Nohra concentration camp

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The concentration camp in Nohra was on March 3, 1933, the first officially established concentration camps for up to 220 prisoners in the Nazi Reich . The Thuringian Ministry of the Interior (under Nazi leadership) set it up on the former airfield near Nohra , six kilometers from Weimar , operated it until April 12, and closed it again on May 10, 1933. The direct successor as a concentration camp was the Bad Sulza concentration camp, thirty kilometers away, and the Buchenwald concentration camp from July 1937 .

founding

In Thuringia , the NSDAP had been involved in government since 1930. After the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933, several hundred communists were arrested in the state of Thuringia within a very short time. The local and regional court prisons were immediately overcrowded. In order to remedy this, the Thuringian Ministry of the Interior decided to set up a concentration camp in the military-oriented Heimatschule Mitteldeutschland eV founded in 1928 on March 3, 1933 . The location of the first concentration camp of National Socialist Germany was on the former airfield in the classrooms near Nohra .

The home school in Nohra consisted of two buildings that were connected by a low building. The voluntary labor service was housed in the house on the left , the administration and the large dining room of the school on the ground floor in the house on the right. The first floor was reserved for the military sports camp of the Stahlhelm . The concentration camp was set up above it. It was divided into three large halls, furnished only with thatch and blankets.

The hygienic conditions were catastrophic due to insufficient toilets and washing facilities. At times the camp was completely overcrowded. Several auxiliary policemen guarded the hall doors, as the home school was not isolated from the outside world by barbed wire, fence or walls. Initially, Nohra was referred to as a "collection camp". The term “concentration camp” for Nohra first appeared in a newspaper on March 8, 1933.

business

The Thuringian Ministry of the Interior was responsible for guarding and managing the camp . The security team consisted of auxiliary police officers, selected local schoolchildren, reinforced by SA and Stahlhelm members. The superiors of the home school also acted as managers of the security team in the Nohra concentration camp. The Ministry of the Interior set up a police station in the school to interrogate the prisoners, transfer them to other detention centers and release them. The responsible head of the police station in the home school in Central Germany - not known by name - can be seen as the leader of the Nohra concentration camp.

On the first day, March 3, 1933, about 100 prisoners came to Nohra directly from regional court prisons, the barracks of the protective police in Weimar or via the regional court prison in Weimar. Many came from Thuringian industrial locations, which were traditionally considered "red" strongholds. On the second day the number increased to 170. Around March 12, 1933, the camp had its maximum occupancy with around 220 prisoners. In March 1933 there were extensive layoffs. On March 31, 1933, the concentration camp had around 60 prisoners. There were only a few new deliveries compared to the layoffs. An average of 95 prisoners lived in Nohra.

Only communists from the Free State of Thuringia were interned in Nohra. Five of the ten Thuringian KPD members of the state parliament sat there: Fritz Gäbler , Richard Eyermann , Rudolf Arnold , Erich Scharf and Leander Kröber . A large part of the communist city councils and other communist functionaries of Thuringia, such as the KPD local chairmen, the cashiers, members of the Red Front Fighters' Union and active members of the Red Aid were also brought to Nohra. Some women were also briefly detained in the home school.

The prisoners did not work in the Nohra concentration camp. They stayed in the dormitories all day. This monotony and isolation was only interrupted by interrogations and the daily entrances. The prisoners had no connection to the outside world. Former detainees mention mistreatment by guards in their memory reports.

The alleged protective custody in Thuringia was a police preventive detention ; consequently, the communist prisoners were police inmates. This resulted in the right to participate in the Reichstag election . The prisoners in the Nohra concentration camp voted on March 5th at the same polling station as the residents of Nohra. All prisoners voted for the KPD. As a result, the Communist Party in Nohra received 172 votes, up from ten a few months earlier in the local elections in December 1932.

closure

The Nohra concentration camp was one of the first to close again; it only existed until April 12, 1933. By then about 250 people had passed through the camp.

The last 32 prisoners were taken to the Ichtershausen state prison near Arnstadt that day , where a protective custody department already existed. The Nohra concentration camp was thus dissolved. By September 1933, almost all of the former Nohra prisoners from Ichtershausen had been released. Some stayed in Ichtershausen until the Bad Sulza concentration camp was opened - among them the two state parliament members Richard Eyermann (Bad Salzungen) and Leander Kröber (Meuselwitz), who were given prisoner numbers 23 and 24 in Bad Sulza.

Further use

In 1935 the Luftwaffe built a training airfield on the site, and later it built new hangars and barracks. After the war, the Red Army took possession of the place. Around 1970 she demolished some buildings, including the building that housed the Nohra concentration camp. In 1988 the SED district leadership in Weimar put up a memorial plaque in Nohra. It carried the inscription: "In this municipality the imperialist rulers set up the first fascist concentration camp in Thuringia in March 1933." In 1990 the board was removed by a local council resolution. Today it is in the attic of the mayor's office. There is nothing left to indicate the location of the first concentration camp in National Socialist Germany. As a structural remainder, there is an inn on the B 7 “Zum Kommandanten”, the commandant's house of the former airfield.

Prisoners

Prisoners were arrested KPD leaders, members of the state parliament, communists and other opponents of the regime, such as Rudolf Arnold ( Eisenach ), Johannes Enke ( Buttstädt ), Richard Eyermann ( Bad Salzungen ), Fritz Gäbler (secretary of the KPD East Thuringia), Gustav Huhn ( Lauscha municipal council ), Leander Kröber ( Meuselwitz ), Max Leipold (Lauscha City Council, RFB), Karl Müller ( Hüttengrund ), Franz Müller-Deck (Lauscha City Council, Chairman KPD-OG), Paul Greiner-Pachter (Lauscha City Council).

Archival material

First and foremost there are files on the Nohra concentration camp in the Thuringian main state archive in Weimar . Further sources are the VdN files there, in the state archives in Rudolstadt, Meiningen and Greiz as well as in the Federal Archives in Berlin. Further information can be found in various city archives.

literature

  • Klaus Drobisch , Günther Wieland: System of the Nazi concentration camps, 1933 - 1939. Akademie Verlag , Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-05-000823-7 .
  • Udo Wohlfeld, Peter Franz: The Net - The Concentration Camps in Thuringia 1933-1937. Edited by the history workshop Weimar / Apolda, now Prager-Haus Apolda e. V., in the "Wanted" series, 2000

Web links

Notes, notes

  1. ^ TAZ report by Katrin Zeiss in taz Magazin No. 6987 from Feb. 22, 2003, pages I-II
  2. ↑ On the right-wing extremist home school cf. the Tübingen dissertation by Reimers, 2000, see web links. The teaching staff at the school came from the nearby "German Home School" in Bad Berka

Coordinates: 50 ° 58 '  N , 11 ° 15'  E