Echterdingen concentration camp

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Back center, the "White Hangar" at Stuttgart Airport

The Echterdingen concentration camp was established in November 1944 as a branch of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp on the air base in Echterdingen , which is now Stuttgart Airport . This external command was planned and set up by the " Organization Todt " (OT).

history

In order to maintain flight operations, several thousand foreign and forced laborers were probably deployed in Echterdingen during the war years, and their exact fates are difficult to reconstruct. In November 1944, 600 Jewish prisoners were locked in a white hangar . They were previously housed in the Stutthof concentration camp and some of them in the Auschwitz concentration camp before that .

The prisoners had to repair damage at the airport, in particular they had to fill in the bomb craters. They had to break the stones required for this in quarries in Leinfelden , Plieningen and Bernhausen . When the runway was no longer usable, the prisoners had to build a connection to the motorway that was to be used as a replacement. The working conditions were inhumane, they had to walk to the quarries every day, and after the furnace failed, the hangar was no longer heated. The emaciated prisoners were sometimes no longer able to go back to the camp on their own: two inmates had to drag them along or they were pulled back on a two-wheeled cart. They were guarded by soldiers from the air base.

After a typhus epidemic broke out, the SS began to close the camp in January 1945. Of the at least 119 dead, the first 19 were cremated in Esslingen, 66 more were initially buried in a mass grave in the Bernhäuser Forest and after the war buried in the Ebershaldenfriedhof in Esslingen am Neckar . The survivors were taken to the Vaihingen satellite camp , the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and the Ohrdruf forced labor camp. Only 64 prisoners are known to have seen the end of the war.

Todays situation

During construction work to expand Stuttgart Airport in autumn 2005, the remains of 34 prisoners were discovered about 100 meters from the hangar. Since the Jewish tradition demands an eternal rest period , they were buried again exactly at the place where they were found. On Sunday, April 15, 2007 the gravestones for the 34 victims of the Echterdingen concentration camp were placed. The hangar and the adjacent burial ground are now located on the military part of the airport, the Stuttgart Army Airfield operated by the United States Army . On June 8, 2010 the freely accessible memorial “Paths of Remembrance” was set up based on a design by the artist Dagmar Pachtner. The memorial is a member of the network of memorials in the former Natzweiler concentration camp complex .

Former mass grave with plaque

The exact location of the mass grave in the Bernhäuser Forest has been forgotten for decades. In 2006, however, it was rediscovered in a forest near Plattenhardt, about 500 m east of today's Bärensee. In 2015 the city of Filderstadt put up a plaque to commemorate the location and set up a simple memorial. Externally, the grave is roughly delimited by some hewn stones, although it is unclear whether this is the original border of the grave. Nevertheless, a rectangular area measuring around 10 × 5 meters can be made out, where the surface has sunk a little as an indication of previous tillage.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from January 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.von-zeit-zu-zeit.de
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Echterdingen-Bernhausen satellite camp . City of Leinfelden-Echterdingen. Retrieved August 27, 2017.
  3. ↑ Concentration camp memorials establish network of remembrance. December 22, 2018, accessed December 23, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Stuttgarter Zeitung, Stuttgart, Germany: Memorial plaque for murdered concentration camp inmates: What is a person worth? In: stuttgarter-zeitung.de . ( stuttgarter-zeitung.de [accessed on March 4, 2018]).

literature

  • Gudrun Silberzahn-Jandt: From Pfarrberg to Hitlerplatz. Five villages during the time of National Socialism. A topography. Dissertation. 1994. Volume 9 of the Filderstädter series of publications.
  • Manuel Werner: Power and helplessness of young air force helpers - an example from the Echterdingen / Filder air base and concentration camp , in: State Center for Civic Education Baden-Württemberg / Educators Committee of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation Stuttgart (ed.): Through fascination for power - the fascination power. Building blocks for the relationship between power and manipulation. Handouts for teaching , Stuttgart 2003.
  • Faltin, Thomas u. a .: In the face of death: The Echterdingen subcamp 1944/45 and the suffering of the 600 prisoners . City Archives Filderstadt + Leinfelden-Echterdingen 2008, ISBN 3-934760-10-4 , ISBN 978-3-934760-10-3 .

Web links

Coordinates: 48 ° 40 ′ 47 "  N , 9 ° 11 ′ 27"  E