Ladelund subcamp
The Ladelund satellite camp , located 20 km northeast of Niebüll on the German- Danish border, was occupied with prisoners on November 1, 1944 as a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp in connection with the construction of the so-called Friesenwall . The Friesenwall was a planned but only partially implemented defense system that was to be built on the German North Sea coast towards the end of World War II . The concentration camp near Ladelund was responsible for the construction of trenches and gun positions in a militarily senseless " locking position " south of the Danish border. The camp was closed on December 16, 1944. Within the month and a half that it existed, 300 of over 2,000 prisoners died .
Geographical location
The area, on which a labor camp of the Reich Labor Service (RAD) and later the concentration camp satellite camp was built in 1938 , is located northeast of Ladelund in the former district of Südtondern (in today's district of North Friesland , South Tondern Office ) near the Danish border. About eight kilometers from the actual warehouse is located in Achtrup the train station where 2,000 prisoners from many European countries in covered wagons arrived. The prisoners had to walk from Achtrup to Ladelund. Ladelund was chosen as the external storage location because of its location, the existing RAD storage area and the good transport routes.
prehistory
In 1938 the Reich Labor Service set up a barrack camp for 250 young men northeast of Ladelund. They built a 34 kilometer long road from Süderlügum to Flensburg parallel to the Danish border ; this was called "Betonstraße" or " Panzerstraße ". They also worked on drainage measures, wasteland cultivation and afforestation. The Ladelund Labor Camp was not gated or guarded.
Ladelund subcamp
On August 28, 1944, Hitler ordered the so-called Friesenwall to be built on the North Sea coast. 16,000 prisoners of war were used for the construction, as well as 6,000 concentration camp prisoners who moved from the Neuengamme concentration camp to newly built satellite camps in the Engerhafe concentration camps (2,000 prisoners) in East Friesland, Meppen-Versen (3,000 prisoners) and Dalum in Emsland (1,000 prisoners) and Schwesing (up to 2500 prisoners) and Ladelund in North Frisia were shipped. In October 1944, the conversion of the labor camp into a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp began. It was fenced in with barbed wire and received four watchtowers. On November 1st, it was occupied with over 2000 inmates from Neuengamme. These arrived at the Achtrup station in freight wagons . Most of the prisoners were classified as “political” according to the concentration camp system - with the exception of the Kapos - and came from all over Europe. They were arrested as resistance fighters , hostages or forced laborers . The largest group came from the Netherlands ; many came from the village of Putten . More than 600 Dutch men aged 17 and over were arrested there on October 1, 1944 in Putten as part of a punitive action on behalf of the German Wehrmacht commander. The " Putten case " was seen as an act of retaliation after resistance fighters carried out an attack on an off-road vehicle of the Wehrmacht near the village. A vehicle occupant and a resistance fighter were killed.
On December 2, 1944, those arrested were taken to the Amersfoort transit camp and from there to the Neuengamme concentration camp. Of the 588, only 48 returned, the rest perished in Neuengamme concentration camp or in other concentration camps, including in Ladelund, where the first prisoners soon died of the inhuman conditions.
Originally, Ladelund was set up as a Reich labor camp for 200 to 250 men. After the conversion into a concentration camp satellite camp, more than 2,000 prisoners lived here in unheated barracks 50 meters long and eight to ten meters wide . 80–120 prisoners were cooped up in a barrack room measuring almost 40 m². Only the “elder” had his own bed; the "room attendants" shared a bed. All the other inmates slept on the floor or on rough wooden frames close together, without straw sacks, without mattresses, only on a little bit of straw. The sanitary facilities had not been expanded in the course of the conversion to a concentration camp satellite camp and still came from the old labor camp. Like the kitchen, they were sufficient for a maximum of 250 people. The hygienic conditions in the camp were catastrophic; Bugs and diseases spread. Despite the adverse weather conditions in November and December 1944, the barracks were not heated. Then there was the hard work that many prisoners had to do, especially at anti-tank trenches. An anti-tank ditch was four to five meters wide and three to five meters deep. Malnourished and exposed to the blows of kapos, inmates often worked eleven to twelve hours a day in the ice-cold water.
If the prisoners had already arrived in Ladelund undernourished and weakened, they were now exposed to diets which, in their official version, were already starvation rations. In Ladelund they did not even receive this because the commandant was embezzling food. The death rate was soon so high that the subcamp in Neuengamme was considered a "death camp".
