Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp

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Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp (Germany)
Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp
Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp
Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Germany
Entrance board to the memorial
Overview plan of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp memorial

Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp is the name used today for a National Socialist concentration camp north of Nordhausen in what is now the state of Thuringia . The camp "Dora" on the southern slope of the Kohnstein at Niedersachswerfen was the largest single location as well as the seat of the headquarters of the autumn of 1944 newly organized "Mittelbau". In this camp prisoners were interned who were employed in the expansion and operation of the underground armaments factory Mittelwerk GmbH in the tunnel system in Kohnstein . The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp memorial is located on the site of the former main camp.

Overview and name

Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp memorial, on the left behind the concrete column the roll call square, on the right on the slope of the Kohnstein a rebuilt prisoner barracks

On August 28, 1943, the SS set up a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp at the foot of the Kohnstein north of Nordhausen with the camouflage designation “Dora” labor camp . The designation “Arbeitslager der Waffen-SS” was the code name officially used by the SS from 1943, especially for those sub-camps that were built in the course of the increased underground relocation of the German armaments industry. “Dora”, in turn, was taken from the German postal spelling table.

The inmates of the “Dora” subcamp were mainly used in tunneling and in the underground works of Mittelwerk GmbH, where the “ Vergeltungswaffe 2 ” (V2) and the flying bomb “ Vergeltungswaffe 1 ” (V1) were produced.

On October 28, 1944, the "Dora" camp, previously run as a satellite camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, was declared an independent concentration camp by the SS-Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt (SS-WVHA) under the name Mittelbau Concentration Camp (Mittelbau for short). In addition to the “Dora” camp, other sub-camps or external commandos were subordinated to the “KZ Mittelbau” . The camp complex finally comprised almost 40 sub-camps, with the “Dora” camp also serving as the headquarters of the commandant's office and the headquarters of the SS guards .

During the 18 months that the "Mittelbau concentration camp" complex existed, around 60,000 prisoners from 48 nations passed through it; 20,000 of them died as a result of the inhumane working and living conditions. On April 11, 1945, the "Dora" camp at the foot of the Kohnstein was liberated by the US Army .

In 1964 the GDR opened the “Mittelbau-Dora Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Mittelbau-Dora” on the site of the former main camp “Dora” at the foot of the Kohnstein, which has been redesigned several times over the years. After the end of the GDR it was named Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. In 1995 the memorial was given a new museological concept on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany and parts of the extensive tunnel under the Kohnstein were made accessible to the public. In 2005, a new museum building was opened on the site of the former main camp, which has been showing a new permanent exhibition since 2006.

In connection with this concentration camp there is also the name “Dora-Mittelbau”, which was used at different times to name both the “Dora” camp site, the entire complex of the “Mittelbau” concentration camp and the memorial on the site of the former main camp “Dora” .

The “Dora” camp at the foot of the Kohnstein

Underground relocation and choice of location

The development of the Mittelbau concentration camp complex in the Harz Mountains is closely related to the underground relocation of the German armaments industry during the Second World War. As far as possible, existing underground structures were used. The tunnels under the Kohnstein in Niedersachswerfen near Nordhausen , which were built from the mid-1930s and were originally intended as an underground fuel storage facility for the Wehrmacht , are such a system . The tunnel system was provisionally completed by autumn 1942. The building projects in the Kohnstein were constantly supplemented and expanded.

After the bombing of the Peenemünde Army Research Center by the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the night of August 17-18, 1943, Adolf Hitler , Armaments Minister Albert Speer and Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler made the decision to also start work on the " V2 " rocket as well as the " V1 " flight bomb from Peenemünde underground . The tunnel system in Kohnstein in the Harz was chosen as the future location of the rocket manufacturing plant . In September 1943, Hans Kammler also received the order to relocate the Peenemünder development plant to a new tunnel system to be built near Ebensee in the Alps . In order to set up these facilities, the use of concentration camp prisoners was planned on a large scale , who were stationed on site in their own external commandos and guarded by the SS.

With the expansion of the tunnel system in Kohnstein to the underground rocket factory Mittelwerk, the WiFo was commissioned as owner; The manufacture of the rockets according to the specifications of the Peenemünde Army Research Institute was assigned to the semi-public "Mittelwerk GmbH", which was set up especially for this purpose and was only officially founded as a company on September 24, 1943.

Conversion of the tunnels into an armaments factory

The entrance to tunnel A, which was blown up in 1947
Tunnel entrance B, on the left the buried original entrance, in the middle today's visitor entrance, which leads to tunnel A in the mountain

The conversion of the tunnel system into a production facility lasted from the late summer of 1943 to the beginning of 1944. The Buchenwald concentration camp set up an external command with the code name “Dora labor camp” for the use of the concentration camp prisoners on the Kohnstein . The first prisoner transport with 107 prisoners reached the mountain on August 28, 1943, ten days after the destruction of the facilities in Peenemünde and before the formal establishment of the operating company Mittelwerk GmbH.

