Hanover-Stöcken concentration camp (accumulator works)

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Memorial by Hans-Jürgen Breuste for the slave laborers of the battery factory
Visitors in front of the memorial plaque for the concentration camp, inaugurated in 2013
Remains of the commanders bunker
Remnants of the wall on the site of the former satellite camp
View of the former AFA premises, then Varta, today Johnson Controls , in Hanover on the Mittelland Canal

The Hanover-Stöcken satellite camp (accumulator works) in Hanover-Stöcken was one of the satellite camps of the Neuengamme concentration camp during World War II . It existed from July 19, 1943 to April 8, 1945. It was built by the AFA company, a predecessor company of Varta AG , for the accumulator works in Hanover-Stöcken , which used concentration camp prisoners as forced laborers in their factories .

history

The basis for the use of prisoners in the AFA was a contract between the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office and the company management from March 1943, in which, in addition to the number of SS prisoners to be "delivered" , 1,500, it was already specified that the " monthly loss of manpower ”of 80 prisoners is to be compensated by the SS. The Stöcken concentration camp ( Hanover ) was part of the Neuengamme concentration camp as a satellite camp . The camp existed between July 1943 and April 1945 and was located right next to the factory premises of the battery factory. It was guarded by the SS. Before and during the war, AFA was the main supplier of drive batteries for submarines, mainly of types VII and XXI , torpedoes ( G7e / G7es ), and on-board batteries for the long-range rocket V2 . From July 1944, the camp manager, as a "base manager", was under the control of the other satellite camps in the region: the Mühlenberg camp, the Ahlem camp, the Misburg camp, the Limmer camp and two women's camps.

The prisoners were deployed in the lead foundry, in the acid department and on the hot counter rollers. A lack of occupational safety led to accidents and damage to health. There is evidence that 403 of the 15,000 or so prisoners died from poor living and working conditions in the Stöcken camp. On the night of April 6th to 7th, 1945, the marching prisoners left the camp in the direction of Bergen-Belsen before the advancing allies. Prisoners who couldn't keep up were shot. Karl Wilhelm Genth , SS medical officer who accompanied the death march as a medic, admitted to the public prosecutor in Hanover in 1961 that he had personally killed three prisoners by shooting in the neck. The approximately 600 prisoners who were unable to march were transported by train to Mieste and had to march from there to Gardelegen , where they were murdered with a larger group of prisoners from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in the Isenschnibber field barn , which the SS set on fire. It is not known how many of the 1,016 prisoners died from sticks in the field barn, as not all bodies could be identified.

Warehouse manager

Camp leaders of the concentration camp were SS-Oberscharführer Johannes P., then SS-Untersturmführer Hugo Benedict , followed by SS-Untersturmführer Hans Hermann Griem . In July 1944 it became SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt Klebeck , who, however, primarily had to take care of the satellite camps, so that the actual management in Stöcken was with his representative, SS-Stabsscharführer Paul Maas .

Klebeck was sentenced to ten years in prison in the so-called Ahlum trial in 1947. Karl Wilhelm Genth and SS-Stabsscharführer Paul Maas were sentenced by the Hanover Regional Court in 1963 to three years and six months in prison for crimes on the death march.

Commemoration

The history of this camp, the fate of the prisoners and the reappraisal in the post-war period - in particular the criminal prosecution - were comprehensively documented in the mid-1980s.

To commemorate this, a memorial with a sculpture and plaque was erected on public land in 1987 in Hannover-Marienwerder near the former camp. The sculpture was created by the sculptor Hans-Jürgen Breuste in collaboration with former prisoners. The main shareholders of Varta, the Quandt and Klatten families , refused to erect a memorial on the company premises. It is dedicated to the West and East European prisoners who were forced into war production under inhumane conditions. The camp manager's bunker is still left between Glockenberg in the monastery forest and the Marienwerder cemetery .

See also

literature

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Federal Ministry of Justice : Directory of the concentration camps and their external commands in accordance with Section 42 (2) BEG No. 573, Hanover-Stöcken, Accumulatorenwerk
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel, Angelika Königseder: The place of terror: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme . tape 5 . CH Beck, 2005, ISBN 978-3-406-52965-8 .
  3. ↑ a b Buggeln: Stöckheim (Akkumulatorenwerke). 2007, p. 445 f.
  4. ↑ Homepage of the Isenschnibbe Feldscheune Memorial Gardelegen: On the history of the historic site. Retrieved March 22, 2020 .
  5. ^ Rainer Fröbe et al .: Concentration camp in Hanover. 1985.
  6. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Jakobs : December 16, 2008, ARD: Allegations against Quandt (BMW) “A German dynasty, the Nazis and the concentration camp”. Retrieved January 25, 2015 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 24 '39.4 "  N , 9 ° 37' 56.9"  E