415, pp. 260 f.
  23. ^ Weigelt, Andreas, Ernst Heubach, in: Weigelt, Andreas / Müller, Klaus-Dieter / Schaarschmidt, Thomas / Schmeitzner, Mike, (eds.), Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944-1947): A historical-biographical study, Göttingen 2015, pp. 159-415, pp. 260 f.
  24. ^ Evidence of remembrance at the time of the FRG
  25. ^ Evidence ( memento of February 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) about the memorials and metal plaques
  26. ↑ Year information in cultural monuments in Thuringia. District of Sonneberg by Thomas Schwämmlein, E. Reinhold Verlag, Altenburg, p. 418
  27. ↑ Article ( Memento of February 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Free Word of July 29, 2014, PDF file from the Reservist Comradeship website
  28. ↑ Proof of Gerhard Stier: Forced labor in Sonneberg: the example of a gear factory
  29. ↑ film on site zauberhaftes-sonneberg.de

Coordinates: 50 ° 21 '38.4 "  N , 11 ° 8' 35.5"  E