By the end of 1943 alone, a total of 11,000 concentration camp prisoners had been taken to the Kohnstein. The most urgent task of the prisoners in the tunnel under the Kohnstein was the conversion of the existing fuel store into a rocket factory and then the gradual expansion of the tunnel systems as required by the armaments companies involved. All work was carried out by the prisoners, mostly without special transport or aids. First of all, the floors were concreted in the tunnels, roads were built, tracks were laid, further chambers laid out and the large production machines installed. To expand the facility, the prisoners had to drive two parallel main tunnels, called Fahrstollen A and Fahrstollen B, into the mountain, each about 1,800 meters long and about 30 meters high. Railroad tracks were laid in the driving tunnels, which were connected by 46 transverse tunnels, in order to transport the parts required for production into the underground factory and the completed rockets. The total length of all tunnels in May 1945 was about 20 kilometers, the total area was over 250,000 square meters. The prisoners also built a freight station near the southern tunnel entrances and a railway bridge over the Zorge so that the tunnel system a rail connection to the South Harz Railway could get.

From the beginning, the living conditions for prisoners on the Kohnstein were extremely poor. When the first group of inmates from Buchenwald concentration camp arrived in August 1943, there was no accommodation for the inmates on site. Initially, the prisoners were temporarily housed in a tent camp on the Kohnstein and later under inhumane conditions in the tunnel system itself. An above-ground prisoner camp was only built after V2 production had started. Most of the prisoners who were involved in the construction of the rocket factory until early 1944 were kept in the tunnels by the SS around the clock. The inmates were forced to set up "sleeping tunnels" for themselves in the first four side chambers. In the first few months, thousands of them died of exhaustion, malnutrition , due to the catastrophic sanitary conditions and lung diseases caused by the dust from the explosions. These took place during the day and at night, so that even regular sleep in the tunnels was not possible. In this first phase, the prisoners' medical care was also inadequate. A tunnel chamber had been set up as an outpatient clinic, but that was not enough to treat the sick. By the time rocket production in the Mittelwerk started up at full speed in the spring of 1944, around a third of the prisoners employed at the Kohnstein died from the inhumane supply and living conditions. Of the roughly 60,000 forced laborers, at least 20,000 died, most of them before the barracks were built. In terms of extermination through work , this was definitely wanted by the SS.

Arms production and other buildings

V2 rocket in the Mittelwerk. Photo from July 1945
US aerial view of the Zorgetal between Nordhausen and Ellrich with the underground facilities at Niedersachswerfen and Woffleben marked by the Allied air evaluation (March 1945)
Engine part of a V2 in the tunnel

The production of the V2 in the " Mittelwerk " under the Kohnstein began in January 1944, six months after the establishment of the "Arbeitslager Dora" external command . While the production of armaments began after the necessary machinery was set up and the specialist personnel moved to Lower Saxony , the tunnel system was continuously expanded. On average, around 5,000 prisoners were employed in the V2 assembly under the supervision of around 3,000 civilian employees .

In the summer of 1944, the V1 wing bomb was also produced. In addition, the Heinkel and Junkers companies produced aircraft and aircraft engines in the underground tunnels. Until the war-related cessation of rocket production at the end of March 1945, a total of around 6,000 V1 rockets and roughly the same number of V2 weapons were manufactured.

As a production facility for armaments, the Mittelwerk was the largest underground armaments factory of the Second World War . The majority of the prisoners were not used in rocket production, but in the construction of tunnels for the underground relocation of further operations and the construction of additional external camps in the Harz Mountains .

Barrack camps and above-ground facilities
Rebuilt residential barracks

After V2 production started in early 1944, the prisoners, who had been housed in the "sleeping tunnels" until then, were gradually moved to an above-ground barrack camp, also built by prisoners, near the tunnel entrances at the foot of the Kohnstein, to which the name of the "Dora labor camp" was transferred. The last prisoners left the sleeping tunnels at the beginning of June 1944 - if they had survived by then.

The prisoner camp at the foot of the Kohnstein, which had been built in several construction phases since the beginning of 1944, was surrounded by a high-voltage barbed wire fence with watchtowers. In contrast to most other large concentration camps, the improvised camp Dora did not have a massive gate building. The transition from the SS area to the prisoner camp was marked by a wooden gate that lay between two long wooden SS barracks.

Inside the prisoner's area were the roll call area and, most recently, 70 wooden barracks for forced laborers , which were divided into residential and functional barracks . The latter included the farm buildings such as the camp kitchen, the brick boiler house and the camp laundry, but also the brick camp prison with an attached execution site that was not visible from the outside. As in some other concentration camps, there was also a camp brothel in the “Dora” camp , remains of which are still preserved today (camp plan no. 29). For this purpose, female prisoners from the Ravensbrück concentration camp were forced into prostitution. The brothel was paid for with storage fees. This facility was regarded as a “means of driving higher performance”, but was frowned upon by some prisoners.

crematorium

Separated from the residential and functional barracks and within its own fencing were the so-called prisoner infirmary, consisting of several barracks, as well as the camp's own crematorium with dissection rooms and two incineration ovens from the Berlin company Kori , located on a slight hill above the prisoner camp and completed in autumn 1944 . About 5,000 corpses were burned here, and the ashes were dumped down a slope next to the crematorium. Until this crematorium was built, the prisoners who had died in the “Dora” camp were brought back to the Buchenwald concentration camp for cremation.

