Kuhlen concentration camp
The Kuhlen concentration camp was an early (“wild”) concentration camp in Kuhlen near Rickling in Schleswig-Holstein , it existed from July 18, 1933 to October 27, 1933. Most of the inmates were communists and social democrats .
prehistory
In 1883 the Schleswig-Holstein State Association for Internal Mission established a workers' colony in Rickling. In the following years, job seekers were offered board and lodging for their work. The aim was to place the job seekers in permanent employment and to get them used to a regular life. The farm, which was acquired as property in 1920, comprised approx. 200 hectares and consisted mainly of large moor and swamp areas.
In 1931, almost 200 people took part in agricultural work on the nearby Kuhlen estate, before the "meaningful activities" were to be carried out as part of the voluntary labor service (FAD) from November 1931 . Since the mentally ill from the Schleswig state hospital were increasingly being admitted to the two existing houses, the additional barrack "Falkenried" was put into operation on January 31, 1932 due to a lack of space. On July 12, the NSDAP then took over the Kuhlen / Falkenried labor camp. From August 1932, 14 SA men of Standard 213 Segeberg were on the estate as harvest workers and farm workers.
Establishment of the concentration camp
In mid-July 1933, then District Administrator Waldemar von Mohl directed the first prisoners to the SA camp. The front page of the Segeberger Kreis- und Tageblatt reported on the camp on the premises of the Rickling-Kuhlen Anstalten on July 15, 1933:
“The concentration camp in Rickling offers space for 60 plus moderate food and cultivation work in abundance. We will let these saboteurs of construction do economically useful work. So that the spirit does not wither, a long-time party member of the camp commandant, deacon Othmar Walchensteiner, will hand out National Socialist ideas free of charge. "
The official address was: "Regional Association for Inner Mission, Kuhlen Concentration Camp Department" .
The prisoners were between 18 and 63 years old and mostly came from Holstein . Supporters of the SPD and KPD were among the earliest people arrested. Among the prisoners were also victims of old settlements between Nazi formations as well as victims of denunciation and arbitrary police force . The most prominent prisoner was Reinhold Jürgensen from Elmshorn, the KPD member of the Reichstag who was murdered in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp in December 1933 . During the three months of its existence, 189 prisoners were in the camp, with an average of 90 people in the camp.
The organization of the camp
The actual concentration camp consisted only of the former FAD barrack “Falkenried” from July 27, 1933 until it was closed. Inside there were four bedrooms, each 16 m², a dining room and lounges for the security personnel. The building with the small forecourt was not fenced, the area was determined by the paths between the Kuhlen buildings.
In addition to the SS man Othmar Walchensteiner, who had already joined the NSDAP in 1925 and was active in various Inner Mission institutions before 1933, there were at least nine SA men as security guards and one SS man who also represented the commandant acted. The part-time concentration camp administrative manager was the deacon Franz Schuba. The association kept the concentration camp account and paid the wages of the guards and the commanding officer from the treasury of the State Association for Inner Mission. Medical care and food for the staff and prisoners were also provided by the Inner Mission.
The prisoners had to work eleven hours a day for the regional association. Mainly it was field work and work for the Kuhlen peat factory. In addition to the income from these businesses, the Inner Mission also received the stipulated state reimbursement of costs of 1.50 Reichsmarks per day and prisoner for "food, security guards and ancillary costs" . The National Association for Inner Mission asked in vain for reimbursement of costs of 1.65 RM.
The liquidation of the camp
On October 13, 1933, three days before the municipal and SA camps were banned, the Kuhlen concentration camp was dissolved. Most of the prisoners were released, but about 40 prisoners were transferred to the Emsland camps , where some soon died.
Most of the SA guards stayed, initially as farm workers for the Inner Mission, after the outbreak of war as guards of deported forced laborers. Alcoholics moved into the barracks, and the former concentration camp commandant Walchensteiner was temporarily responsible. He later became the “political trainer” of the National Association for Internal Mission. In March 1935 he resigned because he had joined the German Faith Movement , which rejected Christianity. After the dissolution of the concentration camp, the Inner Mission expressed "appreciation for the successful completion of the certainly not easy task given you" . Walchensteiner became SS-Obersturmführer and area commissioner of an "SS-Einsatzgruppe" in Russia in 1941 , where he died in 1943.
After 1945
The Rickling concentration camp was the subject of two trials after 1945: in 1948 the deputy of the commandant, an SS adjutant from Neumünster, was sentenced to a short prison term in Kiel. In 1976, after six months of litigation, an ex-prisoner was recognized for two months of unpaid incarceration ( reparation from the Inner Mission was never an issue). Although a map of all known Nazi concentration camps published in 1957 lists an unspecified "Rickling" camp, the existence of the Kuhlen concentration camp was only made public in 1986 through a self-published publication by the deacon Peter Sutter in Rickling. There was initially no sustained reaction from the Inner Mission; In a commemorative publication from 1975 it was said that the Kuhlen concentration camp was a "concentration camp of the NSDAP".
memorial
The location of the camp barracks is now marked on the site as a large rectangle of 40 by 11 meters by a beech hedge. In the gravel of the interior there is a bronze plaque with the inscription: “Foundation of the barracks of the Kuhlen concentration camp. From July to October 1933 around 200 men, almost all of them from Schleswig-Holstein, were captured here. You were among the first to suffer under the National Socialists' system of injustice. Forgive us our debts! "
literature
- Peter Sutter: The sinking Peter - Rickling 1933-1945. Self-published, 1986.
- Harald Jenner: Kuhlen concentration camp 1933. National Association for Internal Mission, 1988.
- Ernst Klee: The SA of Jesus Christ - The Church under Hitler's spell. Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-596-24409-9 , pp. 61-66.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ernst Klee: The SA of Jesus Christ - The Church under the spell of Hitler. Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-596-24409-9 , p. 66.
Coordinates: 54 ° 0 '34.3 " N , 10 ° 12' 34" E