Mühldorf concentration camp external command

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Survivors of the Mühldorf external command on May 4, 1945, a few days after liberation by the US Army

The Mühldorf concentration camp external command , also known as the Mühldorf concentration camp group , was one of 169 external commands of the Dachau concentration camp . It was built in the summer of 1944 and directed by the SS . In addition to the camps in Kaufering and Munich-Allach , the Mühldorf camp group was one of the three largest external commandos of the Dachau main camp. The prisoners in the camps were forced to work in the vicinity of Mühldorf . Most of them worked outside of the camps, especially in agriculture and the construction industry. On the construction site of the Weingut I project , where an armaments bunker was to be built for the production of the Me 262 , the concentration camp inmates provided half of the forced laborers. How many prisoners actually passed through the camps of the external command Mühldorf can no longer be proven beyond doubt. In the so-called Mühldorf Trial , a number of around 8,300 people was given for the period from July 1944 to April 1945. The death toll varies depending on the source, but is believed to be around 4,000 people. In addition to the concentration camps, there were several Todt Organization work camps and foreign labor camps in the vicinity of Mühldorf . Although these were not subordinate to the concentration camp in Dachau, they were mostly assigned to similar construction projects.

The concentration camp group

Location of the former concentration camp of the Mühldorf external command in today's surroundings

The Mühldorf concentration camp complex included a total of four independent camps within a 20 km radius. The external command Mühldorf with the official name Waffen-SS-KL Dachau-KL Mühldorf Fp. No. 27451 was directly subordinate to the command office in Dachau. From October 1944, the commandant of the camp group was SS-Sturmbannführer Walter Adolf Langleist , who ran the camps from the Mettenheim concentration camp. Before this time, probably due to the small size of the camp complex, no commander was deployed. The sub-commands were usually subordinate to a Hauptscharführer of the Waffen SS . The guards of the camp group grew with the number of prisoners and at the end of March comprised at least 310 men and three female guards . The exact number of guards in the Thalham camp is not given. Many of the SS guards were no longer suitable for the front line of the Wehrmacht.

Mettenheim camp

The Mettenheim ⊙ camp , also called M 1 or MI , was located in what is now the Mettenheim- Hart district south of what was then the Air Force airfield . The "camp station", a railway connection to the air base, was directly adjacent to the camp.

The camp was first mentioned in official records on July 28, 1944. An advance detachment from Dachau, consisting of 50 prisoners with security guards, was used to convert a clothing store built by the Luftwaffe in 1940. The first prisoner transport from Auschwitz with around 1,000 prisoners arrived shortly afterwards in the unfinished camp. After further transports, the number of prisoners finally rose to 2,000 men. From September 25th, a women's camp was set up to accommodate 500 women. When completed, the camp comprised at least 20 wooden barracks, each of which housed at least 150-200 people. The functional barracks included workshops and a mortuary barracks.

The SS accommodations and workshops of the Todt Organization were located in the immediate vicinity of the camp. The later camp leader and SS-Hauptscharführer, Sebastian Eberl (also incorrectly spelled "Eberle") was responsible for building the camp. In a police interrogation after the war, the latter described the camp as "extremely primitive". “There were no sanitary facilities” and “there was only one water point”. According to Eberl, there were no heating options.

The Mettenheim camp was completely removed after the war. Today there is a new housing estate on the site.

Forest camp

The so-called forest camp V / VI ⊙ was established in August 1944 and was the second largest concentration camp of the Mühldorf camp group. It was located south of the Ampfinger local part Holzgasse in Mühldorfer Hart . After only a few remains of the ground had been recognizable for decades, a three-part memorial was opened in April 2018. According to the International Tracing Service of the Red Cross , the forest camp was first mentioned on August 9, 1944. The numbering came from the fact that OT labor camps in Mühldorfer Hart were already designated as forest camps I-IV. The construction of the camp began with the establishment of forest camp V in July 1944 by concentration camp inmates from the Dachau main camp. This camp was initially designed as a summer camp, the prisoners were housed in Finnish tents . A later expansion of the camp was called Forest Camp VI . This part of the camp was built in the late autumn of 1944 and served as winter storage. The prisoners lived there in earth huts. Organizationally, both parts of the camp were viewed as one camp and managed as forest camp V / VI. The camp leader was Captain A. Ostermann, an officer of the Wehrmacht who was unfit for the front and who was not accepted into the SS. The camp was mostly occupied by almost 2,000 men. Not until January 1945 was a women's camp mentioned for the first time, which was later occupied by up to 250 women.