Immediately in front of the access to the prisoner camp was the so-called "SS area", in which, in addition to the commandant's office and the garages, there were accommodations for the SS guards as well as the economic and administrative facilities of the camp. With the start of V2 production, an “industrial area” was expanded next to the SS area, in which the warehouse station with shunting tracks and the entrances to the tunnel system A and B of the tunnel system with the central plant were located. At the end of the war, the camp grounds at the foot of the Kohnstein consisted of four large, separate sections.

"Dora" as the main camp of the Mittelbau concentration camp

Dead inmates in the inmate barracks, taken on April 11, 1945 after the liberation of the camp by members of the United States Army Signal Corps

From the spring of 1944, with the establishment of new satellite camps in the surrounding region, a more and more branching camp complex gradually emerged, which eventually comprised almost 40 subsidiary camps and whose administration was made independent in stages by the Buchenwald concentration camp.

From June 8, 1944, the former “Dora labor camp” of the Buchenwald concentration camp was officially designated as “Mittelbau I”, and the Harzungen and Ellrich-Juliushütte satellite camps together as “Mittelbau II”.

As early as September 10, 1944, the camp complex was restructured again. The designation "Mittelbau I" for the "Dora" camp remained, while Ellrich-Juliushütte was now listed as "Mittelbau II" and Harzungen as "Mittelbau III".

From October 28, 1944, the “Dora” camp site with its satellite camps was organizationally separated from the Buchenwald concentration camp and, together with other smaller camps, made into the “Mittelbau Concentration Camp”. It was the last main concentration camp established by the SS. Even after the independent “KZ Mittelbau” was founded, the “Dora” camp at the foot of the Kohnstein continued to serve as the headquarters of the commandant's office and the headquarters of the SS guards .

After the evacuation of the Groß-Rosen and Auschwitz concentration camps in Eastern Europe in January 1945, more than 16,000 other prisoners and 1,000 SS members were transported to the Mittelbau concentration camp. The last commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Richard Baer , took over the management of the Mittelbau concentration camp in February 1945.

In March 1945, the production of armaments in the Mittelwerk was stopped and the majority of the prisoners from the "KZ Mittelbau" camps were sent on evacuation transports and so-called death marches . Only the sick and dying were left behind, especially in the Boelcke-Kaserne subcamp in Nordhausen. These death marches led to the concentration camps in Bergen-Belsen , Sachsenhausen , the concentration camp Ravensbrück and also in the Bay of Lübeck (see Cap Arcona ), where numerous camp inmates were killed when the ships there were sunk by Allied bombings. 1016 prisoners were burned alive in the Isenschnibber field barn near Gardelegen .

Liberation and the immediate post-war period

The liberators in front of Mittelwerk

The "Dora" camp site was finally liberated by the 1st US Army on April 11, 1945 , but help came too late for the majority of prisoners, as they were still in the control of their guards after the camp had been evacuated could later be released. Residents of Nordhausen were forcibly taken through the concentration camp to show them the inhumane machinery of extermination. The barracks of the prisoner and SS camps then stood as good as empty for several weeks; the prisoners found were cared for in hospitals.

After the liberation of the Mittelbau concentration camp, British and American special forces secured material and machines from the Mittelwerk in the tunnel system in Kohnstein . They captured about 100 V1 and V2 that were transported to the USA. After the Americans handed Thuringia over to the Soviet military administration on July 1, 1945 , the construction of missiles, engines and turbines continued for a year under Soviet leadership. Then members of the Red Army dismantled the remaining machines and material from the medium-sized works and the suppliers and brought them to the Soviet Union . After the Soviets had finished dismantling the facilities, they tried to blow up the entire tunnel system under the Kohnstein. However, the demolition carried out in the summer of 1947 failed, so only the tunnel accesses were destroyed.

After the inventory was cleared by US and Soviet specialists, the camp's barracks served briefly as refugee accommodation for liberated slave laborers and as a hospital.

From the end of 1945 to the end of 1946, German authorities accommodated displaced persons from the Bohemian cities of Reichenberg, Gablonz and Friedland in the camp (“Dora resettlement camp”). In December 1945 the camp was occupied by 1,194 “resettlers”. The plan was to build a barrack town for around 6,000 people.

On April 11, 1946, the first anniversary of the liberation, a memorial was erected by the Soviet occupying forces on the crematorium building of the former main camp “Dora”.