On December 16, 1944, the " Friesenwall " had become completely pointless due to the changed military situation. The camp in Ladelund was closed and the surviving prisoners were brought back to Neuengamme.
Warehouse organization
Headquarters
SS-Untersturmführer Hans Hermann Griem was the commandant of the Ladelund satellite camp . He embezzled groceries, enjoyed sadistic torture, personally shot several prisoners and was often drunk. After the camp was closed, he was in command of the Dalum Emsland camp until March 1945 . Griem was never convicted of his actions.
SS-Oberscharführer Friedrich Otto Dröge was the camp and administration leader . An SS-Unterscharfuhrer Georges was responsible for the logistics of the camp as "Rapport- und Blockführer". He was directly responsible for the living conditions, the supply and the housing.
Security guards
The guards at a camp often consisted of SS death's head associations , which were reinforced by older marines who were no longer fit for field service . Ladelund was one of around 80 fieldworks at Neuengamme concentration camp and one of over 340 camps throughout the German Reich. The SS death's head units that provided guards in the camps were no longer sufficient to guard all these camps. In Ladelund, this meant that only the commandant and a few Unterscharführer belonged to the SS, while the guards consisted of soldiers from the Navy. Presumably, this provided two companies (around 200 men), which consisted of older soldiers. Hitler had personally ordered their use in 1944. For their work in the camps, they were given makeshift training, including with drawings from a picture book for concentration camp guards. These soldiers were housed in the village of Ladelund.
Kapos
Criminal concentration camp inmates, the Kapos , were used as block elders and foremen , who tortured the inmates. As a rule, they were convicted violent criminals who had been brought from penitentiaries and prisons to concentration camp service because they were believed to be highly violent. Many of the prisoners deployed as Kapos were already deployed as Kapos in the Husum-Schwesing camp, including Wilhelm Schneider. He was born in Dortmund in 1911, had many criminal records and had been in “preventive detention” since 1939. In September 1944 he became a Kapo in Husum-Schwesing and from November 1944 a supervisory "Arbeitsarbeit Kapo" in Ladelund. Wilhelm Demmer, born in Moers in 1904, committed several offenses after 1922. He had been in Neuengamme concentration camp since March 1944 and then also became a Kapo in Husum-Schwesing. From November he was also a Kapo in Ladelund.
Their duties consisted of guarding, intimidating, driving to work and punishing the inmates.
Foremen were assigned to the kapos who worked purely as supervisors and who did not work themselves. The relatively large privileges corrupted many of those appointed kapos. In some cases, from the outset, the SS selected those prisoners who were willing to earn their privileges through particular brutality and who had already "proven themselves" in the Husum-Schwesing camp.
Response of the population
In the war years, forced laborers were mainly used in agriculture in and around Ladelund . The establishment of the subcamp confronted the village with the whole reality of Nazi violent crimes.
Many saw the inmates on their way to work and heard the screams of the beatings. The guards were quartered in houses in the village. A Ladelunder farmer had to bring the bodies to the cemetery in his cart. Death certificates were drawn up every day at the registry office . Some Ladelunder believed that fair sentences were being served in the satellite camp; however, there have been some attempts to help.
tomb
The victims of the Ladelund concentration camp were buried in nine graves on the edge of the village cemetery. But contrary to common practice, the concentration camp deaths were followed up as well as possible by the then parish pastor Johannes Meyer (who himself was a long member of the NSDAP and a German Christian and refused to participate in the persecution of the perpetrators in Ladelund) Christian tradition buried on church land. Their names were in the church records of parish records of St. Peter Ladelund and at the graves. Pastor Meyer reported in detail in the church chronicle about "The Concentration Camp" and justified the attitude of the community. The notes also served to relieve him. Due to his early commitment to National Socialism, he had to fear the impeachment by the British occupying power. In 1948 he reached the completion of his denazification process . After the end of the war, Pastor Meyer sought contact with grieving relatives. The grave complex was decorated with dignity and became the starting point and center of remembrance and international encounters as early as 1950.
After 1945
The camp site near Ladelund served as a military hospital in 1945/46 for the follow-up treatment of amputated soldiers. From 1946 to 1959 up to 200 refugees and displaced persons were housed here. After that, the barracks were gradually sold by the responsible district administration and the property returned to the lessee. In 1970 the last remaining barracks were demolished after the state, district and municipality had compensated the owner with 5500 DM.
