Uckermark concentration camp

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Map of the Ravensbrück camp complex with the Uckermark concentration camp as a so-called youth protection camp

The Uckermark concentration camp ( Uckermark for short ) was a youth concentration camp for girls and young women in the German Reich at the time of National Socialism . It was built in 1942 in the municipality of Ravensbrück (today the city of Fürstenberg / Havel ) in the north of the Brandenburg province as a satellite camp of the Ravensbrück concentration camp .

The name Uckermark refers to the historical landscape of the same name . In National Socialist parlance, the concentration camp was euphemistically called "youth protection camp ". The youth concentration camp was dissolved in January 1945. The area then served as a death and selection camp for women from the Ravensbrück concentration camp until the liberation in April 1945 . The Uckermark concentration camp is also known as the “forgotten” concentration camp.

history

From June 1942, the Uckermark concentration camp was used to intern the first girls and young women classified by the National Socialists as “criminal”, “ subversive ” and “ anti- social ” (also “ sexually neglected ”). It was the only youth concentration camp in the German Reich that was built specifically for girls and young women. The Uckermark concentration camp was set up in the spring of 1942 by women imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in the immediate vicinity and was assigned to it as a satellite camp. The distance to the center of Berlin was about 86 km via Reichsstrasse 96 . The director was the detective Lotte Toberentz . Her deputy was the chief secretary Johanna Braach .

In two work barracks , the inmates produced components for Siemens & Halske in connection with the Siemens camp in Ravensbrück . This should become the model for the deployment of concentration camp prisoners in the war economy. In arms production it was the first time concentration camp prisoners were deployed directly on a concentration camp site.

In a concentration camp Uckermark 1,200 young women and girls were interned, mostly at the request of youth welfare offices, homes or juvenile courts by the "Reich Central Office for combating youth crime" of the Reich Criminal Police Office have been trained. Many were brought directly from welfare institutions to the camp, where they had to do forced labor in extremely poor living conditions . As in the Moringen concentration camp, the reasons for imprisonment were complex and included “educational” arguments such as “restlessness”, “ineducibility” or “refusal to work” as well as eugenic or racial reasons. The “ sexual neglect ” reason for detention was only applied to girls and women. In addition, the Secret State Police sent young women to the Uckermark concentration camp for participation in or support of resistance groups, oppositional attitudes and “sexual intercourse with foreign nationals” by means of protective custody orders. In June 1944, a sub -camp was set up in Dallgow-Döberitz to accommodate girls who had proven themselves in Uckermark. From January 1945 the camp was used as a death and selection camp for women from the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Almost nothing is known about the exact conditions of detention in the camp. It consisted of hastily built and very simple wooden barracks, which were demolished in the first months after the end of the war after the liberation by the Red Army , which used the area for military purposes until 1993. There are only extremely vague estimates of the number of women killed after they were converted to a death and selection camp in January 1945, as there are no pictures or documents attesting to that time in the Uckermark concentration camp.

The former director Toberentz and her deputy Braach were defendants in the Third Ravensbrück Trial in 1948 before a military court in Hamburg . You were acquitted and then worked in the West German criminal police . The preliminary investigations initiated in the 1950s and 1960s were closed due to the statute of limitations for mistreatment and bodily harm. The deaths in the camps were not counted as murder.

Work-up

The association Initiative for a memorial site for the former Uckermark concentration camp e. V. has been trying since 1997 to research the history of the camp, to seek and maintain contact with survivors and to create a worthy memorial site on the site. This task is carried out in annual construction and encounter camps, as well as in the context of national and international information events, series of events, film screenings and discussions with survivors on the subject of youth concentration camps and related topics. In 2010, the association received the Hans Frankenthal Prize of the Auschwitz Committee Foundation for its work . In 2011 it was planned to use EU conversion funds to demolish the Soviet Army warehouses still on the site and then to create a concept for a memorial site.

Play

  • 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

  • Martin Guse: The youth protection camps Moringen and Uckermark . In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps . tape 9 : Labor education camps, ghettos, youth protection camps, police detention camps, special camps, gypsy camps, forced labor camps . C. H. Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-57238-8 , pp. 100-114 .
  • Viola Klarenbach, Sandra Höfinghoff (ed.): “We weren't allowed to speak. As soon as you made contact with anyone, there was a hail of punishment. ”The former concentration camp for girls and young women and later the Uckermark extermination camp. Exhibition catalog . Klarenbach, Berlin 1998, DNB  964404192 , p. 100–114 ( gedenkort-kz-uckermark.de [PDF; 780 kB ]).
  • Katja Limbächer, Maike Merten, Bettina Pfefferle (eds.): The girls' concentration camp Uckermark. Contributions to the past and present . 2nd Edition. Unrast, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-89771-204-0 (table of contents: DNB 972849254/04 ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Martin Guse: The Uckermark Youth Concentration Camp (1942–1945). In: martinguse.de. January 24, 2009, accessed February 26, 2019 .
  2. ^ Martin Guse: Uckermark youth concentration camp. In: bpb.de . January 24, 2006, accessed February 26, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Current status on the subject of conversion / memorial site for the former youth concentration camp and later Uckermark extermination camp. (pdf, 46 kB) Initiative for Memorial Site, October 27, 2010, accessed on February 26, 2019 .
  4. ↑ "Swing Heil! .." Documentary Music Theater. In: brunner-und-barscheck.de. Retrieved February 26, 2019 .

Coordinates: 53 ° 11 ′ 16 ″  N , 13 ° 10 ′ 50 ″  E