Wöbbelin concentration camp

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The Wöbbelin camp after the liberation by American soldiers, May 5, 1945 (Source: USHMM Washington)

The Wöbbelin concentration camp was the last subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp established . From mid-April 1945 it served as a reception camp for evacuation transports from disbanded concentration camps, mostly from other satellite camps of the Neuengamme concentration camp. This concentration camp was located between Ludwigslust and Wöbbelin and existed for ten weeks - from February 12, 1945 to May 2, 1945.

History and structure

As early as autumn 1944, forced laborers and prisoners of war built a small wooden barracks camp 2.5 km south of Wöbbelin. The construction of a new stone barracks camp began under the direction of the Todt Organization and with the support of companies in the area. Groß Laasch farmers were expropriated for this purpose, forest areas cleared and watchtowers erected. A siding led from the Ludwigslust-Schwerin railway line to the construction site at the level of the Wöbbelin signal box.

A new camp for American and British prisoners of war was built on the road between Wöbbelin and Ludwigslust, 500 m from the so-called “Reiherhorst” wooden barracks camp. The " STALAG Luft IV " from Groß Tychow near Swinoujscie was to be evacuated here. To support the construction project, the first 500 prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp were deported to Wöbbelin on February 12, 1945. They met on the night of 14./15. February 1945 in the wooden barrack camp "Reiherhorst". On February 27 and March 23, 1945, two more transports followed with a total of 205 prisoners, who were also used to set up the new camp.

business

As the Allies continued to advance in Germany, many concentration camps were evacuated from the front. As the “Reiherhorst” wooden barracks camp was overcrowded, the decision was made on April 15 to use the stone barracks camp that was still under construction as a reception camp. Between April 13 and April 26, 1945, five more transports with more than 4,000 concentration camp prisoners arrived from various concentration camps. They were mainly concentration camp prisoners from other satellite camps of Neuengamme.

How many buildings the stone barracks camp Wöbbelin comprised can no longer be determined with certainty. After interpreting aerial photographs as well as historical photos and film recordings, it consists of several subdivided storage areas with accommodation barracks, kitchen and sanitary facilities. However, there was only one water pump and there was no water connection in the barracks.

Conditions of existence

Survivors at the only water pump in the Wöbbelin concentration camp, May 5, 1945 (Source: USHMM Washington)

In the ten weeks that the Wöbbelin concentration camp was in existence, more than 1,000 of the 5,000 prisoners from over 25 nations died as a result of abuse, exhaustion and hunger.

After Wöbbelin served as a reception camp from April 1945, it soon turned into a death camp. The SS did not primarily kill through violence, but left the prisoners to die through starvation, illness and exhaustion, a procedure that Wolfgang Sofsky described in The Order of Terror as "indirect mass extermination".

When more than 2,500 concentration camp prisoners arrived on April 15, 1945, exhausted after several days of transport, often without adequate food, the camp organization was not prepared for this.

The food consisted of a daily ration of one kilogram of bread for ten prisoners and half a liter of soup. The survivors reported the importance of single pump water to survival. Hunger led to cannibalism cases in Wöbbelin .

makeshift bed frames in an accommodation barracks, May 5, 1945 (source: USHMM Washington)

Since some of the accommodation barracks had not got beyond the shell construction stage, the prisoners had to sleep on the sand floor and makeshift bed frames made of tree trunks. The barrack, intended as a sanitary facility (washroom and latrine), was used to store the corpses until they were buried in mass graves behind the railway line. There was no medical care whatsoever in the infirmary, e.g. B. the paper packaging of the cement was used as a dressing material.

At the end of April 1945 between 5 and 40 people died every day. These were no longer buried. On May 3, 1945, the American soldiers found more than 500 corpses in the "wash barrack" like "wood stacked", buried between the barracks and in pits behind them.

