Lichtenburg concentration camp

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Coordinates: 51 ° 39 ′ 45 "  N , 12 ° 55 ′ 55"  E

Map: Germany
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Lichtenburg concentration camp
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Germany

The Lichtenburg concentration camp - also known as the Lichtenburg assembly camp - was located in Lichtenburg Castle from the 16th century in Prettin ( Saxony ) from June 1933 to May 1939 . The building was used as a penitentiary from 1812 and was closed in 1928 due to poor structural and sanitary conditions.

1933-1937

Postmarked prisoner mail : Prettin ( Kr.Torgau ), November 8, 1933

In the Nazi state, the Lichtenburg camp was one of the first concentration camps to serve as a model for the camp system in the German Reich. On June 13, 1933, it was set up as a “concentration camp for male protective prisoners ”. Planned for 1000 prisoners, the Lichtenburg concentration camp was already overcrowded with around 2000 prisoners in September 1933, which made the prisoners' living conditions extremely poor. At least 20 (documented) prisoners perished during the camp's existence as a result of abuse, poor prison conditions and murders in the bunker . It is said that this is where the whipping buck was invented, which has been adopted in other concentration camps.

Wolfgang Langhoff , a former prisoner who arrived on December 6, 1933, found around 70 percent communists, 20 percent socialists and 10 percent politically unorganized prisoners in the Lichtenburg concentration camp. From 1934 onwards , men who had been persecuted as homosexuals were increasingly brought into the "light", and later also so-called professional criminals, who were previously convicted without trial. Initially, the police were responsible for guarding the camp. From mid-August, 150 SS men guarded the camp, the camp commandant was SS troop leader Edgar Entsberger from SS-Standarte 26. From June 1, 1934, the Dachau camp regulations were in effect .

After the so-called Röhm Putsch , around 60 SA men were briefly assigned to the Lichtenburg concentration camp in July 1934 . Jehovah's Witnesses were arrested especially from 1935 onwards ; a total of about 130 of them were in the Lichtenburg men's camp. After the Nuremberg Laws were passed in September 1935, the SS arrested Jewish women who were charged with “ racial disgrace ”.

On November 1, 1936, Hans Helwig was charged with taking on the business of the concentration camp commandant on a trial basis; the inspector of the concentration camps Theodor Eicke had refused to employ Helwig in a concentration camp in August 1936. Here left Helwig the camp administration's regarded as brutal and arbitrary detention camp leader Egon Zill . After the Lichtenburg men's camp was closed, Helwig became camp commandant in Sachsenhausen concentration camp . Helwig was nicknamed “Goose General” among the prisoners there.

1937–1939 Conversion to a concentration camp for women

Prisoner mail to the family, August 5, 1937

After the establishment of the Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald concentration camps , the men's concentration camp was dissolved in August 1937 and the castle was temporarily used for female prisoners from December 1937. On December 15, the first 200 female prisoners from the Moringen women's concentration camp arrived. By 1939, 1,415 prisoner numbers were occupied. The women's camp was subject to the SS inspection of the concentration camps (ICL of the SS). SS-Standartenführer Günther Tamaschke took over the camp command . The camp leaders were Alex Piorkowski and, from September 1938, SS Hauptsturmführer Max Koegel , who came from the Dachau concentration camp .

Since the castle had a dilapidated structure and was not considered expandable, the remaining 867 female prisoners were transferred to the newly built Ravensbrück women's concentration camp in May 1939 .

Inmate groups

In addition to political prisoners who were detained in some cases since 1933 have been since 1935 reinforces the " Jehovah's Witnesses " mentioned Jehovah's Witnesses , returning emigrants , because of " race defilement pursued" Women of Jewish origin, Sintize and Romnija and so-called antisocial deported to the concentration camp and criminals.

Use after 1939

After the closure of the Lichtenburg concentration camp, the castle served as a location for the Totenkopf Infantry Replacement Battalion II and, from 1942, the SS main witness office. Up to 65 prisoners from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, who were housed in the cell area, were available to the SS for forced labor.

After 1945; Establishment of a memorial

Rally of the VVN in the former concentration camp and prison (1949)

After 1945 the castle and the adjoining lands were used for agriculture until 1990. In 1965, a memorial was set up in the bunker of the former concentration camp and was expanded in 1974.

In 1995 the Ravensbrück / Freundeskreis e. V. fight for the preservation of the memorial. In the late summer of 2000, the Lichtenburg was to be sold as federal property by the Magdeburg Regional Finance Directorate . Protests broke out at home and abroad under the motto “Concentration camps for sale”. Inquiries were made to the Bundestag . In November 2004 the memorial was threatened with closure again. Only after a protest did the Saxony-Anhalt state government agree to share the costs. Long-term negotiations about the future and the sponsorship of the Lichtenburg Concentration Camp Memorial between the Wittenberg district, the state government in Saxony-Anhalt and the federal government led to the decision in 2006 to set up a memorial foundation in Saxony-Anhalt .