Legal processing
From 1945 the British military judiciary began investigating the Ladelund concentration camp . Commander Griem, other SS members and the Kapos were tried from 1947 onwards, in which they were sentenced to heavy sentences. Friedrich Otto Dröge and SS-Unterscharführer Georges could no longer be found after the war. Commander Griem managed to escape shortly before the start of the trial. Only in 1963 did the public prosecutor's office in Flensburg resume investigations against Griem, but did not make any progress in their investigations until the whereabouts of Griem could be determined in 1965. He had settled in Hamburg-Bergedorf , whereupon the case was handed over to the Hamburg public prosecutor in 1966. It began with systematic investigations and sought a trial against Griem, on January 16, 1969, the Hamburg Regional Court opened the preliminary judicial investigation against Griem. Shortly before the actual trial began, Griem died on June 25, 1971.
memorial
The Ladelund concentration camp memorial and meeting place is the oldest concentration camp memorial in Schleswig-Holstein and one of the oldest in Germany. It began to process the history as early as 1950 on the initiative of the local pastor, who had kept the register of the prisoners buried in the church cemetery in 1944, officially the memorial work with the participation of those affected and relatives of the victims. In the 1980s, the Flensburg high school teacher Jörn-Peter Leppien designed an exhibition that could be seen until 2017. Since 1995 there has been a full-time management. The memorial is sponsored by the local Evangelical Lutheran parish and has since been funded by the state of Schleswig-Holstein , the North Church and the parish of North Friesland.
A document house was built in 1989 within sight of the graves, which houses a permanent historical exhibition on the history of the subcamp with its pre- and post-history, as well as a small media room that can also be used as a seminar room. In the summer of 2006, the extension of the building was inaugurated so that the memorial and meeting place can do justice to the growing number of visitors.
On the edge of the former camp area, the last barracks of which were demolished in 1970, a memorial stone commemorates the events of 1944. This bears the inscription:
"THE DIGNITY
OF MAN
IS UNANTASTBAR
KZ NEUENGAMME
EXTERNAL COMMAND
LOAD LUND
November - DEC. 1944 "
Young people from the Theodor Schäfer Vocational Training Center in Husum erected a steel sculpture in May / June 2002 as part of a joint project with the Ladelund Memorial, which commemorates the fate of the concentration camp inmates.
On the day of public mourning 2010, the steel stele “Das Mal” by Ansgar Nierhoff († August 2, 2010) was unveiled as a “memorial, landmark and atonement” on the former anti-tank ditch.
The exhibition, which has been located in the Document House since 1990, was modernized after 25 years at the request of the incumbent director of the memorial. With the help of funding from the Federal Government, the State of Schleswig-Holstein and the Northern Church , modern storytelling techniques have been used since 2017. The revision cost a total of 500,000 euros. In the exhibition, which opened in November 2017, information boards, audio and film stations as well as biographies in German, Danish, English and Dutch provide information about the fate of the prisoners.
literature
- Raimo Alsen: The Putten-Ladelund loop. A relay race in memory of the concentration camp victims . In: Grenzfriedenshefte , 2/2015, pp. 149–160 ( online ).
- Raimo Alsen, Angelika Königseder (ed.): The concentration camp in the village. History and post-history of the Ladelund satellite camp . Metropol Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-86331-374-6 , table of contents (PDF)
- Klaus Bästlein: The main culprit was spared. For the prosecution of the Nazi violent crimes committed in the North Frisian concentration camps. In: Working group for research into National Socialism in Schleswig-Holstein e. V. (Hrsg.): Information on Schleswig-Holstein contemporary history . Issue 54, Kiel 2013, pp. 56–113.
- Pieter Dekker, Gert van Dompseler: Van naam tot number. Slachtoffers van de Puttense raid. Uitgeverij Louise, Leeuwarden 2014.
- Detlef Garbe: The North Frisian external commandos of the Neuengamme concentration camp. History and remembrance. In: Grenzfriedenshefte , 3/2008, pp. 257–268 ( online ).
- Christine Gundermann: The reconciled citizens. The Second World War in German-Dutch encounters 1945–2000. Waxmann, Münster 2014.
- Uwe Hauptenthal: "The Mark". Ansgar Nierhoff's stele on the former anti-tank ditch in the Ladelund concentration camp memorial and meeting place. In: Grenzfriedenshefte, 2011, Issue 2, pp. 117–126 ( online ).
