Moringen concentration camp

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The Moringen concentration camp was a concentration camp in Moringen in Lower Saxony in the Northeim district . It was housed in a building that was built as an orphanage in 1732 and had served as the Landeswerkhaus since 1866. This was one of over 50 workhouses that had existed in the German Empire since the 19th century . The concentration camp was used one after the other to imprison men, women and young people.

The former headquarters of the Moringen concentration camp, today the seat of the MRVZN Moringen

history

Men's concentration camps

From April 1933 to July 1933 the Prussian Ministry of the Interior ran the men's concentration camp in Moringen. Police officers were used as camp commanders, protection and auxiliary police officers as guards. From August 1933, SS commanders took over the supervision of the camps, who used arbitrariness and violence as a means of rule on site. In October 1933, the relocation of the not yet released male prisoners to the concentration camps in Emsland and the Oranienburg concentration camp began .

Women concentration camps

Between June 1933 and March 1938 there was initially a "protective custody department" for women in Moringen, and from October 1933 a women concentration camp in which a total of around 1,350 women were imprisoned, including Lotte Hahm . While the proportion of Jehovah's Witnesses in the concentration camps before the start of the war averaged 5–10 percent, the Jehovah's Witnesses in the Moringen women's concentration camp made up almost 90 percent of the prisoners at times. This camp was finally closed in the spring of 1938 and the remaining women were transferred to the Lichtenburg concentration camp.

Youth concentration camp

From June 1940 until the liberation in April 1945, part of the Moringer Werkhaus under the euphemistic designation "youth protection camp" served as a youth concentration camp for young people and young men aged 13 to 22 and was the Reich Main Security Office , Office V ( Reich Criminal Police Office ), Section VA 3 among government and criminal Councilor Friederike Wieking assumed. Their deeds are currently being investigated as part of research.

SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Dieter acted as camp commandant . The camp doctor in the men's, women's and youth camps was Otto Wolter-Pecksen throughout .

The youth concentration camp for male youths in the Moringer Werkhaus was set up as the first of its kind at the suggestion of Reinhard Heydrich . The prisoners were divided into several "blocks" according to their supposed character and biological characteristics and characteristics:

  • Observation block (B block)
  • Block of the Unfit (U-Block)
  • Block of Disturbers (S-Block)
  • Block of permanent failures (D block)
  • Block of Failures of Opportunity (G-Block)
  • Block of questionable parents (F block)
  • Parenting Block (E block)
  • Stapo block (ST block), with young people classified as political-opposition (from communist resistance fighters to non-conformist swing youth )

The block allocation determined the degree of disenfranchisement and whether the detention in Moringen was followed by transfer to another concentration camp, an institution, the armed forces, the labor service or release. A release was only possible for prisoners who were granted the “educational capacity”. The likelihood of discharge was low. Of the 273 young people who had left by October 1, 1943 - mostly because they were transferred to other detention centers, but also to sanatoriums and nursing homes - only 26 were ultimately released, five of them to the Reich Labor Service .

The block division went back to the doctor and racial hygienist Robert Ritter , head of the racial hygiene research center at the Reich Health Office . Since 1937, Ritter has been systematically recording the "foreign races" "Gypsies" as well as the numerous " German-blooded " population groups labeled as " anti-social " or "non-community". Since 1941 he also headed the Criminal Biology Institute of the Security Police (KBI), whose task he saw in "criminal biological aspects" to determine all young people alien to the community "against whom police measures should be carried out for reasons of prevention". Boys and young men whom Ritter viewed as "mentally defective" and as "pathologically degenerate" were to be imprisoned in Moringen, girls and young women in the Uckermark youth concentration camp . “In suitable labor camps,” says Ritter cynically, “they could do a lot of useful things”. Ritter also suggested compulsory sterilizations , which were then applied for by the camp doctor and the commanding officer and carried out in the Göttingen University Hospital .

The young people had to work in various workshops within the camp, including for private companies in the region.

The labor of the young people was used to the point of complete physical exhaustion. In the summer of 1942 some young people died of starvation. Others committed suicide . One case of execution "while on the run" is known.

Moringen was liberated on April 9, 1945. Three days earlier, "evacuations" took place in the direction of the Harz Mountains , the sick remained in the camp.

Up until the liberation, around 1400 young people were admitted to Moringen. The exact number of victims of the camp conditions and attacks by personnel and others is unknown. Inside the camp there were at least 56.

Bearing of the same or similar function

Subcamps of the Moringen concentration camp were set up in Berlin-Weißensee in September 1943 and in Volpriehausen in July 1944 .

After 1945

After the liberation of the concentration camp in early April 1945, a DP camp was set up on the site and operated until 1951.

Since 1993 there has been a memorial on the site of the former concentration camp , which was founded by the association “Lagergemeinschaft und Gedenkstätte KZ Moringen e. V. "is operated. Much of the old building was demolished. Today is the in place and in parts of the historic buildings Landeskrankenhaus Moringen, a forensic - psychiatric hospital are treated in the instructed primarily by court order patients.