This has existed since January 1, 2007. Since the beginning of 2008, the Lichtenburg Concentration Camp Memorial has belonged to this foundation. Between 2008 and 2011, the former workshop wing was converted into a modern visitor information center. The new permanent exhibition was presented to the public when the new memorial opened on December 1, 2011. The working group "Schloss und Gedenkstaette Lichtenburg e.V." dissolved on January 1, 2012 when his association goals were achieved. The Lichtenburg Prettin Concentration Camp Memorial is supported by the "Schloss und Gedenkstätte Lichtenburg eV" association that has existed since 2010.

Security guards

The perpetrators on site, the guards, are made up of different groups.

Camp commanders in the men's concentration camp

Protective detention camp leader in the men's concentration camp

Arthur Liebehenschel was an adjutant in the Lichtenburg concentration camp from 1934 to July 1937. In 1940 he was in the service of a staff leader and representative of the inspector of the concentration camps.

Camp director in the women concentration camp

Deputy Warehouse Directors

  • December 1937 - August 1938 Alexander Piorkowski
  • September 1938 - May 1939 Max Koegel

Overseers

For ideological reasons, female superiors were not SS members, but were referred to as SS entourage. Margarete Stollberg was from December 1937 to February 1939 and then Johanna Langefeld was supervisor until May 1939 . In October 1938, Maria Mandl was hired as a guard in the Lichtenburg concentration camp. She worked there with about fifty other women who, like Mandl, belonged to the SS entourage . In May 1939 she and the other guards were taken over to the newly opened Ravensbrück concentration camp near Fürstenberg / Havel . The mistreatment of camp inmates put Mandl in a good light with her superiors - she was promoted to superintendent. In the concentration camp, she monitored the daily routine and the work of the guards who reported to her. Among them, the female concentration camp prisoners were subjected to beatings and flogging. In October 1942 Mandl was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , where she became SS camp leader.

Known inmates

A dismissal order from 1933

See also

literature

  • Lichtenburg Concentration Camp Memorial - literature by and about former prisoners
  • Klaus Drobisch : Concentration camp in Lichtenburg Castle. Commission for Research into the History of the Local Labor Movement of the Cottbus District Management of the SED, Cottbus 1987. (and: District Administration, Wittenberg 1997)
  • Klaus Drobisch, Günther Wieland : System of Nazi concentration camps 1933–1939. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-05-000823-7 .
  • Hans Hesse, Jürgen Harder: "... and if I had to stay in a concentration camp for life ..." The Jehovah's Witnesses in the women's concentration camps in Moringen, Lichtenburg and Ravensbrück. Klartext, Essen 2001, ISBN 3-88474-935-8 .
  • Stefanie Endlich: Lichtenburg - past and future: Renaissance castle, concentration camp, memorial. In: Memorials circular 111th year 2003.
  • Stefan Hördler, Sigrid Jacobeit (eds.): Documentation and memorial site Lichtenburg concentration camp - conception of a new permanent exhibition for workshop buildings and bunkers. Lit-Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-643-10038-2 .
  • Werner Dietrich: Lichtenburg concentration camp. Medien Profis Leipzig, Prettin 2002. (Lichtenburger Hefte 2)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Lichtenburg Concentration Camp Memorial ( Memento of the original from January 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stgs.sachsen-anhalt.de
  2. lichtenburg.org: The Lichtenburg complex as a concentration camp and SS location in the Nazi era - 1933 to 1945 ( memorial from November 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) , accessed on May 11, 2010.
  3. Stefan Hördler, Sigrid Jacobeit (eds.): Documentation and memorial site Lichtenburg concentration camp . Berlin 2009, p. 94.
  4. Stefan Hördler, Sigrid Jacobeit (eds.): Documentation and memorial site Lichtenburg concentration camp: conception of a new permanent exhibition for workshop buildings and bunkers. LIT Verlag, Münster 2009. p. 98.
  5. Tuchel, Concentration Camp , p. 172.
  6. Chronicle Sachsenhausen in the appendix to: Rudolf Wunderlich, Joachim S. Hohmann: Concentration camp Sachsenhausen near Oranienburg 1939 to 1944, records of the concentration camp prisoner Rudolf Wunderlich. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-631-32212-7 , p. 103 f.
  7. Sachsen-Anhalt Memorials Foundation ( Memento of the original from January 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stgs.sachsen-anhalt.de
  8. Stefan Hördler, Sigrid Jacobeit (ed.): Documentation and Memorial Site Lichtenburg Concentration Camp , Berlin 2009, pp. 125f.
  9. ↑ Recommended literature ( Memento of the original from January 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stgs.sachsen-anhalt.de