Herzogenbusch concentration camp
 
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Herzogenbusch concentration camp in the south of the Netherlands
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The concentration camp Herzogenbusch ( Dutch Kamp Vught ) was one of the five German concentration camps in the Netherlands during World War II . After the liberation, it was used by the Allies as an internment camp for evacuated Germans. Vught is a place near 's-Hertogenbosch .
history
The concentration camp
Construction of the camp began in 1942. It was laid out based on the model of concentration camps in the German Reich and was one of the three official concentration camps laid out west of the Reich. The others were the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace (France) and the Breendonk concentration camp in Belgium. The cost of 15 million guilders was mainly covered by confiscated Jewish property. The concentration camp was one kilometer long and 350 meters wide. The first prisoners came from the Amersfoort transit camp and had to build the camp themselves.
The concentration camp was opened on January 5, 1943 and was under the direct supervision of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA). The commandant was SS-Untersturmführer Karl Chmielewski .
A total of around 31,000 men, women and children were interned in this concentration camp, among them 12,000 Jews , members of the Roma minority, political prisoners, Jehovah's Witnesses , resistance fighters, homosexuals and those labeled as "anti-social". The inmates did forced labor on the fortifications outside the camp and in the Philips workshops . The Philips operations managers hesitated for a long time and were successful in improving working conditions. The inmates made clothes and furs.
One of the following were integrated into the concentration camp:
- " Protective Custody Camp "
- "Jewish reception camp", as "Jewish transit camp (JDL)" from June 1943
- "Hostage camp"
- "Student camp"
- "Police transit camp (PDL)"
On June 6 and 7, 1943, it was announced that all Jewish children would have to leave the concentration camp and be sent to a special children's camp, but they were taken to the Westerbork transit camp . From there they were deported to the Sobibor extermination camp , located in what is now Poland, and murdered. On this occasion there is a memorial in the Herzogenbusch concentration camp bearing the names of Jewish children and young people in 1269.
In one of the women's barracks there was a woman who reported the contents of the conversations to the camp commandant and was given relief in prison. One day it was discovered, and so the 89 women in the barracks decided to cut the traitor's hair off. The next day, the traitor complained to the camp commandant about the procedure, whereupon the woman who cut the traitor's hair was put in solitary confinement. Against this, the remaining 88 women protested, because it was not lawful to punish this one when they had made the decision together. Thereupon the camp commandant, SS-Hauptsturmführer Adam Grünewald , who had been in command since October 1943, decided to squeeze the women together in a single cell (cell 115). On January 15, 1944, SS men, including the aforementioned camp commandant, his adjutant Wicklein and protective custody camp leader Arnold Strippel, pressed 74 inmates into a 9.5 m² cell, the last of which were already crammed with brute force. The remaining 15 women were locked in a second cell with the same floor space. Both rooms had no ventilation . By the morning of the 16th when cell door 115 was opened, ten had suffocated. In May 2009, two of the 74 women from cell 115 were still alive and they and their children report when they visit the former concentration camp that they cannot forget that night and continue to suffer from it today. The cell in which the tragedy took place is back in operation. It is part of the prison that is located today on the site of the former concentration camp.
As this incident led to a considerable uproar in the Dutch public, Grünewald and Wicklein were brought before the SS and Police Court in The Hague . At the beginning of March Grünewald was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for mistreating subordinates and Wicklein was sentenced to six months in prison for favoring his superior in the act of negligent homicide of ten women. By Heinrich Himmler , the two convicts were pardoned. Grünewald was demoted and transferred to the Eastern Front. Wicklein was transferred to the Porta Westfalica satellite camp , a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp , as a camp manager, probably on probation . From October 1944, after some Neuengammer satellite camps had been combined into bases, he acted as head of the Porta base and headed the Barkhausen , Hausberge and Lerbeck / Neesen satellite camps until April 1945. After the end of the war , Wicklein was captured by the British, but from which he was imprisoned September 1945 managed to escape. After 1945, Wicklein is said to have lived in Oberhausen. His further life is unknown.
His successor in Herzogenbusch was SS-Sturmführer Hans Hüttig in February 1944 . Between July and the evacuation of the camp in September 1944, Hüttig had another 329 prisoners murdered.
On September 5 and 6, 1944, the camp was evacuated from the approaching Allied armies, and the prisoners were transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . The Germans handed the camp over to the Red Cross on September 22, 1944 . However, it was not liberated by the Canadian 4th Armored Division until October 27th.
According to the memorial, over 750 prisoners died in the Herzogenbusch concentration camp from hunger, illness and abuse, when they were hung on the gallows or from the firing squads at the execution site. The type of mass extermination that took place in the Eastern European concentration camps did not take place in the Herzogenbusch concentration camp.
Subcamp
At times, up to 14 subcamps belonged to the main camp in Herzogenbusch:
- in Arnhem (in the Coehoorn barracks and in the Saksen-Weimar barracks)
- in Breda ( Gilze-Rijen Airport )
- in The Hague (only briefly existing, small external command: auxiliary services for the commander of the security police and the SD )
- in Eindhoven ( air base )
- in hair (housed in the confiscated seminary there )
- in 's-Hertogenbosch ( Continental tire factory )
- in Leeuwarden ( air base )
- in Leusden (in a former barrack camp of the Dutch army)
- in Moerdijk (especially for Dutch people imprisoned for "favoring Jews")
- in Roosendaal (at the Landbouwschool)
- in Sint-Michielsgestel (only fragmentarily documented)
- in Tilburg (only fragmentarily documented)
- in Venlo ( air base )
The internment camp (from autumn 1944)
Shortly after the concentration camp was liberated, the Allies used it as an internment camp. In the associated communities, which were among the first occupied German territories, the front line stood still from September 1944 to January 1945. That is why the population was evacuated from the communities of Gangelt and Selfkant to Vught, because they feared German collaborators. This measure was probably unique in the course of the occupation of Germany and was not repeated due to negative experiences.
