Leschwitz concentration camp

The Leschwitz concentration camp was an early concentration camp in National Socialist Germany . It was built in March 1933 in the village of Posottendorf-Leschwitz and dissolved on August 30, 1933.

History in National Socialism

Pending the implementation of the operational KZ SA in the Brown House in Görlitz a kind of private torture chamber in which unpopular persons and opponents of the regime were mistreated. In March 1933, the concentration camp was opened on the site of the former Hossner cloth factory on Seidenberger Strasse in Leschwitz.

On March 13, 1933, SA men occupied the Görlitz People's House and the trade union building . During this action, SPD functionaries and trade unionists were arrested and taken to Leschwitz and a police prison. On May 2, 1933, another 70 KPD and 120 SPD functionaries were arrested. According to a letter dated July 2, 1933, beggars and people who "[...] gave the impression of vagabonds [...] and political suspects [...]" were also to be sent to the Leschwitz concentration camp.

In the camp itself, namely in the former administration building of the cloth factory, an official apartment was set up for the camp commandant , the guard room, an SA kitchen and a shoe workshop. According to an inmate report, most of the furniture was stolen from the detainees' homes.

As in most of the early concentration camps (sometimes referred to as wild concentration camps ), Leschwitz was a place where the SA could torture and terrorize unpopular people. The SA's terror methods were varied. The guards chased prisoners into trees and then mocked them as monkeys. Communist prisoners were threatened with having a hammer and sickle burned on their foreheads. Leschwitz also had the club and a gallows that were used in the later camps . A special cell was reserved for the most prominent Görlitz Social Democrat Otto Buchwitz , in which there was water up to half the height of the room. At least two inmates died from the abuse in the camp, and two others committed suicide . In May 1933, relatives of the prisoners complained to the Görlitz Medical Association about the conditions in the concentration camp. Three doctors then carried out an inspection and, against their better judgment, certified it was harmless. After the propaganda reports that followed in the Nazi media, the population saw the previous rumors as proven.

A pastor from the Confessing Church did pastoral work in the concentration camp. The prisoners were also able to take part in the Sunday service in the church just 300 m away. The daily routine of the prisoners was determined by - essentially unproductive - work. Ten to 20 prisoners worked on the fields of large farmers in Leschwitz, others had to peel potatoes, sweep the yard or do private tasks for the camp commandant. It was also reported that for an entire day sand had to be carted from one corner of the camp to the other without making any sense. The end of the working day was at 6 p.m., and by 8 p.m. at the latest, all prisoners had to lie in their beds - or often more sleeping places.

The conditions in the camp were so untenable that Görlitz Superintendent Georg Bornkamm protested against the SA. On August 30, 1933, the camp was finally closed. The background was presumably not so much the mistreatment as the centralization efforts in the concentration camp system, which resulted in the establishment of the inspection of the concentration camps in 1934 . The remaining prisoners were deported to other camps (e.g. Sonnenburg ).

The prisoners

Shortly after the seizure of power in January 1933, the National Socialists persecuted the immediate political opposition - mainly communists and social democrats, sometimes also bourgeois - in order to exclude them from political life while power was being consolidated. A total of 1,000 to 1,500 people were probably imprisoned in Leschwitz, 300 of them permanently. These were mainly KPD and SPD functionaries as well as non-party opponents of the National Socialists from the region around Görlitz. Prisoners came from Rothenburg , Weißwasser , Niesky and Muskau . Leading KPD members in particular were mistreated. They were not allowed to go to work with the farmers or receive visitors.

The guard

The Leschwitz concentration camp was subject to SA Standard 19, which had its headquarters at Görlitzer Furtstrasse 3. The commandant of the camp was the SA troop leader Ernst Krüger from Kohlfurt . He was considered extremely brutal and corrupt. In order to have work done for himself, he also had non-political master craftsmen arrested, which aroused displeasure among the population. Presumably for this reason, Kruger was finally replaced and replaced by Sturmführer Langner. This at least stopped the public abuse. Interrogations were carried out under Langner by a Gestapo man and two SA troop leaders in the factory's administration building. According to the sources, Langner tried to avoid particularly brutal torture.

History after 1945

In 1948 the former guards were tried. The former camp leader Krüger was largely confessing. He was eventually sentenced to 15 years in prison and the loss of all civil rights for life . The rest of the guards were sentenced to prison and prison terms of between two months and eight years. The prison convicts were deprived of their civil rights for ten years. Another member of the SA was sentenced to six years in prison in 1949. Only a plaque on a building several hundred meters away reminds of the Leschwitz concentration camp. The concentration camp building itself was not maintained and fell into disrepair. Due to the high renovation costs, there was no buyer or sponsor for the site.

literature

• Roland Otto: Revenge on political opponents and private interests: the Leschwitz concentration camp near Görlitz in: W. Benz, B. Distel (eds.): Dominion and violence. Early concentration camps 1933-1939 , pp. 237–244, Metropol, Berlin 2002

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Benz, Angelika Königseder: The Place of Terror: History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps , CH Beck, Munich 2005, p. 148

Coordinates: 51 ° 7 ′ 1.1 ″  N , 14 ° 59 ′ 11.3 ″  E