Columbia concentration camp

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Columbia concentration camp memorial on Columbiadamm , near the former Tempelhof Airport

The Columbia concentration camp (short: KZ Columbia or KL Columbia , also known as KZ Columbia-Haus or just Columbia-Haus , a rarer spelling was KZ Columbiahaus ) was a National Socialist concentration camp on the northern edge of Tempelhofer Feld in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg .

The building was erected around 1900 as a military prison on what was then Prinz-August-von-Württemberg-Strasse (since 1927: Columbiadamm ) and was initially used as a Gestapo prison from 1933 . The actual concentration camp was opened on December 27, 1934 and officially existed until November 5, 1936. Due to its location near downtown Berlin , many prominent personalities of political life were imprisoned in the Columbia-Haus. The Columbia-Haus was demolished in 1938 on the occasion of the construction of Tempelhof Airport at the time . A memorial has been commemorating the history of the place since 1994.

Military detention center

The "Military Arrest Institution" on a map from 1905 at the lower right of the picture

Due to capacity problems in the existing Berlin military prisons ( Moabit , Lehrter Strasse and in Spandau what was later to become the “ war criminals prison ”), in 1896 on Tempelhofer Feld opposite the barracks of Queen Augusta Guard Grenadier Regiment No. 4 (from 1948: Police headquarters , later: Directorate 5 - Section 52 of the Police of the State of Berlin) a new military detention center was established in which convicted soldiers were imprisoned. The area consisted of a prison building with 156 dungeons , a courthouse, an official residence building and other outbuildings. After the First World War , the military prison was converted into a police prison and stood empty from the late 1920s to 1933.

1933: used by the Gestapo

The central Gestapo prison at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8 in Kreuzberg was soon overcrowded due to the waves of arrests with which the political opposition was switched off shortly after the Nazis “ seized power ” . From July 1933 at the latest, the Gestapo began using the Columbia House as a prison for political prisoners. Although the Spandau detention center was still available to her in addition to the Gestapo headquarters , the political police established a new prison with the Columbia House. The background was that the Spandau prison officers, who were still rooted in the Prussian prison system, were considered "too lax" by the new rulers.

In July 1933, 80 men were detained in the Columbia house, but the number rose rapidly. In September there were already 300 prisoners, in February 1934 the number was 450 prisoners. Due to the drastic overcrowding of the 156 existing cells, the living conditions were inhuman. In addition to the Wecke group , SS men from "SS Section III Berlin-Brandenburg" were also deployed as security guards under the supervision of SS Oberführer Max Henze and the commander of SS troop leader Othmar Toifl . The guards had been given a completely free hand in treating the prisoners; Attempts by the judiciary, which had not yet been fully aligned, to deal with the events, Hitler prevented through personal intervention at the Ministry of Justice. This resulted in regular abuse and murders.

When the torture in the Columbia concentration camp finally became known to the Berlin population and met with a very negative response, the Secret State Police Office (Gestapa) felt compelled to intervene in order not to “unnecessarily worry” the population and abroad. In September 1934, the Gestapa expressly prohibited the harassment and torture of prisoners. However, this hardly improved the inmates' situation. Arbitrary torture and killings have decreased, but mistreatment has now only been "legalized" by a new, extremely strict camp ordinance, which stipulated draconian measures for even the slightest violations. Terror and horror were hardly alleviated by the introduction of a camp order, on the contrary, they were guided into “regulated channels”.

However, the Columbia concentration camp remained a "problem child" of the SS. Again and again there were serious violations of discipline by the management personnel. A few weeks after his appointment as Hundertschaftsführer in May 1935, the later commandant of the Flossenbürg concentration camp, Jakob Weiseborn, got drunk during his guard duty in the Columbia concentration camp, and the substitute Unterführer Dannecker - later a confidante of Eichmann and deportation specialist - forged the watch book to protect Weiseborn. This was the last of a series of reasons to change the entire leadership of the Columbia concentration camp in the summer of 1935.