- Madelon de Keizer: Raid on putti. Wehrmacht crimes in a Dutch village. Dittrich, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-920862-35-X .
- Willi Kramer: The opening of the anti-tank trench near Ladelund. What's behind it all . In: Grenzfriedenshefte, 2011, Heft 3, pp. 167–174 ( online ).
- Jörn-Peter Leppien: "They weren't human anymore ...", from the chronicle of the parish. Pastor Johannes Meyer on the Ladelund concentration camp in 1944. A source-critical study. In: Grenzfriedenshefte . Husum 1983, 3.
- Jörn-Peter Leppien, Klaus Bästlein, Johannes Tuchel (eds.): Ladelund Concentration Camp 1944. Permanent scientific exhibition at the Ladelund Memorial in Schleswig-Holstein. 2nd Edition. Ev.-luth. Parish of Ladelund, 1995.
- Jörn-Peter Leppien: Remembering for the present and the future. The historical documentation in the Ladelund concentration camp memorial and meeting place. In: Grenzfriedenshefte. 2006, 4, pp. 277-294 ( online ).
- Jörn-Peter Leppien: slave labor for the "final battle". The border position in 1944/45 and the Ladelund concentration camp. In: Grenzfriedenshefte , 3/2010, pp. 203-236 ( online ).
- Jörn-Peter Leppien: From the number to the name. The concentration camp dead in Ladelund 1944. In: Grenzfriedenshefte , Yearbook 2014, pp. 79–114 ( online ).
- Karin Penno (ed.): Minorities in the Nazi era. From the separated yesterday to the unifying today. Ladelund 2000.
- Jannes Priem, Willem Torsius: Don't forget to forgive. Contributions to the 50th anniversary of the liberation in Ladelund on May 4, 1995. Series of publications by the Ladelund concentration camp memorial and meeting place. H 1. Ev.-luth. Parish of St. Petri, Ladelund 1995 (German and Dutch).
- Harald Richter: We did the natural thing - a satellite camp of Neuengamme concentration camp with us in Ladelund, graves in the cemetery and experiences for which we are grateful. In: Detlef Garbe (Ed.): The forgotten concentration camps? Memorials for the victims of Nazi terror in the Federal Republic. Lamuv, Bornheim-Merten 1983, ISBN 3-921521-84-X , pp. 121-143.
- Harald Richter: Descended into the realm of death. The concentration camp, Pastor Meyer and church memorial work in Ladelund. Luth. Publishing house, Hannover 2014, ISBN 978-3-7859-1183-9 .
- Harald Schmid : A turning point in the regional culture of remembrance: Schleswig-Holstein's first concentration camp memorial in Ladelund in 1950/90. In: Schleswig-Holstein. The culture magazine for the north. Special issue "Turning Points in Schleswig-Holstein History", 2018, pp. 72–77.
Web links
- Ladelund Concentration Camp Memorial
- About the events that took place in Putten on October 1st and 2nd, 1944
Individual evidence
- ↑ Detlef Garbe: Husum-Schwesing in the system of the external commandos of the Neuengamme concentration camp ( Memento from July 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). In: Friends of the Husum-Schwesing Concentration Camp Memorial e. V. Manuscript of a lecture, August 29, 2014.
- ↑ a b c d Klaus Bästlein: The main perpetrator was spared ... For the prosecution of the Nazi violent crimes committed in the North Frisian concentration camps. (PDF) In: Information on Schleswig-Holstein Contemporary History (Kiel) No. 54. Winter 2013. pp. 268–336. Working group for research into National Socialism in Schleswig-Holstein e. V. (AKENS), 2013, accessed on November 27, 2017 .
- ↑ a b c d Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel , Angelika Königseder: The place of terror: History of the National Socialist concentration camps . CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52965-8 , p. 468 ( google.de ).
- ↑ Ev.-Luth. Parish of St. Petri Ladelund (ed.): Ladelund concentration camp 1944. Exhibition catalog. Flensburg 1990, 1995.
- ↑ Booklet on the permanent scientific exhibition "Ladelund in National Socialism". P. 9 and 32
- ↑ shz.de : Future plans for the Ladelund Memorial , January 25, 2015
- ↑ Ladelund Concentration Camp Memorial: A Bridge Against Oblivion | shz.de . In: shz . ( shz.de [accessed December 6, 2017]).
Coordinates: 54 ° 50 ′ 51 ″ N , 9 ° 2 ′ 10 ″ E