From the spring of 1947, German authorities finally had the barracks dismantled and erected as temporary accommodation in the district and in the town of Nordhausen, which was destroyed by the war.

Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp memorial

Monument by Jürgen von Woyski in front of the crematorium at a memorial event

History of the memorial

Compared to the former Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, which were designated as “national memorials and memorials” in the GDR, the importance of the “Dora” camp as a place of remembrance remained subordinate for a long time. GDR authorities, for example, had the camp prison built in 1944 as a massive stone building demolished in 1952.

In 1954 the crematorium building of the former main camp “Dora” was dedicated as a memorial, and since 1964 the “Mittelbau-Dora Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Mittelbau-Dora” was opened by the GDR . The exhibitions in the crematorium converted into a museum, however, focused on the topic of 'anti-fascist resistance' and thus covered other, non-political fates.

The former location of the prisoner camp was not included in the memorial until the 1970s. The former position of the camp gate was marked with concrete pillars. The former roll call square was redesigned in 1974 by local GDR authorities as a "Monument to the Nations": the square was graveled, with a concrete pedestal, a memorial wall, a flame bowl and the "Stones of the Nations" that border the square.

On the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camp in 1995, the memorial was reopened with a new concept that deliberately also contains elements from the GDR era. A newly created entrance, the construction of which had already started between 1988 and 1991, has since then made a very small part of the tunnel system with bedrooms and production rooms accessible again to the public as part of guided tours. The Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation has been a member of the working group of independent cultural institutes since 2000 .

In spring 2005 a new museum building was inaugurated, in which a new permanent exhibition was opened in September 2006.

Design of the memorial

Rusty parts of bombs and rockets in the tunnel, 2012
Storage fee

Large parts of the area designated as the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial Site are now covered by meadows and forest. Of the vast majority of the buildings in the prisoner camp, the infirmary, the SS buildings and the railway station, only remains of the foundations can be seen.

At the entrance to the memorial there are the remains of the railway bridge over the Zorge as well as an old railway carriage of the Reichsbahn, with which the deportation of the prisoners to the camp is to be remembered. The foundation walls are visible from the former warehouse station, as are numerous exposed tracks and the warehouse sewage treatment plant. Only a few remains of the floor can be seen from the former SS area.

The tunnel system in the Kohnstein with the former Mittelwerk is accessible as part of guided tours, but large areas are flooded by groundwater and in some sections may have partially collapsed as a result of industrial mining in the vicinity.

In addition to the former and today's museum building of the memorial, only the crematorium, the fire station, an SS shelter, a carpentry and a living barracks can be seen on the area of ​​the former prisoner and sick camp. This area is dominated by the meeting place, which was created by the GDR authorities instead of the roll call area.

The SS shelter that is visible today and the living quarters are reconstructions. The shelter was reconstructed by the GDR in 1974 and is referred to as a "standing bunker" in older publications. The barrack was rebuilt from parts of several original buildings. In the 1950s, two barracks on the former concentration camp site were dismantled and rebuilt on the site of a nearby cigarette factory, where they served as a company kindergarten and bowling alley for a long time. It was not until the early 1990s that the barracks were returned to their original location, where a living barracks that was as true to the original as possible was assembled from the parts that had been preserved.

Of the former camp prison with its place of execution, the laundry, the cinema barrack, the boiler house, the infirmary and around 60 residential barracks, only foundations can be seen, some of which are overgrown by trees and are gradually being exposed again.

  • The two incinerators in the crematorium

  • Leftovers from the laundry

Subcamp

By April 1945, a dense network of around 40 satellite camps had been set up in the Harz Mountains . Each of these camps had its function in the “KZ Mittelbau” complex, with the “Dora” camp functioning as the headquarters.

There were three different types of camps: production, construction and death camps. Prisoners who had been "worked off" in production units (e.g. Rottleberode subcamp , Kleinbodungen subcamp , etc.) were transferred to the construction camps (e.g. Ellrich-Juliushütte subcamp , Harzungen subcamp etc.) and had to work hard on the individual there Construction sites, for example the unfinished construction of the Helmetalbahn , with which the supraregional traffic on the southern Harz line should be led around the area of ​​the concentration camp.

Due to the heavy physical work, the prisoners quickly became unable to work and were then deported to so-called death camps (e.g. the Boelcke-Kaserne subcamp in Nordhausen), where they were largely left to their own devices without medical care.

Prisoners

Origin of the inmates

People from almost every country in Europe were deported to the various camps of the Mittelbau concentration camp for a variety of reasons . More than 60,000 prisoners were detained there while the camp was in existence, at least 20,000 did not survive the inhumane working and living conditions. In April 1945 alone, 6,000 prisoners in the Mittelbau concentration camp complex died. Before that, between January and March 1945, around 16,000 exhausted prisoners from the Auschwitz and Groß-Rosen concentration camps had been "evacuated" to the Mittelbau concentration camp due to the looming defeat of the German Reich towards the end of the Second World War . In the wagons of the arriving railroad transports there were sometimes only dead or dying prisoners.