Subcommands

The Mühldorf external command included three other camps in the area, some of which were run independently and others as dependently.

The Mittergars ⊙ camp was located in a forest area on the Rosenheim – Mühldorf railway line between Jettenbach and Mittergars , about 18 km southwest of Mühldorf. The all-male camp was probably built in October 1944 and consisted of 33 primitive barracks on an area of ​​75 by 150 m. Initially, there were only tents to house the prisoners. The SS guards were housed outside the camp. Most of the 300 to 350 prisoners of various nationalities were Jews. Most of the dead in the camp were buried in a mass grave . The prisoners who had died were only reburied later. Other camps planned in the vicinity of Gars were no longer realized. Only sparse remnants of the camp are still preserved today.

In Thalham (municipality of Obertaufkirchen ) there was also a sub-command of the Mühldorf camp complex ⊙ , directly on the Munich – Mühldorf railway line . The camp was officially mentioned for the first time at the end of January 1945. The almost 200 male concentration camp prisoners were used for forced labor in the nearby gravel pit. The so-called “Jewish camp” consisted of 22 barracks and was presumably subordinate to the Gestapo . This also managed a so-called “ labor education camp ”, also called “Anhalterlager”, and a camp for Italian slave laborers in Thalham . The camps were completely demolished after the end of the war.

The Zangberg camp was assigned to the Mettenheim camp as a non-independent camp. A munitions factory was to be built in the confiscated Zangberg Monastery . For this purpose, forced laborers from Mettenheim were first requested, later a separate camp was set up in Zangberg with around 60 prisoners, mostly skilled workers. The camp was officially mentioned for the first time shortly before the end of the war in March 1945.

Origin of the inmates

A precise examination of the national composition, especially the distribution, is hardly possible today. The books of the dead in the Mühldorf camps provide a clue. Hungarians undoubtedly made up the vast majority of the prisoners . The prisoners in the concentration camps also came from Lithuania , France , Italy , Poland , the Netherlands , the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , the Soviet Union , Germany and other European countries. The majority of the prisoners were Jews , only about 900 were non-Jewish prisoners. These included criminals and political prisoners, as well as presumably some prisoners of war .

Labor input

The inmates of the subcamps around Mühldorf also worked inside the camps, but mostly they were deployed on work assignments in the area. In the summer and autumn of 1944 in particular, they were forced to build and expand the camps. Most of the workers was soon on the construction sites and ancillary facilities of Weingut I used. Prisoners were also assigned to work in forestry and agriculture as well as for manual tasks. In addition, prisoners were briefed for work assignments, for example after an air raid on the Mühldorf train station, where the prisoners had to clean up.

The female prisoners were sometimes forced to work similar to the men, but mostly to less physically demanding tasks. This included, for example, cleaning service, kitchen work, serving food as well as work in the laundry and tailoring.

As in all concentration camps, the prisoners had to do actual work as well as work for the camp operations or their fellow inmates.

Number of victims

Excerpt from the list of the dead that was used as evidence in the Mühldorf trial
Document dated October 25, 1944 about the transport of 555 so-called “ Muselmännern ” from camp M 1 to Auschwitz

The exact number of dead in the Mühldorf camps can no longer be proven beyond doubt. Several sources are available, but the resulting numbers differ considerably in some cases.

Two books of the dead are available for forest camp V / VI, but they were written by different people. It is unclear why two such books were kept. Book of the Dead I puts the number of deaths between August 28, 1944 and April 28, 1945 at 631. In the more comprehensive Book of the Dead II, the number of dead between April 28, 1945 and May 1, 1945 is given as 649, that is, 18 more.