As in all concentration camps, the various groups of inmates were identified by colored triangles of fabric ( angles ) and inmate numbers, which the inmates had to sew onto the left breast of the jacket and the right pant leg. The red triangle stood for “prisoners in custody”, green for “preventive detainees” and “preventive detainees”, brown initially for “gypsies”, black for “ anti-social ” and later also for “gypsies”, purple for Jehovah's Witnesses and pink for homosexuals . Jewish prisoners also received a Star of David . This label expresses the racist prejudices of the National Socialist ideology. Due to the soiled clothing, however, the labels were barely recognizable after a short time. Only in the Auschwitz extermination camp were inmate numbers tattooed on their bodies.

No new prisoner numbers were issued in the Wöbbelin concentration camp.

Camp management and guards

The construction management Wöbbelin, Organization Todt in the area of ​​OT Einsatzgruppe II was responsible for the construction of the new prisoner of war camp. Until mid-April 1945 there was a guard command with around 100 men under the direction of a lieutenant of the Wehrmacht. The guards were mostly older men who were no longer fit for the front. In addition, some of the SS men who had accompanied the transports to the Wöbbelin concentration camp remained as security guards in the concentration camp. Among them were numerous members of the Wehrmacht, especially the Air Force.

On April 20, 1945, members of the commandant's office took over from the Stutthof concentration camp, which had already been dissolved . However, they rarely appeared in the Wöbbelin concentration camp. Administrative structures as in other sub-camps no longer emerged.

The camp commandant was the former camp leader of Stutthof, SS-Sturmbannführer Paul Werner Hoppe . The adjutant was SS-Hauptsturmführer Theodor Traugott Meyer , who Hoppe had already served as an adjutant in Stutthof. SS-Obersturmführer Engelbert Raimund Sylvester von Bonin was the administrative leader; he too had already held this position in Stutthof.

liberation

The sick prisoners are transported to military hospitals and hospitals in Ludwigslust, May 5, 1945 (Source: USHMM Washington)
German nurse cares for former concentration camp prisoners in a hospital in Ludwigslust, May 1945 (Source: USHMM Washington)

On May 1, 1945, the transportable prisoners were loaded onto a freight train that did not leave because the locomotive was broken. Many former prisoners later suspected that the train - like all other transports from the Neuengamme concentration camp - should have headed for the Baltic Sea or Lübeck . Most of the prisoners there were killed in the air raid in the Lübeck Bay (see Cap Arcona ). After 24 hours in the crammed wagons, the prisoners were driven back from the freight train to the camp. A column of more than 300 German prisoners was assembled there and set off for Schwerin . However, the guards gave up the column in Dreenkrögen when the countercurrent of the Wehrmacht, refugees and concentration camp prisoners from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp death march towards the Elbe became stronger and stronger. Around 3,500 people were left behind in the camp itself, including extremely exhausted and near death prisoners, so-called " Muselmen ". The remaining guards in the camp also left around noon on May 2, 1945 for fear of the Allies. Before that, they equipped some kapos with rifles to keep the inmates in check. In the early afternoon of May 2, 1945, the Wöbbelin subcamp was finally liberated by soldiers of the 82nd US Airborne Division of the United States Army and the 8th US Infantry Division. At the same time, 500 female prisoners who had arrived in the small wooden barracks camp on May 1, 1945 were freed from the death march of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Kleinmachnow external command.

Burial on May 7, 1945 in Ludwigslust in front of the castle with the participation of the German population (source: USHMM Washington)

Shocked by the conditions found, division commander Gavin ordered that civilians from the surrounding areas must visit the camp. Civilians from Ludwigslust were also forced to retrieve the bodies from the liberated camp.

The dead lying on the entire camp grounds and in the barracks as well as bodies exhumed from mass graves were to be buried in individual graves by order of the American military authorities of the 82nd US Airborne Division and 8th US Infantry Division . This took place on May 7, 1945 in Ludwigslust between the castle and the town church (200 victims), on May 8, 1945 in Schwerin at today's place of the victims of fascism (74 victims), in Hagenow in the Schützengarten (144 victims) and in Wöbbelin behind the Theodor-Körner-Museum (70 victims). In all places the civilian population had to attend the public burial ceremonies. Honorary cemeteries and memorials still exist in all places today.