After the end of the war, the Polish Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes compiled a list of the number and nationality of the prisoners for the main camp of the Mittelbau concentration camp and the largest satellite camps in the summer of 1945:

was standing nationality total
Soviet Poland French people German Belgian Others
Main camp
Mittelbau 		Nov 1, 1944 4051 3883 2373 1165 217 2107 13796
April 1, 1945 4192 5387 2406 1180 281 2287 15733
Satellite camp
Ellrich-Juliushütte 		Nov 1, 1944 2419 1786 1389 203 670 1535 8002
April 1, 1945 2135 1495 676 294 490 1462 6552

Harzungen external warehouse 		Nov 1, 1944 956 796 558 129 755 807 4001
April 1, 1945 1533 1471 440 215 306 742 4707
Satellite camp
Boelcke barracks 		Nov 1, 1944 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
April 1, 1945 1067 2168 816 463 401 796 5711
SS construction brigades Nov 1, 1944 1550 1166 503 419 15th 674 4327
April 1, 1945 1273 1254 340 544 51 378 3840
Other satellite camps
and detachments 		Nov 1, 1944 505 716 291 178 390 241 2321
April 1, 1945 734 1188 412 531 382 405 3652
total Nov 1, 1944 9481 8347 5114 2114 2047 5373 32475
April 1, 1945 10934 12963 5092 3227 1911 6070 40202

Inmate clothing

The prisoner clothing intended for the prisoners in the “KZ Mittelbau” camp complex , with its system of colored markings, corresponded to the requirements that the SS also enforced in the other National Socialist concentration camps . The selection of prison functionaries in “KZ Mittelbau” did not differ significantly from the system practiced by the SS in the other concentration camps.

The colors of the angles were:

  • red - politically persecuted
  • green - "criminal"
  • black - "anti-social"
  • pink - homosexuals
  • purple - "Bible Students" ( Jehovah's Witnesses )
  • yellow - Jews

“The red triangle marked foreigners, provided that it contained a black letter that was nothing more than the first letter of the name of the country of origin (F for France, P for Poland, etc.) The German prisoners did not have letters like us. If they wore a red triangle it meant that they had been against the Nazis or that they were communists, the green and black denoted those who had been jailed before the war or the other groups of maladjusted types ... "

- André Mouton

“The SS awarded the angles with as much arbitrariness as they made people into concentration camp prisoners. The decisive factor was that the categories should serve to split the prisoners into different groups and to prevent solidarity against the SS. "

- Jens-Christian Wagner

There were fierce battles over the filling of important positions in the hierarchy of the camp. German and Austrian prisoners, the number of whom was rather insignificant in relation to prisoners of other nationalities, were given preferential posts as prisoner functionaries . In contrast to the Buchenwald concentration camp , the Kapo functions in Mittelbau-Dora were in the hands of the "Greens".

Known inmates

  • Jean Améry (1912–1978), writer, resistance fighter
  • Christian Beham (1906–1945), KPD functionary and resistance fighter
  • Hans Frankenthal (1926–1999), Holocaust survivor
  • Heinz Galinski (1912–1992), President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany
  • Ewald Hanstein (1924–2009), Holocaust survivor
  • Stéphane Hessel (1917–2013), diplomat, poet, essayist and political activist
  • August Kroneberg (1885–1969), trade unionist and local politician
  • Albert Kuntz (1896–1945), politician
  • Jean Mialet (1920–2006), officer, resistance fighter, Holocaust survivor
  • André Mouton (1924-2017), writer
  • Fritz Pröll (1915–1944), resistance fighter against National Socialism
  • Paul Rassinier (1906–1967), politician, pacifist, professor of history, geography and literature
  • Otto Rosenberg (1927–2001), co-founder and chairman of the regional association of German Sinti and Roma Berlin-Brandenburg
  • Ludwig Szymczak (1902–1945), communist worker in the Ruhr area and economic emigrant
  • Othmar Wundsam (1922–2014), contemporary witness of the Nazi era

SS personnel

SS shelter at the entrance to the prisoner camp

In June 1944, the camp staff consisted of around 1,000 people. After the Mittelbau concentration camp became an independent concentration camp in October 1944, around 3,300 SS men were deployed there from the end of 1944 when the SS-Totenkopfsturmbann Mittelbau was founded. Over half of the guards were originally members of the Luftwaffe and were only transferred to the Waffen SS on September 1, 1944 - a few weeks before the SS-Totenkopfsturmbann was founded .

Commander was of Buchenwald satellite camp "Dora" and then the first commander of the independent Mittelbau from September 1943 to February 1945 Otto Förschner , which the employed from July 1944 to February 1945 protective custody camp leader Hans Moser shelter. Wilhelm Simon took over the post of labor leader from October 1943 to spring 1945.