A third book of the dead, the original of which is in the Yad Vashem in Israel , lists the victims of forest camp V / VI as well as those of the Mettenheim camp. The dead in the forest camp are noted here as 632, those of M 1 as 1,341. Since there was initially only a sick camp in camp MI, the number 1341 also includes the inmates of the forest camp who died in the MI hospital.

The numbers mentioned so far do not yet indicate the absolute number of deaths. The numbers of the sub-commands are still completely missing. In Mittergars, after the war, 42 dead from the camp were found in a mass grave. In addition, a total of 835 prisoners were brought to Auschwitz in two transports and died in the gas chambers there .

The Americans found a total of 2,249 dead in three mass graves. This shows that the available death books do not record all the dead in the camp complex. Since the dead were initially brought to Dachau to the crematorium , this number cannot be considered reliable either.

An American commission of inquiry had a report after the war that put the number of deaths in the camp at 3,934. This number is composed of 2,200 prisoners who died in the Mühldorf camps, 840 prisoners who were deported to Auschwitz, 750 people who died during or as a result of a transport to Kaufering and 144 people who died during or after the evacuation of the camps in April 1945 found death. The report gives a number of 3,556 prisoners who survived the camps. The fate of around 810 people is considered unclear.

Evacuation, liberation and processing

Official announcement to attend the funeral of former concentration camp inmates
A memorial stone on the concentration camp cemetery in Mühldorf commemorates the victims buried here
Graves in the concentration camp cemetery in Mühldorf

In April 1945 the war also reached the district of Mühldorf. At the end of April, the Americans carried out several air raids on the Mühldorf railway station and the Mettenheim airfield. In a low-flying attack, 9 inmates of the Mettenheim camp, which was located directly next to the parked aircraft, were also killed.

In mid-April, Ernst Kaltenbrunner , head of the Reich Main Security Office , ordered the destruction of the Dachau concentration camp and the Kaufering and Mühldorf external commandos on Hitler's behalf. According to witnesses, the plan was to have the forest camp destroyed by bombing by the air force. The operation with the code name cloud A1 could, however, be delayed again and again by the Gaustabsamtsleiter Bertus Gerdes and thus prevented. In mid to late April, the inmates of the smaller camps were taken to camps MI and forest camps V / VI. There the remaining prisoners were finally loaded into freight wagons and transported away on orders from Dachau. In the meantime, the " Bavarian Freedom Campaign " had started in Munich , an initiative of resistance fighters who called on the residents to surrender to avoid further bloodshed. When a train with Mühldorf prisoners arrived in Poing near Munich, the SS guards, believing the war was over, announced to the prisoners on April 28th that they were free. The prisoners, who were moving away in all directions, soon opposed SS units under the orders of Gauleiter Paul Giesler , who were supposed to break the uprising of the resistance and drive the prisoners back to the trains. This and an almost simultaneous American low-flying attack resulted in several deaths. The train finally continued in the direction of Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen . After another low- flying attack, the train was split at Wolfratshausen , one train went to Tutzing , the other to Seeshaupt . The prisoners were liberated by American troops on April 29 in Tutzing and on April 30 in Seeshaupt. A number of prisoners came to Feldafing and experienced the liberation there. The Allies reached the camps around Mühldorf on May 1st and 2nd. Medical help was given to the sick there, but prisoners continued to die as a result of the torture. SS guards were captured and interned.

In the following months, mass graves were dug on the orders of the Americans and the dead were buried in concentration camp cemeteries in the area. On June 22, 1945, the then Mühldorf mayor Scheidel announced that a solemn burial of the former prisoners from the surrounding camps would take place on June 23 at the Mühldorf cemetery. By order of the US military government, the entire population had to take part in this act of mourning. Today there are four concentration camp cemeteries in the vicinity of Mühldorf, in Burghausen (253 dead), in Kraiburg (242 dead), in Mühldorf (480 dead) and in Neumarkt-Sankt Veit (392 dead). Cemeteries in Mittergars, Ampfing and Altötting were closed earlier. The dead were transferred to other cemeteries.