It is not known whether the threatened disciplinary action against security guards extended beyond relocation.

concentration camp

Memorial plaque , Platz der Luftbrücke 5, Berlin-Tempelhof
Inscription of the memorial at Columbiadamm 71:
= Remember =
= Memory =
= = Dunning

The Columbia House was
from 1933 prison and
from 08.01.1935 until 05.11.1936
a concentration camp of
Nazi leaders

here people were
detained
humiliated
tortured
murdered

The Columbia-Haus was subordinate to the secret state police of Prussia until April 1934. The documents of the Secret State Archives do not reveal the exact time. As of April, however, CC Columbia had its own household and was subordinate to the SS. The background was that the Gestapo of Prussia was subordinate to the acting Prussian Minister of the Interior and from April 1934 Prime Minister of Prussia, Hermann Göring , who set up the SS as a personal instrument of power on the way to power. After his appointment, Göring transferred the office of Minister of the Interior to Hermann Frick, who united the Ministry with the Reich Ministry. The police continued to report to the Prime Minister. All early camps were disbanded in late autumn 1933 unless they were subordinate to the Gestapo or worked with it. The months December 1933 to April 1934 are unsatisfactory. Even before the Röhm putsch , what was now KL Columbia was the second SS concentration camp in the Reich. This was all the more important as Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorff , who later became Berlin police chief, joined the SS in March 1933 and there was a dovetailing between the SS and Police anticipated early on. As KL Columbia , the camp belonged to the inspection of the concentration camps (IKL) from November 1934 . Organizationally, the arbitrary reign of terror ended and was replaced by the systematic terror of the Dachau model . This changed little for the prisoners.

As a concentration camp, the Columbia differed from the other camps that were previously under the ICL. In Dachau or Lichtenburg , prisoners were already in permanent custody, and the Gestapo extended their term “automatically” every three months. This was also the case in CC Columbia, as can be proven by the detention periods of many prisoners (BarchB NS 4 Columbia) In addition, the Columbia concentration camp also served the temporary accommodation of prisoners whose interrogations had not yet been completed and who returned relatively regularly the Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8 were brought. Many interrogations, according to Provost Bernhard Lichtenburg, took place in the basement of KL Columbia, so that the concentration camp was also an interrogation point for the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais and later R.SH.A. depicted. Thus the Columbia-Haus remained “a kind of branch of the Gestapo headquarters” even under the ICL.

Prisoners

As in most other early concentration camps, the Columbia house housed political prisoners primarily until 1935. With their arrest, the Nazi leadership kept the opposition away from political life in the consolidation phase of National Socialist rule. A total of around 10,000 prisoners were imprisoned during the existence of the concentration camp. On average there were around 400 prisoners in the camp at the same time. They were exposed to the arbitrary measures of the SS guards. The inspector of the concentration camps, Theodor Eicke , consistently removed all SS leaders who, in his opinion, were "too soft". The prisoners had to carry out a number of construction measures, for example paving the road in the courtyard or replacing the guard room. From 1933 onwards, something was done to improve the quality of accommodation for prisoners by installing toilets. This was not done to improve the welfare of the prisoners, but because the guards complained about the stench. The military prison had been closed due to structural defects, the prisoners were used to repair them. There were 20 Jehovah's Witnesses among the inmates .

From November 1934 onwards, increasing numbers of homosexual men and boys were admitted. Since many of the boys worked as “sex workers” and often “worked” as thieves, burglars or fences, the number of boys and men arrested as so-called “ anti-social ” increased significantly with their arrests . From 1935 onwards, hundreds of men accused of “fornication with men”, “ pimping with boys”, or “ fornication with wards or minors” were awaiting trial. Among the men were Hitler Youth boys, boy scouts, Protestant and Catholic clergy and even civil servants. It can be assumed that in view of the propagated restrictive sexual morality in the Nazi state, the allegation was primarily used to discipline and monitor the population. In addition, competitors for political posts could be denounced or property of the Catholic Church confiscated.

Guards

From April 1, 1935, the guards provided the newly established SS guards Oranienburg-Columbia , which was later renamed the Brandenburg SS Wachverband . At that time, the guard association consisted of 155 SS men plus 39 SS candidates. By the end of May 1935 this number had risen to 273 SS men and 64 candidates. From 1936 the guard association was called SS-Totenkopfverband Brandenburg and numbered 420 men. When the concentration camp was dissolved in October 1936, 531 SS men and 30 members of the commandant's office served in the guards.

The Columbia was one of their first career stations for many later concentration camp commanders . When the Columbia-Haus became a concentration camp in December 1934, the previous prison director, SS-Sturmbannführer Walter Gerlach , who had held this post since August 1, 1934, was also replaced. Adjutant von Gerlach was the later camp commandant of the Majdanek and Auschwitz I concentration camps , Arthur Liebehenschel , who was also relieved and transferred to the Lichtenburg concentration camp .