After the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp , more SS men were transported to the Mittelbau concentration camp, which led to an increase in the number of camp personnel. On February 1, 1945 Richard Baer (previously camp commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp) was appointed as the new camp commandant of the Mittelbau concentration camp. At the beginning of February 1945, he replaced almost all the heads of the Mittelbau concentration camp site departments with members of the Auschwitz camp SS . Thus Franz Hössler protective custody camp, Max Sell labor leader, Eduard Wirths SS garrison doctor and Hans Schurz head of the Political Department .

Dealing with the past

Post-war processes

August 7, 1947 to December 30, 1947 as part of the Dachau trials brought before an American military tribunal at the Dora Trial against 14 SS members of the Mittelbau, four function prisoners and the Director General of mittelwerk. In addition to the death sentence against the former protective custody camp leader Möser, four acquittals and 13 prison sentences were issued. Previously, in the Bergen-Belsen trial, among others, twelve SS members and prison functionaries from the Mittelbau concentration camp had been negotiated, who ended up in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as part of the evacuation of the Mittelbau concentration camp . In this process three former SS members of the Mittelbau concentration camp were sentenced to death and executed, including the former protective custody camp leader Hößler. The former camp commandant Förschner was sentenced to death in the main Dachau trial and executed at the end of May 1946. His successor Baer went into hiding at the end of the war and died in custody before the first Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt began .

Further individual proceedings against former camp staff of the Mittelbau concentration camp continued until the 1980s in the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR . The best-known process was the Essen Dora Trial , which began on November 17, 1967 and ended on May 8, 1970. The former commando leader Erwin Busta was indicted in the Dora trial in Essen together with Helmut Bischoff , the former KDS of the restricted area Mittelbau, and his former employee Ernst Sander for crimes in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. All three defendants received prison terms, which they did not have to serve.

“Here, like in hardly any other place, the justification of contemporaries is questioned that they had no idea of ​​the extensive camp system - the Nazis had kept forced labor and mass deaths a secret from their own people. Between 1943 and 1945 Mittelbau-Dora was the concentration camp next door for the people in the surrounding villages and towns. With more than 40 external camps, it extended over the entire southern Harz. Almost every place had its sub-camp at that time. Prisoners were loaned to local companies, where they worked bench after bench with German colleagues and were often humiliated and mistreated by them. Civilians commanded the work gangs that went through the towns every day - with the bodies of deceased prisoners on a cart. "

- Jan Friedmann

The Dora Committee

In the summer of 1990, former Dora prisoners from France, Belgium and the Czech Republic founded the European committee Dora, Ellrich, Harzungen et Kommandos "Pour la Mémoire" on the initiative of Jacques Brun (born November 20, 1921 in Paris; † July 8, 2007 there) as a prisoners' association . Jean Mialet (1920–2006) was President of the Comité, Brun until 1996 General Secretary. The Comité was founded to keep the memory of the crimes committed in the Mittelbau concentration camp alive internationally; A particular concern was the expansion of the “Mittelbau-Dora” memorial into an institution that was appropriate to the events. In 1995 Jacques Brun initiated the founding of the association “Jugend für Dora” and called on the young people to continue the work of remembrance against forgetting the Nazi crimes. Jacques Brun was arrested by the Nazis as a young man and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in August 1944. From there, the SS transferred him to the Dora concentration camp in September 1944. He was later transferred to the Ellrich satellite camp, from where the SS sent him on a death march in early April 1945, which he survived.

reception

Movies

  • Eberhard Görner: Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp - memory of hell. Documentation, 2006, 45 min.
  • National Geographic : Hitler's rocket tunnel, documentation, 42 min. Pictures from the concentration camp, pictures of a dive into the flooded lower production tunnels, pictures of V rockets, pictures of Wernher von Braun and pictures of US space rockets
  • The Good German - In the ruins of Berlin . 2006. The US film addresses, among other things, the knowledge of the inhumane conditions in Dora-Mittelbau on the part of the scientists involved in the rocket project.

art

"The Tunnel" is an artistic testimony by Edmund Polak from 1944 at the time of his imprisonment, which depicts the living and working conditions in the underground facilities of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. A digitization project at TU Darmstadt turned the folded paper artwork into a virtual reconstruction of the horror in the tunnels and the situation of the prisoners. Reason for the project: "We know of over 90 TH employees from Darmstadt who worked for V rocket research from 1940," said Christof Dipper , head of the project group that investigates how the university was involved in the Nazi armament .