To commemorate the suffering of the prisoners in Mühldorfer Hart , a three-part concentration camp memorial was opened on April 27, 2018.

Court process

On the basis of the Control Council Act No. 10 of December 1945, a series of lawsuits against those responsible for the Mühldorf camps were conducted after the war. In the Dachau main trial ("Dachau Concentration Camp Case" - Case 00-50-002), the camp commandant of the Mühldorf camps, Walter Langleist and the camp manager of Mittergars, Johann Viktor Kirsch , were indicted alongside those responsible from the Dachau and Kaufering camps . Both were approved and on 13 December 1945 guilty on 28 May 1946 at the war criminal prison Landsberg executed . In the so-called Mühldorf Trial , negotiations were held against members of the Todt Organization, the construction company Polensky & Zöllner and members of the SS in connection with the armaments project and the concentration camps . The defendants of the local camp leadership included Franz Auer (Hauptscharführer, work operations leader), Wilhelm Bayha (Oberscharführer), Heinrich Engelhardt (Hauptscharführer), Daniel Gottschling (Unterscharführer), Wilhelm Jergas (Hauptscharführer), Anton Ostermann (captain, camp leader of Waldlager V / VI ), Jakob Schmidberger (squad leader) and Herbert Spaeth (main squad leader). The verdict was pronounced on May 13, 1947. Ostermann, who had the prisoners in the camp issue a clean bill of health , was acquitted. Auer, Jergas and Spaeth were sentenced to death by hanging , Engelhardt to life imprisonment. Schmidberger was added to 20 years, Gottschling to 15 years and Bayha to 10 years in prison convicted. While the death sentence against Auer was carried out on November 26, 1948, the remaining death sentences were initially converted into life sentences and later into temporary prison sentences. The last convicts of the Mühldorf trial were finally released in 1958. In the so-called Mühldorf Ring Trial, six men were tried who were active as command leaders, guard soldiers and as Kapo in the Mühldorf camps. They were sentenced to several years and mostly life imprisonment, all of which were suspended in 1957 at the latest. In a follow-up to the Mühldorf trial, the MI camp leader, Hauptscharführer Georg Schallermair , was sentenced to death on September 23, 1947 and executed in Landsberg on June 7, 1951. He was the last of 288 convicts to be executed in Landsberg.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Testimony from 4 prisoners who worked as camp, labor and food magazine clerks. Memorandum of June 2, 1945. vol. 3, microfilm 123a / 2, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (BayHSta).
  2. ↑ Mission report of camp M 1, forest camp V / VI and Mittergars from March 31, 1945. vol. 3, microfilm 123a / 6, BayHSta.
  3. ↑ Peter Müller: The bunker area in Mühldorfer Hart: Armaments mania and human suffering . 4th edition. Heimatbund; Mühldorf a. Inn: District Museum, Mühldorf a. Inn 2006, p. 66f.
  4. ↑ a b Edith Raim: The Dachau KZ external commandos Kaufering and Mühldorf - armaments buildings and forced labor in the last year of the war 1944-45 . Dissertation, Landsberg 1992, p. 174.
  5. ↑ Raim (1992), p. 153.
  6. ↑ a b c Police interrogation of S. Eberl on 7./8. June 1966 in Dachau, archive of the memorial of the Dachau Concentration Camp Museum, call number 15871.
  7. ↑ Matthias Köpf: The forgotten camp . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . April 3, 2018, p. 32 ( pressfrom.com ).
  8. ↑ International Tracing Service: Catalog of Camps and Prisons in Germany and German-Occupied Territories, Arolsen 1949. reprinted in Martin Weinmann (Ed.): Das Nationalozialistische Lagersystem . 2nd Edition. Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 71.
