Bisingen concentration camp

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The Bisingen concentration camp , or Bisingen concentration camp for short , was set up in 1944 as a satellite camp of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp (as an administrative main camp) for oil extraction from slate as part of the Desert Company . It was located near Bisingen in what is now the Zollernalb district .

history

Enterprise desert

The war economy of the National Socialist regime (see Economy in the National Socialist German Reich ) urgently needed oil in 1944 after the battle of Stalingrad and thus of the oil fields there was lost in 1943 . Therefore, attempts were made along the Zollernalb train and along the railway line Balingen-Rottweil in Bisingen , Dautmergen , Dormettingen , Erzingen , Frommern , Schomberg and Schörzingen ten oil shale plants build. The aim was to extract oil from the oil shale found there as part of the mineral oil security plan. The project failed within a short time; Only four of the ten oil shale plants were able to produce small quantities at all.

From a total of seven concentration camps , the SS forced 15,000 prisoners on marches to Württemberg and Hohenzollern . More than 3,480 people died of exhaustion or were murdered at Operation Desert. In the Bisingen concentration camp alone, 1,158 prisoners died, all but two of whom are buried in the concentration camp cemetery there.

The Bisingen subcamp

A total of 4,163 concentration camp prisoners were transported to Bisingen, including

There they had to build the oil shale plant and the associated concentration camp on a small plateau. The oil shale plant in Bisingen was to be operated using the kiln method. To do this, a water pipe had to be laid across the site in the difficult-to-access mining site. The oil shale was broken by hand and then piled into a pile that was detonated with minimal ventilation.

The first kiln was ignited on February 23, 1945 in Bisingen. Shortly before the end of the war, the small amount of oil extracted could no longer influence the war. The contemporary witness Alfred Korn describes the pointlessness of oil shale mining: "I observed that hundreds of prisoners worked to get a drop every five minutes and then nothing for five minutes, and that was the achievement of the Bisingen oil shale."

Franz Johann Hofmann was SS commander of the Bisingen concentration camp. In February 1945 he was relieved of his post and transferred to Guttenbach . The headquarters of the SS headquarters for the entire subcamp of the Natzweiler concentration camp in the region was relocated to the Neckar due to the war (the front was getting closer) . On December 19, 1961, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on two counts for murder by a jury court at Munich II district court . In the first Auschwitz trial, he was sentenced again to life imprisonment in prison on August 10, 1965 by the Frankfurt Regional Court . There was also a preliminary investigation at the Hechingen jury court on allegations of crime in the Natzweiler concentration camp. Hofmann died in prison in August 1973.

Between October 1944 and February 1945 the Swiss Johannes Pauli (1900–1969) was deputy camp leader in Bisingen. At the end of the war, Pauli fled to Switzerland, where he was arrested in Basel and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Commemoration

Honorary cemetery and memorial near Bisingen

For decades, the surrounding towns kept silent about what had happened. Today, a concentration camp cemetery with a memorial cross, a history trail and the permanent exhibition Courage to Remember - Courage to Take Responsibility remind us of this part of history. Bisingen Concentration Camp Memorial Association is a member of the association of memorials in the former Natzweiler concentration camp complex .

literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Timeline ( Memento of the original from May 16, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zollernalbkreis.de
  2. ↑ PDF, p. 6. ( Memento of the original dated May 16, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zollernalbkreis.de
  3. ^ Judgment of the jury court of December 19, 1961 - 2 Ks 8/61 according to the judgment text of the Auschwitz trial
  4. ^ Swiss Nazis - "My grandfather was a murderer" In: SRF from January 21, 2018
  5. ↑ http://www.hechingen4you.de: Bisingen concentration camp - The perpetrators
  6. ↑ Concentration camp memorials establish network of remembrance. December 22, 2018, accessed December 23, 2018 .

Coordinates: 48 ° 19 ′ 5 ″  N , 8 ° 55 ′ 17 ″  E