Boizenburg concentration camp

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Former kitchen barracks of the Boizenburg subcamp

The Boizenburg concentration camp was a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp near Boizenburg / Elbe . It existed from August 1944 to April 28, 1945.

history

Monument to the Boizenburg subcamp

In the spring of 1944, a barrack camp for prisoners of war and forced labor, which had existed on the Elbberg since the early 1940s, was examined for its suitability for accommodating prisoners. In the early summer of 1944, the Boizenburg satellite camp was built on this site.

The camp consisted of four wooden accommodation barracks, a solid kitchen barrack, a wash barrack and small outbuildings (infirmary, administration) made of wood and a watchtower. The exact location of the barracks and outbuildings can be traced back to a sketch made by eyewitnesses in 1946.

In August 1944, 400 Jewish women who were fit for work, mostly from Hungary, were brought from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp to Boizenburg. The transport, carried out under inhumane conditions, lasted three days, during which the women and young girls did not receive enough food or water.

The female concentration camp prisoners were used for forced labor in the Thomsen & Co shipyard after their arrival . There they had to produce parts for planes and ships in twelve-hour shifts. The malnourished women often suffered serious injuries during their work assignment. In addition, they were constantly exposed to harassment and abuse from the mostly female SS guards . After work at Thomsen & Co ceased in March 1945, the concentration camp inmates were deployed to repair bomb damage as a result of the low-flying attacks in Boizenburg harbor.

On March 8, 1945 there were 399 inmates in the camp. The advancing front line caused the SS to evacuate the camp in the early morning hours of April 28, 1945. This meant the removal or mass murder of the prisoners before Allied troops reached the camp area. The SS drove the women towards the Neustadt-Glewe satellite camp, a satellite camp of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. There, however, they were refused entry because of the alleged outbreak of typhus . The women then had to continue walking towards the Wöbbelin concentration camp reception camp . A unit of the 82nd US Airborne Division liberated them on May 2, 1945 near Groß Laasch . After the war, an SS guard from the Boizenburg subcamp was arrested and sentenced to prison in 1948.

The camp complex was used as accommodation for war refugees and displaced persons in the post-war years. In the course of 1956 the wooden barracks were torn down. The massive kitchen cellar, which was spared the demolition, served the Elbe shipyard as a storage room from then on .

Memorials

On October 3, 1969, the memorial, which was designed by the former Boizenburg mayor and artist Günther Zecher (1929–2013), was inaugurated below the former concentration camp site. The memorial was desecrated on the night of May 8, 2008. In the course of the restoration, the sacrificial bowl that formed the upper end was removed and the memorial plaque renewed.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the kitchen barrack, which was still in its original state, was placed under monument protection on the former camp site . Since 2000 it has housed the Elbbergmuseum Boizenburg with a permanent exhibition about the subcamp .

See also

literature

  • Ilse Ständer: The Boizenburg satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp. Local history museum of the city of Boizenburg, Boizenburg 1996.
  • Hans Ellger: Forced labor and female survival strategies, the history of the women's subcamps of the Neuengamme concentration camp. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-938690-48-2 , p. 128, p. 145, p. 304.
  • Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-52965-8 , p. 355 ff.
  • Marc Buggeln: The system of the concentration camp subcamps: war, slave labor and mass violence. Discussion group history issue No. 95. (Ed.) Archive of Social Democracy of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung , ISBN 978-3-86498-090-9 , Bonn 2012, digital copy (PDF); Retrieved June 4, 2017

Web links

Commons : Boizenburg concentration camp  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Buddrus (ed.): Mecklenburg in the Second World War. The meetings of Gauleiter Friedrich Hildebrandt with the NS leadership bodies of Gau Mecklenburg 1939–1945. An edition of the meeting minutes. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2009, p. 971 (Note No. 21).
  2. ↑ Friedrich Stamp: Forced Labor in the Metal Industry 1939–1945. The example of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. In: Otto Brenner Foundation (Ed.): Workbook No. 24. Berlin 2001, p. 70, digitized version (PDF); accessed on June 1, 2017.
  3. ↑ Site plan of the Boizenburg satellite camp . (PDF) In: offenes-archiv.de . Retrieved January 8, 2018.
  4. ↑ Young Jewish women from Romania and Czechoslovakia were also imprisoned in Boizenburg. See interviews of contemporary witnesses imprisoned in the Boizenburg subcamp .
  5. ↑ a b Katrin Fricke: The death march began on April 28th . In: svz.de. April 28, 2015; accessed on June 3, 2017.
  6. ↑ a b Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (Ed.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5, CH Beck, Munich 2007, p. 356 f.
  7. ↑ List of inmates of the Boizenburg subcamp from March 8, 1945 . In: offenes-archiv.de . Retrieved January 8, 2018.
  8. ↑ Boizenburg women's satellite camp. In: kz-gedenkstaette-neuengamme.de . Retrieved January 8, 2018.
  9. ^ Frank Keil: Elbberg Memorial in Boizenburg: Interface between two dictatorships . In: taz.de . August 2, 2011; accessed on June 3, 2017.
  10. ↑ Friedrich Stamp: Forced Labor in the Metal Industry 1939–1945. The example of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. In: Otto Brenner Foundation (Ed.): Workbook No. 24. Berlin 2001, p. 120, digitized version (PDF); accessed on June 1, 2017.
  11. ^ Statement from the supervisor about the camp structure and camp management, BtSU, MfS BV, Ast. 73/74, sheets 9 and 35.
  12. ↑ Knuth Wolfgramm (ed.): Everyone is an artist (Beuys). 200 years of Boizenburg visual artists. Neuer Hochschulschriftenverlag, Rostock 1998, ISBN 978-3-929544-71-8 , p. 38 f.
  13. ^ Mathias Brodkorb: Swastikas on the memorial for concentration camp prisoners. In: right end of the line . May 13, 2008; accessed on January 8, 2018.

Coordinates: 53 ° 22 '30.3 "  N , 10 ° 41' 54.5"  E