The Moringen concentration camp memorial is located in the former Einbecker Tor, Lange Straße 5 .

The memorial's sponsoring association was awarded the Paul Dierichs Prize in 1994 for its commitment . Since 1999, the memorial has been the site of the Austrian memorial service .

Known inmates

Movies

  • Attempt to touch , Federal Agency for Civic Education (video and 16-mm): The 44-minute film deals with the encounter between former Moring prisoner Günter Discher and four young people from Berlin who are initially not particularly interested in politics and the Nazi past. The film shows the young people's reactions to Discher's reports. You get to know each other, a relationship of trust develops. The young people report on their attitude towards life, reflect, differentiate. In addition, the viewer receives exemplary information on the prison conditions in the Moringen youth concentration camp.
  • As if nothing had ever happened ... (Norddeutscher Rundfunk, 1991, 29 minutes)
  • Troublemakers after Block S (Hessischer Rundfunk, 1992, 45 minutes)

Both documentaries were created in collaboration with the Moringen concentration camp community.

  • I never said "Heil Hitler". Gertrud Keen - a German fate. A film by Veral Leiser 1990. (45 min.)
  • Not everyone can be a hero. Gertrud Keen in: Berlin contemporary witnesses from the anti-fascist resistance. A film by Loretta Walz 1993 (20 min. In it).

Plays

  • Die Besserung , Stillehund Theaterproduktionen Göttingen (2011): Two men learn about the story of their fathers, who were prisoners in the Moringen concentration camp at a young age. Developed in close cooperation with the concentration camp memorial, the piece is intended to raise awareness of the history of the concentration camp and thereby provide a regional case study.
  • It don't mean a thing ... , Compagnie Nik München (2015): In search of a topic for their new play, the two actors quickly discover the history of the swing youth on stage and present it to the audience. After working with the concentration camp memorial, the detention of members of the youth movement in the Moringen concentration camp was also shown.
  • Swing Heil , Brunner & Barscheck (2016): A documentary theater about swing music in the "Third Reich", the swing kids and their life during the Nazi dictatorship, the youth concentration camps in Moringen and Uckermark and the subversive power of Swing - with live music.

See also

literature

  • Gabriele Herz: The Moringen women's camp. Fates in early Nazi times. Edited and with an introduction by Jane Caplan. Translated from the English by Joachim Helfer. Vorwärts-Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86602-370-3 . Review by Ursula Krause-Schmitt ( online )
  • Hans Hesse: The Moringen Women's Concentration Camp 1933–1938. Edition Temmen , Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-86108-724-3 (reviewed for H-Soz-u-Kult by Michael Krenzer Online )
  • Manuela Neugebauer: The way to the Moringen youth protection camp. An analysis of the history of the development of National Socialist youth policy. Mönchengladbach 1997.
  • Martin Guse: "We hadn't even started living yet". Catalog for the youth concentration camps Moringen and Uckermark. Liebenau & Moringen, 1997.
  • Martin Guse: The little one who had to suffer a lot ... Jehovah's Witnesses in the Moringen youth concentration camp. In: The Jehovah's Witnesses were always the bravest. Persecution and Resistance of Jehovah's Witnesses under National Socialism . Ed. V. Hans Hesse. Bremen 1998.
  • Wolf Dieter Haardt: “What then, here - in Moringen ?!” The search for a forgotten concentration camp. In: The forgotten concentration camps? Memorial sites for the victims of Nazi terror in the Federal Republic. Ed. V. Detlef Garbe. Bornheim-Mertenm 1983, ISBN 3-921521-84-X , pp. 97-108.
  • Wolfgang Ayaß : "Asocial" in National Socialism. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1995.
  • Wolfgang Ayaß (edit.): “Community strangers”. Sources on the persecution of "anti-social" 1933–1945 , Koblenz 1998. ( Online )

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ See Paul Werner : The instruction in the police youth protection camp. In: German youth law, contributions for the practice and reorganization of youth law, issue 4: On the new youth criminal law (1943), pp. 95-106, here: pp. 99 f.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Ayaß: "Asocial" in National Socialism. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1995, p. 181 ff.
  3. ^ Michael Zimmermann : Racial Utopia and Genocide. The National Socialist solution to the "Gypsy question". Hamburg 1996, p. 154 f.
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Ayaß: "Asocial" in National Socialism. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1995, p. 182.
  5. ↑ Michael Hepp: Because hell was hers. Children and adolescents in the “Poland Custody Camp Litzmannstadt.” In: Mitteilungen. Documentation center for Nazi social policy 2. H. 11/12. 1986, p. 60.
  6. ↑ http://www.gedenkstaette-moringen.de/website/4.html

Coordinates: 51 ° 42 ′ 3 ″  N , 9 ° 52 ′ 18 ″  E