The continued use of the camp after the liberation

After the Wöbbelin subcamp was liberated and cleared, the Soviet Military Administration (SMAD) used the site a few months later as a reception center for evacuees, refugees and displaced persons. Farmers and landowners who had been expropriated as part of the land reform were also housed there.

The Wöbbelin camp was not an internment or prison camp like the " Fünfeichen " camp in Neubrandenburg. There was no camp regime, hardly any guarding and the site could be left for hours or days.

Processing and commemoration

Memorial by artist Jo Jastram for the victims of the death marches. Desecrated and badly damaged in 2002, it was then restored.

The history of the Wöbbelin concentration camp has been commemorated in a permanent exhibition in the museum building since 1965, memorial stones and memorials have been created at the various locations since 1948 and 1951. The memorial by Rostock artist Jo Jastram has been commemorating the victims of the death marches since 1960 .

The legal processing of the Wöbbelin satellite camp did not begin until 1967 at the instigation of a Dutchman whose father had perished in Wöbbelin. The Federal German judiciary was investigating until 1975, but the proceedings had to be discontinued in 1976 with no result. Since the camp is in the area of ​​the former GDR, no academic exchange could take place in the 1970s due to the GDR's demarcation policy.

The barracks of the camp were demolished in 1948 and the area was planted with a pine forest. Remnants of the wall and clinker brick are a reminder of the past in only a few places.

The Wöbbelin memorials and memorials stand in the area of ​​tension between German history and the memory of the poet Theodor Körner and the memory of the victims of the Wöbbelin satellite camp. The National Socialists built a “hero's grove” for Theodor Körner near Wöbbelin, on the site of which the Americans buried some of the victims of the Wöbbelin subcamp on May 8, 1945. A memorial site was inaugurated at the site of the former satellite camp on May 2, 2005, the 60th anniversary of the liberation. Hundreds of clinker bricks bear the names or numbers of prisoners who died between February 17 and June 30, 1945. A circular path, which is lined with information boards and masonry sculptures, leads through the former camp site. There are information steles with original photos at the points where the barracks, the wash barracks / latrines and the pump were located.

  • Memorial for 200 victims of the Wöbbelin concentration camp by the Ludwigslust artist Herbert Bartholomäus, 1951, at the cemetery of honor between the palace and the town church in Ludwigslust

  • Memorial on the site of the former Wöbbelin concentration camp

  • Wöbbelin memorials and memorials

  • Cemetery of honor for the victims of the Wöbbelin concentration camp

  • Cemetery of honor

  • Memorial plaque commemorating the funeral of 200 victims of the Wöbbelin concentration camp

Well-known liberators and former prisoners

The film producer Gyula Trebitsch , the French writer and radical politician David Rousset and the co-founder of the Jewish community in Mecklenburg, President of the Higher Regional Court and member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Franz Unikower , ended up after an odyssey through various camps in the Wöbbelin subcamp, where they were liberated.

The German-American historian Werner Tom Angress and the American general James M. Gavin , as members of the 82nd US Airborne Division, participated in the liberation of the region around Ludwigslust.

The name of the Wöbbelin concentration camp

There are some irritations surrounding the name of the "Wöbbelin concentration camp". It was referred to by the National Socialists as the "Wöbbelin protective custody camp". In a broader sense, these were two camps. On the one hand the wooden barrack camp "Reiherhorst" (name given by the concentration camp survivors) and on the other hand the stone barrack camp Wöbbelin, which became the concentration camp reception camp on April 15, 1945.

Both camps were located in the Groß Laasch district in the immediate vicinity (approx. 6 km) of the city of Ludwigslust. After the liberation of the camp, the prisoners were taken care of by the US troops in Ludwigslust. In Anglo-Saxon publications and contemporary documents, the camp complex was therefore often referred to as "Camp Ludwigslust", "KZ Ludwigslust" or the like.

