Eintrachthütte concentration camp
The Eintrachthütte concentration camp was in the period from 26 May 1943 to 23 January 1945, a satellite camp of the Auschwitz concentration camp , located in the district Eintrachthütte the Upper Silesian city Schwientochlowitz . Subsequently, as the Zgoda camp, the camp was a Polish labor camp for German civilians and anti-communist Poles.
history
In 1942 the “Eintrachthütte” was taken over by the semi-state holding “Berghütte” based in Teschen (Cieszyn); It was managed by its subsidiary "Oberschlesische Maschinen und Waggonfabrik AG (OSMAG)". At first 180 Jewish slave laborers , 300 Soviet prisoners of war , and from 1943 onwards 400 French slave laborers worked there. In June 1943, the “Eintrachthütte armaments camp” was expanded by prisoners from Auschwitz; a year later there were 1,400 mostly Jewish concentration camp prisoners who had been brought in from Drancy , Saloniki , Westerbork , Minsk , Riga , Polish ghettos and Hungary .
Most of the prisoners were used in arms production for the manufacture of anti-aircraft guns . Work was carried out in twelve-hour shifts. Smaller groups of inmates were loaned to external companies such as Holzmann-Posen , Grün and Bilfinger , Königshütter Metallwerke and Friedenshütte .
During the Nazi era, the camp was headed by SS-Hauptscharführer Josef Remmele (May 26, 1943 to July 1944) and SS-Hauptscharführer Wilhelm Gehring (July 18, 1944 to January 23, 1945). Both of them brutally treated the inmates, beat and kicked, incited the dogs on inmates, and participated in corporal punishment and executions. Standing arrest in a wet cell and standing between the electric fences for several hours were particularly feared.
Except for the administration building, the camp consisted of two-room wooden barracks, in which 60 to 80 prisoners per room were housed. Sick people and those unable to work were sent back to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, but 10 to 15 inmates died in the camp itself every week.
The “ evacuation ” of the camp took place in December 1944 and January 1945 with overcrowded trains to the Mauthausen concentration camp . From the perspective of the Nazi perpetrators, there were two processes behind this cover word: removal or mass murder of the prisoners before Allied troops reached the camp area.
After 1945 the camp was continued under Polish administration as the Zgoda camp .
Commemoration
There was an initiative to make the remains of the camp still visible as a memorial.
Individual evidence
- ↑ 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 , pp. 211-216.
- ↑ Camp Zgoda: Memorial initiative encounters resistance from survivors. Our Upper Silesia, December 18, 2003 (PDF; 87 kB)
literature
- John Sack : An eye for an eye. Kabel, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3822503398 .
- Adam Dziurok : Obóz Pracy w Świętochłowicach w 1945 roku. IPN, ISBN 8391598365 .
- Adam Dziurok et al. a .: Obozowe dzieje Świętochłowic Eintrachthütte - Zgoda. IPN, 2002, ISBN 83-89078-11-2 .
- Franz W. Seidler , Alfred de Zayas (Ed.): War crimes in Europe and the Middle East in the 20th century. Mittler, Hamburg, Berlin, Bonn 2002, ISBN 3813207021 . (including an essay by Helga Hirsch)
- Alfred de Zayas: The Anglo-Americans and the expulsion of the Germans. Ullstein, 1988, ISBN 3548330991 .
- Gerhard Gruschka: ZGODA. A place of horror. ars una, Neuried 1997, ISBN 3893916075 .
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 16 ′ 44 ″ N , 18 ° 54 ′ 50 ″ E