Loibl concentration camp

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Loibl South concentration camp

The Loibl concentration camp was established in March 1943 in the Loibltal on both sides of the Loibl Pass as a branch of the Mauthausen concentration camp . By the end of the war, an estimated 1,800 prisoners had to dig a tunnel through the Karawanken , the border between Slovenia and Austria . Around 40 inmates were beaten to death or deliberately murdered.

history

For strategic and economic reasons, the Nazi regime decided to expand the traffic routes to Yugoslavia . Gauleiter Friedrich Rainer in particular urged the construction of a tunnel through the Loibl mountain on the border between Carinthia and Slovenia . In 1943 the state construction management signed a contract with the Viennese company Universale Hoch und Tiefbau AG to carry out the construction work and to set up the concentration camp .

In addition, contracts were signed with the SS , which undertook to provide the necessary “labor”. The 1561 meter long tunnel was supposed to replace the only connection at the time, a pass road with gradients of up to 28%. A concentration camp was built on both sides of the Loibl, the smaller Loibl camp in the north and the south camp, which also housed the camp administration. On the south side, the tunnel boring began in March 1943 , on the north side only in June. In addition to the concentration camp prisoners , around 660 civilian workers were also employed in the camp. Some of them came to the Loibl voluntarily, some were forcibly recruited. Some of them had been sent to the German Reich by the Vichy regime via the Service du travail obligatoire . The first prisoners were brought to the Loibl in June 1943. In Mauthausen, they were loaded into cattle wagons and transported to the Slovenian city of Tržič , which was located near the concentration camp. The residents of Tržič tried to give the prisoners food and cigarettes, while SS men drove them onto trucks and took them to the Loibl. The prisoners were mostly political prisoners , conscientious objectors and prisoners of war of various nationalities. Most of the prisoners, around 800, were French . There were also about 450 Poles , 188 Russians and 144 Yugoslavs . Most of the 70 Germans and Austrians imprisoned were so-called professional criminals . They occupied the leading positions in the camp such as Kapos , Oberkapos and room elders, or at least they were assigned lighter tasks. Other prisoners came from the Czech Republic , Norway , Luxembourg , Greece , Belgium and the Netherlands . In 1944, 15 Jewish prisoners from Hungary were deported to the Loibl. After a few weeks she was sent back to Mauthausen.

The SS camp commandant was Julius Ludolf . Under his leadership, the so-called "corridas" began, which were excesses of beatings carried out by SS men and kapos. The inmates were forced to do heavy labor all the time while the beatings from their guards fell on them. Since the construction company complained about the many prisoners who had been beaten unable to work , Ludolf was replaced by Jakob Winkler in August 1943 . There were excesses of violence under his leadership. There was even talk of a worsening situation for the inmates. The civilian workers also working in the tunnel were not allowed to contact the inmates. Nevertheless, they helped them by, for example, smuggling letters and parcels into the camp and thus establishing contact with the outside world and their families for the prisoners. One of these civil workers was Janko Tišler , who, like many others, joined the partisans after a while and recorded his memories of the time in the camp in the book Das Loibl-KZ . The tunnel was cut on December 4, 1943. A year later, the tunnel was expanded to such an extent that the first vehicles could cross the Loibl. Weak prisoners or those unable to work were sent back to Mauthausen , which meant certain death for them. The camp doctor Sigbert Ramsauer was responsible for selecting the inmates for the return transport. He killed about 30 of them by injecting gasoline into the heart because, in his opinion, they would not have survived the return transport. He called this process "beautiful dying". In addition, he used the prisoners for his human experiments . Life in the camps was marked by malnutrition , the beatings and mistreatment of the kapos and so-called "sports games" in which the weakened inmates had to fight against each other in boxing matches that were intended to amuse their guards.

From 1943 to 1945 there were numerous escape attempts. Captured prisoners were sent back to Mauthausen and executed there . Those who managed to escape usually joined the partisans and fought by their side.