See also

literature

  • Bruno Arich-Gerz: Mittelbau-Dora. American and German Representations of a Nazi Concentration Camp. Literature, Visual Media and the Culture of Memory from 1945 to the Present. Transcript, Bielefeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-8376-1357-5 .
  • Frank Baranowski: The suppressed past. Arms production and forced labor in Northern Thuringia. Mecke, Duderstadt 2000, ISBN 3-932752-67-8 .
  • Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 7: Niederhagen / Wewelsburg, Lublin-Majdanek, Arbeitsdorf, Herzogenbusch (Vught), Bergen-Belsen, Mittelbau-Dora. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-52967-2 .
  • Yves Béon: Planet Dora. As a prisoner in the shadow of the V2 rocket. Bleicher, Gerlingen 1999, ISBN 3-88350-045-3 .
  • Manfred Bornemann: Secret Project Mittelbau. From the central oil depot of the German Reich to the largest rocket factory in World War II. In: Dörfler Zeitgeschichte. Edition Dörfler im Nebel-Verlag, Eggolsheim [2004?], ISBN 978-3-89555-127-7 (license Bernard and Graefe, Munich 1994 - 2nd, completely revised and expanded edition ISBN 3-7637-5927-1 . First edition by: JF Lehmann, Munich 1971, ISBN 3-469-00307-6 / ISBN 3-469-00308-4 ).
  • Udo Breger : The rocket mountain. Kohnstein, Dora and the V2. Peter Engstler, Oberwaldbehrungen in Ostheim before the Rhön 1992, ISBN 3-9801770-7-6 .
  • Rainer Eisfeld : Moonstruck. Wernher von Braun and the birth of space travel from the spirit of barbarism. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-498-01660-1 .
  • Götz Dieckmann : Conditions of existence and resistance in the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp under the aspect of the functional inclusion of the SS in the system of the fascist war economy. Dissertation at the Humboldt University of Berlin [East] 1968.
  • Angela Fiedermann, Torsten Hess, Markus Jäger: The Mittelbau Dora concentration camp. A historical summary. Westkreuz, Bad Münstereifel 1993, ISBN 3-922131-94-8 .
  • Hans Frankenthal : Refused return. Experiences after the murder of the Jews. Fischer Taschenbuch 14493, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-14493-0 .
  • Alvin Gilens: Discovery and Despair : Dimensions of Dora / Departure and Despair : Dimensions of Dora. Westkreuz, Bad Münstereifel 1995, ISBN 3-929592-10-X (English and German).
  • Hans-Herbert Holzamer: Torn Lives. Roman, Gräv, Gräfelfing, 2013, ISBN 978-3-942138-23-9 .
  • Jean Mialet: hatred and forgiveness. Report from a deportee. Berlin 2006.
  • André Mouton: Unexpected return from the Harz . Goslar 1999, ISBN 3-934231-11-X .
  • Joachim Neander: “Has no close example in Europe.” Mittelbau-Dora - a concentration camp for Hitler's war . Metropol, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-932482-31-X .
  • Thomas Pynchon : The ends of the parable . Novel. (= The new book. Volume 112). Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1981, ISBN 3-499-25112-4 .
  • André Sellier: Forced labor in the rocket tunnel. History of the Dora camp. To Klampen, Lüneburg 2000, ISBN 3-924245-95-9 .
  • André Sellier, Yves le Maner: Pictures from Dora: Forced Labor in the Rocket Tunnel 1943–1945. Westkreuz-Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-929592-59-2 .
  • Adam Tooze : Economics of Destruction. The history of the economy in NS. Siedler, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-88680-857-1 .
  • Jens-Christian Wagner : Production of Death. The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Wallstein, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-89244-439-0 . (Dissertation, University of Göttingen 1999, Mania for displacement and death )
  • Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.): Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. Wallstein, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0118-4 .
  • Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.): Destruction and work. Jewish prisoners in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Nordhausen / Weimar 2014
  • Jens-Christian Wagner (arrangement), Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.): Guide through the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8353-1507-5 .
  • Nikolaus Wachsmann : KL: The history of the National Socialist concentration camps . Siedler, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-88680-827-4 .