  9. ↑ a b Raim (1992), p. 175.
  10. ↑ Raim (1992), p. 154.
  11. ↑ Raim (1992), p. 159.
  12. ↑ testimony from Murray Braaf, prosecution exhibit No. 4, microfilm 123a / 5, BayHSta.
  13. ↑ a b c Müller (2006), p. 48.
  14. ↑ Bavarian State Center for Political Education, The Subcamps of the Dachau Concentration Camp - List of the Subcamps of the Dachau Concentration Camp on Gedenkstaettenpaedagogik-bayern.de ( Memento of December 27, 2003 in the Internet Archive ).
  15. ^ Book of the dead of the Mühldorf camps, Federal Archives Koblenz, NS 4 Da 25.
  16. ↑ Müller (2006), 59f.
  17. ↑ See: Mission reports in the archive of the Dachau Concentration Camp Museum, call number 11727 as well as statements during the Mühldorf Trial, microfilm 123a / 6, BayHSta.
  18. ↑ See: Signatures 2119 to 2120, Archive of the Memorial of the Dachau Concentration Camp Museum.
  19. ↑ Raim (1992), p. 192.
  20. ^ The books of the dead were evidence in the Mühldorf trial, Case 000-50-136 United States v. Franz Auer et al., Box 541, RG 338, NARA , Washington DC
  21. ↑ Yad Vashem: O-51/65 "Dead of the Mühldorf-Dachau camp".
  22. ↑ a b Statement by Franz Egger, Microfilm 123a / 4, pp. 110ff./886ff., BayHSta.
  23. ↑ Raim (1992), 242f.
  24. ↑ American investigation report. Memorandum, prosecution exhibit No. 8, 123a / 6, BayHSta.
  25. ↑ Müller (2006), p. 87.
  26. ^ Andreas Wagner: Death march: the evacuation and partial evacuation of the concentration camps Dachau, Kaufering and Mühldorf at the end of April 1945. Panther-Verlag Tietmann, Ingolstadt 1995, online version ( Memento of the original from October 4, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.a-wagner-online.de
  27. ↑ The transport is described relatively well on the basis of testimonies, can be read and found. a. in: Ernst Israel Bornstein: The Long Night. A report from seven camps. Frankfurt am Main 1967, p. 240ff.
  28. ↑ a b Müller (2006), p. 88f.
  29. ↑ Cinema trailer "Endstation Seeshaupt"
  30. ↑ Walter Steffen's film "Endstation Seeshaupt" tells the story of the death train. (Review muenchenblogger.de; April 2011)
  31. ↑ The stories touched upon a trauma. In SZ from April 21, 2011
  32. ↑ Raim (1992), p. 275.
  33. ↑ Mühldorfer Anzeiger of June 22, 1945, official announcement about the funeral of the concentration camp prisoners by Mayor Scheidl on the orders of the military government (represented by Captain Spiak).
  34. ↑ Müller (2006), pp. 93f.
  35. ^ Matthias Köpf The Forgotten Camp , Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 3, 2018, p. 32
  36. ↑ The Mühldorfer Hart concentration camp memorial is opened. BR24 , April 27, 2018, accessed January 26, 2019 .
  37. ↑ Records of United States Army War Crimes, Trials United States of America v. Martin Gottfried Weiss et al., November 15-December 13, 1945, National Archives and Records Administration. (Available online as a PDF file; 20 kB) .
  38. ↑ United States Army Investigation and Trial Records of War Criminals - United States of America v. Franz Auer et al. November 1943-July 1958, National Archives and Records Administration. (Available online as a PDF file; 0.9 MB) .
  39. ↑ Records of the United States Army War Crimes Trials, United States of America v. Michael Vogel et al., July 8-15, 1947, National Archives and Records Administration. (Available online as a PDF file; 12 kB) .
  40. ^ Jewish Virtual Library, Dachau Cases, Case No. 000-50-2-121 (US vs. Georg Schallermair) Tried 23 Sept. 47 (PDF file; 1.4 MB) .
  41. ↑ Raim (1992), p. 291.