Gerlach's successor was SS-Oberführer Alexander Reiner , who had only come into contact with the concentration camp system through an eight-day preparatory course in the Dachau concentration camp. Reiner and his deputy Hans Schmidt were investigated in 1935 for two murder cases of prisoners. After his later replacement, he was followed by SS-Obersturmführer Karl Otto Koch , who was notorious as the later commandant of Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald . Because of his brutality, Eicke thought he was the right man. On April 1, 1936, Koch was transferred to Esterwegen as commandant.

The SS-Oberführer Heinrich Deubel took over the management of the Columbiahaus as the last commandant. He was replaced on September 22, 1936 because he was considered "too soft". Until the camp was liquidated, Deubel's adjutant Max Koegel , later commandant in Majdanek and Flossenbürg , was acting as head of the concentration camp. Richard Baer (Auschwitz and Mittelbau Concentration Camp ), Max Koegel ( Ravensbrück Women's Concentration Camp ) and Albert Sauer ( Riga-Kaiserwald Concentration Camp ) were also among the later concentration camp commanders who also “learned” in the Columbia House .

Escape by Hans Bächle

In April 1935 SS storm man Hans Bächle fled together with the prisoners Hausmann and Wiendig from the Columbiahaus via Prague and Switzerland to Luxembourg .

Bächle was dissatisfied due to a lack of recognition and poor pay. Bächle had already smuggled mail and money into the camp for the imprisoned former commander of the Oberland Freikorps , Josef Römer . Hausmann and Wiendig, both close collaborators of the former Silesian Gauleiter Helmuth Brückner , who was also imprisoned , were introduced to Bächle through Römer . He was persuaded to support Hausmann, Wiendig and Römer's escape plans.

In the end, Römer stayed in the concentration camp voluntarily. The three other men fled to Czechoslovakia on April 20, 1935 in a car organized by Bächle . Their escape was facilitated by the fact that the then commandant Reiner had been given leave of absence because of the murder of two prisoners and that there was uncertainty among the SS guards. On May 23, 1935, a report appeared in the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung in exile in Prague in which Bächle exposed the conditions in the concentration camp. As a consequence of what those in power saw as a propaganda catastrophe, Reiner was replaced.

Dissolution of the concentration camp

With the planned major project at Tempelhof Airport , it was decided to dissolve the Columbia concentration camp. The Columbia prisoners were to be transferred to a new central concentration camp near Berlin - the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The construction plans for Sachsenhausen were first worked out in the early Oranienburg camp, then in KLColumbia. Together with prisoners from the Esterwegen concentration camp , the inmates of Columbia built the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The grounds of the Columbia went to the Reich Aviation Ministry on October 1, 1936 . On November 5, 1936, the Columbia concentration camp was officially dissolved. Photos from the construction site of Tempelhof Airport show that the buildings of the concentration camp existed until at least March 1938.

The Columbia House Memorial was erected in 1994

Since December 1994 a memorial has been commemorating the Columbia-Haus concentration camp. It is located near the former camp site at the confluence of Golßener Strasse and Columbiadamm in the Kreuzberg district . The steel memorial designed by the sculptor Georg Seibert reproduces a house with prison cells.

Prominent inmates

literature

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Huebner: The forgotten memory . In: Der Tagesspiegel , December 28, 2003.
  2. ↑ David Koser et al. : Columbia House . In: Capital of the Holocaust. Places of National Socialist Racial Policy in Berlin. City Agency, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-9813154-0-0 . Place 6, p. 125. ( Description and excerpt from the publisher's website, accessed on May 12, 2012.)
  3. ↑ Hans Hesse: From the beginning a "special hate object". Jehovah's Witnesses in the early concentration camps. in: Jörg Osterloh, Kim Wünschmann (ed.): "... at the mercy of the most unrestricted arbitrariness." Prisoners of the early concentration camps 1933-1936 / 37. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2017. S. 269ff.
  4. ↑ Frank Flechtmann: "When I think of home like that, when I look at the mountains ...". A young Offenburg man flees around Germany in 1935 . In: The Ortenau, publications of the Historical Association for Central Baden . 84th year, 2004, ISSN  0342-1503 , pp. 181-220.

Coordinates: 52 ° 29 ′ 2.6 ″  N , 13 ° 23 ′ 56.9 ″  E