Web links

Commons : Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : Subcamp of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation: “Buried alive”: Dora in autumn 1943. ( online) , accessed on April 28, 2017.
  2. ↑ Hans Maršálek : The history of the concentration camp Mauthausen . Documentation. 3. Edition. Austrian camp community Mauthausen, Vienna 1995, p. 71.
  3. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner (Ed.): Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp 1943–1945 Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition in the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. Wallstein, Göttingen, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0118-4 , p. 53 f.
  4. ↑ Jens-Christian Wagner: Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. Göttingen 2007, p. 32f., 43.
  5. ↑ Jens-Christian Wagner : Production of death: Das KZ Mittelbau-Dora , Göttingen 2001, p. 146ff.
  6. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of death: The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Göttingen 2001, p. 87.
  7. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner: Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror - history of the national socialist concentration camps. Volume 7, Munich 2008, pp. 231f.
  8. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (arrangement): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 10.
  9. ↑ Volker Bode, Christian Thiel: Raketenspuren - Waffenschmiede and military base Peenemünde. Berlin 1995, p. 86ff.
  10. ↑ Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. Göttingen 2007, p. 45f.
  11. ↑ Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. Göttingen 2007, p. 49f.
  12. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of death: The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Göttingen 2001, pp. 205ff.
  13. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (edit.): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 11.
  14. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (edit.): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 11.
  15. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (arrangement): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 14.
  16. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (arrangement): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 10.
  17. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (arrangement): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 10.
  18. ^ Jens Christian Wagner: Mittelbau-Dora main camp. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror - history of the national socialist concentration camps. Volume 7, Munich 2008, 248.
  19. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (arrangement): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 7.
  20. ^ Al Newman: Nordhausen: A Hell Factory Worked by the Living Dead. In: Newsweek. April 23, 1945, accessed on October 7, 2019 : “No one who has seen the Nordhausen morgue will ever be able to forget the details of this terrible scene. As one approached the badly bombed barracks, one could hear low moans and pitiful screams. The unbelievable smell increased with each step. Here, 200 prisoners who had to do slave labor were placed along the railroad tracks for the American Air Force to hit them with their bombs and thus complete the ice-cold scientific mission of slow starvation that the SS had begun. "
  21. ^ Nazi Murder Mills. (Video; 08:15 min) In: Archive.org. April 26, 1945, accessed October 12, 2019 .
  22. ↑ a b c Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition in the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial, Göttingen 2007, p. 152f.
  23. ^ NTV on April 26, 2009 at 7:10 pm: "Hitler's rocket tunnel". Quoted from Eberhard Baage: Saxon uranium and Stalin's nuclear weapons. Self-publication , Engelsdorfer Verlag, Leipzig 2009, ISBN 978-3-86901-523-1 , p. 319.
  24. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (arrangement): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 8.
  25. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (arrangement): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 8.
  26. ↑ a b c Peter Kuhlbrodt (Ed.): Fateful year 1945. Inferno Nordhausen . Nordhausen: Archives of the city of Nordhausen, 1995. P. 107 f.
  27. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (edit.): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 11.
  28. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (arrangement): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 8.
  29. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (arrangement): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 8.
  30. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (arrangement): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 12.
  31. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (edit.): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 11.
  32. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (arrangement): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 12.
  33. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (edit.): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. 5th edition. Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 9.
  34. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (edit.): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial , 5th edition, Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 15.
  35. ↑ Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (ed.), Jens-Christian Wagner (edit.): Guide to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial , 5th edition, Weimar / Nordhausen 2014, p. 12.
  36. ^ Map of the subcamps of the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp
  37. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.): Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Göttingen 2007, p. 7.
  38. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.): Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Göttingen 2007, p. 127f.
  39. ↑ Information from Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.): Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Göttingen 2007, p. 68 - The Jewish prisoners are not listed separately, but are subsumed under the individual nationalities. The Austrian prisoners are grouped together with the German prisoners under the German nationality.
  40. ↑ mainly Roma , Sinti , Hungarians, Czechs, Italians, Yugoslavs, Dutch, source: Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.): Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Göttingen 2007, p. 68.
  41. ^ André Mouton: Unexpected return from the Harz. Julius Brumby Verlag, Goslar 1999, p. 64.
  42. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner : The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2001, p. 40.
  43. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.): Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Göttingen 2007, p. 67f.
  44. ↑ Stéphane Hessel: How I survived Buchenwald and other camps. In: FAZ No. 17 of January 21, 2011, p. 35.
  45. ↑ Otto Rosenberg: The burning glass. Autobiography, recorded by Ulrich Enzensberger , Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin 2012, p. 93f.
  46. ↑ a b Jens-Christian Wagner (Ed.): Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp 1943–1945. Göttingen 2007, p. 103f.
  47. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of death: The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Göttingen 2001, p. 329f.
  48. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of death: The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Göttingen 2001, p. 651f.
  49. ↑ Jens-Christian Wagner: Inferno and Liberation - Auschwitz in the Harz. In: Die Zeit , No. 4, 2005.
  50. ^ A b c Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.): Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Göttingen 2007, p. 155.
  51. ↑ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 24, 158.
  52. ^ Andrè Sellier: Forced Labor in the Rocket Tunnel - History of the Dora Camp. Lüneburg 2000, p. 518.
  53. ^ Mittelbau-Dora - The concentration camp next door. In: Spiegel Online . Culture, September 11, 2006.
  54. ^ Mourning for Jacques Brun. The founder of the European Dora Committee is dead. Press release from the Mittelbau-Dora Memorial on July 8, 2007.
  55. ^ Eberhard Görner: Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp - Memory of Hell. on topographie.de, accessed on April 27, 2017.
  56. ↑ "The Tunnel". Special exhibition of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp memorial in cooperation with the TU Darmstadt
  57. ↑ A work of art that makes you shudder. History - Technical University issues a "tunnel" copy of a concentration camp  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.echo-online.de  
  58. ↑ The American protagonist visits the liberated Dora-Mittelbau camp on the trail of the V2 rocket. Although fiction, you can find an oppressively realistic description of the facility.
  59. ^ Bernhard M. Hoppe: Review of the exhibition at hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de

Coordinates: 51 ° 32 ′ 7 ″  N , 10 ° 44 ′ 55 ″  E