James M. Gavin used the incorrect place name “Wobelein” in his book “On To Berlin”, a spelling that was adopted by many veterans and publications about the 82nd US Airborne Division.

literature

  • Carina Baganz: Ten weeks of the Wöbbelin concentration camp. A concentration camp in Mecklenburg 1945. Wöbbelin memorials and memorials, Wöbbelin 2000.
  • Carina Baganz: Wöbbelin: The last satellite camp of Neuengamme concentration camp as a death camp. In: Detlef Garbe , Carmen Lange (ed.): Prisoners between annihilation and liberation. The dissolution of the Neuengamme concentration camp and its satellite camps by the SS in the spring of 1945. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2005, ISBN 3-86108-799-5 , pp. 105–116.
  • Carina Baganz: Keyword “Wöbbelin” . In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-52965-8 , pp. 543-547.
  • Laszlo Berkowits / Robert W. Kenny: The Boy who lost his Birthday. Maryland 2008, ISBN 978-0-76184066-4 .
  • Anne Drescher : The Wöbbelin camp after the end of the war. 1945 to 1948. The state commissioner for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for the documents of the State Security Service of the GDR (publisher), Schwerin 2011, 2nd edition, ISBN 978-3-933255-25-9 .
  • James M. Gavin: On to Berlin. Battles of an airborne commander 1943–1946. Viking Press, New York NY 1978, ISBN 0-670-52517-0 .
  • Rob Hilberink: Reminder report . unpublished. The copy is in the Wöbbelin memorials.
  • Association of memorials and memorials in the district of Ludwigslust-Parchim eV (Ed.): The educational offers of the memorials and memorials Wöbbelin . Memorials and memorials Wöbbelin 2015, 3rd edition.
  • Association of memorials and memorials in the district of Ludwigslust-Parchim eV (publisher): Museum guide of the memorials and memorials Wöbbelin (Theodor-Körner-Museum and concentration camp memorial), Wöbbelin 2016, 2nd edition.
  • Beatrice Vierneisel: Memento: Franz Siegbert Unikower. A portrait . Friends of the Wöbbelin memorials and memorials V. (Ed.) Wöbbelin o. D. [2011], ISBN 978-3-934411-55-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Carina Baganz: Ten weeks of the Wöbbelin concentration camp . Wöbbelin 2005, p. 14th f .
  2. ^ Association of memorials and memorials in the district of Ludwigslust-Parchim eV (Ed.): The educational offers of the memorials and memorials in Wöbbelin . Wöbbelin 2015, p. 5 .
  3. ^ Carina Baganz: Ten weeks of the Wöbbelin concentration camp . Wöbbelin 2005, p. 56 ff .
  4. ↑ Rob Hilberink: memoirs . S. 3-4 .
  5. ↑ James M. Gavin: On to Berlin. Battles of an airborne commander 1943–1946 . New York 1978.
  6. ↑ Association memorial sites in the district Ludwigslust-Parchim eV (ed.): Museum leaders of the memorial sites Wöbbelin (Theodor Körner Museum and Memorial Site) . 2016, p. 6th f .
  7. ↑ Beatrice Vierneisel: Memento: Franz Siegbert Unikower. A portrait . Wöbbelin 2011, p. 4-9 .
  8. ↑ Civilians of all ages are forced to march past the open graves of prisoners from the concentration camp at Woebbelin. , photographic documentation of the camp visit by civilians
  9. ↑ German civilians from the nearby town of Ludwigslust are made to clear corpses from barracks of the Woebbelin concentration camp , photographically documented recovery of corpses by civilians
  10. ^ Anne Drescher: The Wöbbelin camp after the end of the war, 1945 to 1948 . 2011.
  11. ↑ Peter Michel: Arrival in Freedom. Essays against the loss of value over time , Berlin 2011, p. 177.

Web links

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

Coordinates: 53 ° 22 ′ 1 ″  N , 11 ° 29 ′ 31 ″  E