Benninghausen concentration camp

The KZ Benninghausen was an early concentration camp in the Nazi era . It was located in the community of Benninghausen near Lippstadt and existed from March 29, 1933 to September 28, 1933.

The concentration camp was attached to the provincial workhouse, whose director Hans Clemens also headed the concentration camp. The political prisoners who were imprisoned in the concentration camp were referred to as "police prisoners" and brought in by the regional police stations. The initiative to build the camp went back to the Lippstadt district administrator. Instructions relating to the workhouse and the concentration camp were issued by the district administrator and the regional council of Arnsberg . The guarding of the prisoners was entrusted to local associations of the storm department, which were sworn in as "auxiliary police" and were thus subordinate to the Lippstadt district administrator. Although Clemens was nominally in charge of the camp, it is considered likely that SA Sturmhauptführer Wilhelm Pistor was the de facto commandant.

history

The workhouse had been used as an auxiliary prison for the judiciary since the 1920s and was therefore an ideal place to accommodate political prisoners. A total of 344 prisoners were held in Benninghausen. The first transports of a total of 110 prisoners, members of the KPD and SPD , arrived in Benninghausen on March 29, 1933. On April 25, 1933 and May 11, 1933, again larger prisoner transports arrived with 19 and 39 people. The highest occupancy was 220 prisoners.

By July 1933 only 108 prisoners were left in the Benninghausen concentration camp due to releases and transfers. On August 1, 1933, another 90 were relocated to Papenburg , on September 1 and 14, 1933, most of the guards were dismissed. With the transfer of the last 9 prisoners on September 28, 1933, the Benninghausen concentration camp ended.

After 1945 the workhouse was converted into a state nursing home. Since 1968 this has been known as the “Westfälisches Landeskrankenhaus Benninghausen”. Long-term hospital for psychiatry ”, today the facility is called“ Westphalian Care and Support Center Lippstadt-Benninghausen ”. There is no form of public commemoration of the former concentration camp on site. On a time table in front of the building it says: "1918–1945: The workhouse becomes an auxiliary prison."

Conditions of detention

The prisoners were exposed to the arbitrariness of the SA men. Beatings and psychological torture were the order of the day. At least two mock executions and numerous cases of baton mistreatment, in which the victim was doused with cold water as soon as they passed out, have been documented. Former prisoners reported suicide attempts to the torture to escape. Before being released, the person had to sign a statement saying that he was treated well and that he was not beaten.

Nevertheless, a former prisoner filed a criminal complaint in 1934. The chief public prosecutor in Paderborn dealt with the matter. In a statement, the director Clemens stated that he was not responsible for guarding the prisoners and tried to downplay the incidents. He wrote that bruises were not unequivocally due to abuse; that the suicide attempts were merely "superficial cuts" and that the person concerned "inflicted these injuries in the hope of being transferred from protective custody to a hospital in this way."

The abuse in the Benninghausen concentration camp was investigated in three proceedings by the Paderborn public prosecutor in 1950/51.

literature

• Reimer Möller: Benninghausen: The workhouse as a concentration camp . In: Benz, Distel (ed.): Instruments of Power: Early Concentration Camps 1933–1937 . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2003, pp. 89–95.
• Elisabeth Elling-Ruhwinkel: Securing and punishing. The Benninghausen workhouse (1871–1945) . Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, ISBN 3-506-71344-2 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 39 ′ 15 ″  N , 8 ° 14 ′ 51 ″  E