From mid-November between 6,000 and 7,000 Germans were brought to camp Vught. At the same time, 3,000 Dutch collaborators were still held there. The camp commandant was the Canadian Colonel Price, while the guards were recruited from Dutch and the British troops were in charge of the catenary. Dean Franzen became the warehouse manager on the German side. This confusion of competence had a negative effect on the management of the camp.
140 to 190 people were housed in each of the 35 barracks, which were 85 m long and 12.87 m wide. The hygiene was catastrophic, e.g. B. the women only received sanitary towels at the end of January. Diphtheria , dysentery and typhus broke out, and the death rate rose. The evacuees were given half a liter of soup and a few biscuits a day to feed them, and even less in winter. There was no baby food. The Dutch historian Loe de Jong , who later assessed the situation for the Dutch government, compared the situation with "what had become known from the German concentration camps". The main cause was probably the incompetence of the leadership and the lack of functioning authorities in the recently liberated Netherlands. Although the front moved on in January 1945, the population was held in the camp until the end of May.
The reception camp for Moluccan soldiers (from 1951)
During the Indonesian War of Independence , numerous Moluccan soldiers fought in the Royal Dutch-Indian Legion (KNIL). After the victory of the Indonesians in 1949, they were considered collaborators and therefore had to be evacuated from the former Dutch East Indies to the Netherlands together with their families to protect against acts of revenge . Most of the demobilized Moluccan KNIL members were housed in Kamp Vught.
Today, next to the "National Monument" Kamp Vught, there is a prison ( with a special department for terrorists and other convicts classified as very dangerous ), a Moluccan settlement ("Lunetten") and two barracks .
The memorial
Today there is a memorial with permanent and changing exhibitions on the site of the former Herzogenbusch concentration camp. Admission costs € 7.50 per person, there are discounts for young people and families, an audio guide costs € 2.50.
The tour of the memorial begins with an exhibition of everyday objects, clothing, jewelry, and letters from the prisoners. In a restored half of the barracks (Barrack 1B, Barrack 1A is now a Moluccan church). a. the history of the camp after the liberation in 1944 is shown: Vught as an internment camp for Germans, German-Dutch, members of the Nationaal-Socialistische Bewegungs in Nederland (NSB) and collaborators as well as accommodation for former KNIL soldiers and their families.
The second part of the tour in the outdoor area leads to a miniature of the camp made of natural stone , a replica barrack that clearly illustrates the living conditions of the prisoners, to the memorial for the deported children and young people as well as to the crematorium with dissection room, gallows room and the notorious cell 115.
The third section within the memorial building leads to the “Wall of Thoughts”, to which visitors can post their thoughts on the wall, written on pieces of paper. There is also the “Room of Reflection” in this section: 750 white tablets with the names of the prisoners who died and were executed in the concentration camp are attached to the walls. The youngest victims are only a few months old. At the end of the tour, some other concentration camps that were connected to the Herzogenbusch concentration camp are briefly presented.
Pictures, photographs
Ash graves next to the crematorium
Crematorium (mobile)
crematorium
Dissecting table
Washroom in a barrack
Lounge in a barrack
Sleeping places
Watchtower
See also
- Jan Postma (Dutch communist and resistance fighter of the Red Chapel ) - he was shot on July 23, 1944 in Kamp Vught.
- Nico Richter (Dutch composer) - imprisoned in the camp from January to November 1943
- Erich Deppner (SS-Sturmbannführer and head of the anti-enemy department of the Commander of the Security Police and SD (BdS) in The Hague )
- Corrie ten Boom , founder of an underground organization to rescue Jews who was incarcerated in Kamp Vught
- Chris Lebeau , Dutch artist and anarchist. Died of typhus in Kamp Vught.
- Westerbork concentration camp
literature
- 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 .
- Andreas Pflock: On forgotten tracks. A guide to memorials in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg , published by the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2006.
- Coenraad JF Stuldreher: German concentration camps in the Netherlands. Amersfoort, Westerbork, Herzogenbusch . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (Ed.): The forgotten camp . dtv, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-423-04634-1 , pp. 141-173 (first edition 1989 in the series Dachauer Hefte , vol. 5).
- Holger Schaeben , THE SON OF THE DEVIL - From the memory archive of Walter Chmielewski , Offizin-Verlag, Zurich 2015, ISBN 978-3-906276-18-2 .
Web links
- National Monument Kamp Vught website (Dutch)
- Single point of tussenstation. Gids Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught . In: nmkampvught.nl . National Monument Kamp Vught (Dutch; PDF)
Individual evidence
- ^ Gidi Verheijen: Radios and tubes from the concentration camp. Kamp Vught in Herzogenbusch / Netherlands . In: Funkgeschichte , vol. 36 (2013), issue 207 (February / March), pp. 10-16.
- ↑ Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002 (Dissertation TU Berlin), urn : nbn: de: kobv: 83-opus-4303 , doi : 10.14279 / depositonce-528 , p. 174f.
- ↑ Jan Erik Schulte : Concentration camps in the Rhineland and Westphalia 1933–1945. Central control and regional initiative . Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, p. 137f.
- ↑ 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, pp. 151-183.
- ↑ Klaus Bischofs: 40 years ago: The internment of the Selfkant population in Camp Vught from November 1944 to May 1945 . In: Local calendar of the Heinsberg district . Volume 1985, pp. 195-208, here p. 203.
- ↑ Henk Smeets: Molukkers in Vught . Boekhandel Brabant, Vught 1996, ISBN 90-801564-5-0 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 39 ′ 57 ″ N , 5 ° 15 ′ 24 ″ E