On April 16, 1945, the north camp on the Carinthian side was closed due to increasing partisan activity and the prisoners were moved to the south side. On May 7th, 80 prisoners from the Klagenfurt sub-camp in Lendorf were transferred to the Loibl. The deportees were released on the same day. The Slovenian prisoners were sent to Tržič, where they were arrested again by the Landwehr and released soon afterwards. All other inmates marched through the tunnel to Carinthia, accompanied by SS men who used them as human shields. In the Rosental , the partisans finally attacked and freed the deportees from the SS. Camp commandant Jakob Winkler was sentenced to death by hanging by a British court martial. Sigbert Ramsauer was sentenced to life imprisonment and, like many Austrian Nazi war criminals, pardoned in 1954.

Memorials

The Slovenian government erected a memorial on the site of the former concentration camp in the 1950s and declared the site a historical memorial. The suffering of the prisoners is symbolized by a statue by the sculptor Boris Kobe. The south camp is still clearly visible today. The concrete foundations of the barracks have been preserved. The crematorium , protected by a steel grille, commemorates the deportees who were burned here.

On the Carinthian side, two information boards on Zollamtsplatz and three memorial boards on the north-facing tunnel portal have been reminding of the suffering of the concentration camp prisoners since 1995. In autumn 2008, the remains of the foundations of the north camp were uncovered by experts from the Federal Monuments Office. This first step in making the former concentration camp visible was made possible because the Federal Ministry of the Interior had signed a long-term lease agreement with the landowner that year. In 2009, the memorial site staff developed a concept for a worthy Loibl-KZ-Nord memorial, which is to be gradually implemented in the coming years.

In spring 2009 the heads of state of Austria and Slovenia, Heinz Fischer and Danilo Türk , met at the Loibl concentration camp for a memorial ceremony. Carinthian governor Gerhard Dörfler ( FPK ) avoided taking part in the commemoration with a flimsy reason.

The National Council for Culture Wolfgang Waldner announced at the beginning of his term in 2012 to provide funds for a memorial available. With the 68,000 euros made available, the remains of the Loibl-Nord concentration camp, including the roll call area, were to be exposed so that a memorial could be erected there. Until the summer of 2013, the remains on the site were researched under the direction of the archaeologist Claudia Theune-Vogt .

Part of the uncovered foundations, such as the wash barracks, were concreted in to protect them from the weather. This covering could be removed again if there is a long-term perspective for a memorial where the remains are sustainably cared for. The Mauthausen Committee criticized the covering of the structural remains, it would make the mediation work on site more difficult.

literature

  • Janko Tišler , Christian Tessier: The Loibl concentration camp. The history of the Mauthausen satellite camp on the Loiblpass / Ljubelj. Federal Ministry of the Interior, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-9502183-6-7 (series of publications by the Mauthausen Memorial - Documentation).
  • Josef Zausnig: The Loibl Tunnel. The forgotten concentration camp on the southern border of Austria. Drava, Klagenfurt / Celovec 1995, ISBN 978-3-85435-241-9 .
  • Erich F. Lercher: The tunnel: The angel from the Loibl pass. Austrian Literature Society, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-03886-001-3 .

TV documentary

  • Ferdinand Macek: Mauthausen branch - Loibltunnel crime scene. (Broadcast on ORF III in 2017).

Web links

Commons : KZ Loibl  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biography of a concentration camp doctor. In: orf.at . December 2, 2010, accessed September 29, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Dörfler on the absence at the memorial service. In: orf.at. June 9, 2009, accessed February 15, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Elisabeth Steiner: "We have to be awake, indignant, cry out". In: The Standard. June 7, 2013, accessed February 15, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Tanja Malle: Loibl twin concentration camp: turn of memory. In: orf.at. June 7, 2013, accessed September 29, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Tanja Malle: “Sarcophagus” could be removed again. In: orf.at. September 28, 2018. Retrieved September 29, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Press release - Measures at the site of the former Loibl Nord subcamp. Mauthausen Committee Austria, September 28, 2018, accessed on September 29, 2018 .

Coordinates: 46 ° 26 ′ 18 ″  N , 14 ° 15 ′ 18 ″  E