Sonnenburg concentration camp

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Sonnenburg Concentration Camp (Poland)
Sonnenburg concentration camp
Sonnenburg concentration camp
Location of the Sonnenburg concentration camp in present-day Poland

The Sonnenburg concentration camp was established on April 3, 1933 as an early concentration camp on the initiative of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior and Justice in Sonnenburg near Küstrin (on the Oder ) in a former prison .

history

Although the hygienic conditions in the building, which was closed in 1930, were catastrophic, officials from the Prussian Ministry of Justice recommended it as a favorable location. They estimated the capacity of the building to be 941 so-called protective prisoners , who were to be imprisoned in mass cells of 20, 30 and 60 people each or in individual cells.

On April 3, 1933, the first 200 prisoners came from the Berlin police headquarters together with 60 SA auxiliary police officers . Later made on arrangement of the Prussian Gestapo CHEFS Rudolf Diels the deported of prisoners from the prison Gollnow in Pomerania by Sonnenburg, whereby the number of prisoners increased to 1,000 people.

The Sonnenburg concentration camp was closed on April 23, 1934; the prison continued. From the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, the concentration camp (or prison camp) continued to exist until 1945 as a concentration and labor camp for allegedly anti-German persons from occupied countries. Resistance fighters Jean-Baptiste Lebas and Bjørn Egge , among others, were imprisoned there. The father of the later controversial Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre , René Lefebvre, died in the camp in 1944 as a result of the abuse inflicted on him. Between 1942 and 1945 well over 1,500 night-and-fog prisoners from France, Belgium, Holland and Norway were imprisoned in the Sonnenburg prison.

Soviet soldiers among murdered prisoners of the Sonnenburg concentration camp, March 1945

As the Second World War drew to a close and Soviet troops approached, the largest massacre of prisoners in the final phase of the Second World War occurred in the Sonnenburg prison . (see also end- stage crime )

Gestapo officers from Frankfurt / Oder under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Nickel shot 819 prisoners on the order of State Secretary Herbert Klemm in the night of January 30th to 31st, 1945. The head of the prison Theodor Knops was also involved in drawing up the selection list . Among the victims were Franz Petrich and Karl Hübener, Kurt clove and Richard Traut, members of a Berlin KPD - resistance organization .

Among the executed were 91 Luxembourg conscripts . This greatest mass murder of Luxembourgers during the Second World War is remembered as the "Sonnenburg massacre". Every year she is officially remembered by a ceremony at Kanounenhiwwel in Luxembourg City .

On February 2, 1945, units of the Soviet 8th Guard Army reached Sonnenburg and liberated the few prisoners who had remained there after the prison had been evacuated and the prison management had escaped, including four survivors of the massacre. Between February 2 and 10, a Soviet commission of inquiry secured the traces of the crime and was able to identify some of the victims. It was in this context that the film and photo recordings of the mountain of corpses in the Sonnenburg prison, which were widely used worldwide, were made.

Legal processing

Herbert Klemm during the Nuremberg Trials

“The crimes against humanity committed in the Sonnenburg concentration camp and later prison from 1933 to 1945 were never systematically and consistently prosecuted. The only exceptions were the legal prosecution of the SA Oberführer State Secretary Herbert Klemm in the Reich Ministry of Justice under Otto Thierack , as part of the Nuremberg legal process , the investigations against the SS guard Heinz Adrian and the repeated investigations of the Polish main commission to investigate the Nazi crimes in Poland ( Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce / GKBZHwP). Federal German authorities in particular prevented legal processing by failing to comply with requests for administrative assistance or acquitting the perpetrators in their own proceedings. "

Judicial organs in the Soviet occupation zone carried out witness interviews soon after the end of the war, which led to the arrest of Georg Runge, the deputy director of the prison. In 1946 he was sentenced to death by a Soviet military court in Rathenow and executed for his responsibility for the massacre . The lawyer and State Secretary Herbert Klemm was convicted at the Nuremberg legal process, among other things, for his responsibility for clearing the prison. A trial before the district court in Kiel against the Gestapo Heinz Richter, who carried out the execution on 30./31. Ordered January 1945, and Wilhelm Nickel, who was in charge of the execution, led in 1970 to the acquittal of the charges of aiding and abetting homicide . The verdict sparked great outrage at home and abroad. However, as early as 1949, not least against the background of the Cold War , the significant criminal findings from the Nuremberg legal process were no longer considered.

Since 2014, the Polish public prosecutor's office has been investigating again on suspicion of crimes against humanity.

staff

The following acted as commanders:

  • SA Storm Leader Bahr
  • Police Lieutenant Gerhard Paessler
  • Lieutenant Bark
  • Police Lieutenant Siegmund
  • SA storm leader year
  • SS-Untersturmführer Paul Breuning

SA Storm Leader Bahr initially commanded the notorious Berlin SA storms 1 Horst Wessel and 33 Mordsturm Maikowski , which were responsible for guarding the prisoners. In addition, members of the police came as reinforcements. At the end of April 1933, the Berlin SA men were replaced by those from Frankfurt / Oder. At the end of August, as in many other concentration camps , the SS took command with 150 members of SS-Standarte 27 from Frankfurt / Oder.

Prisoners

During the first years of its rule and long before the start of the war , the Nazi regime primarily imprisoned communists and social democrats in the Sonnenburg concentration camp . These included (in alphabetical order):

literature

  • André Hohengarten: The massacre in the Sonnenburg prison from 30./31. January 1945. with a foreword by Henri Koch-Kent . Imprimerie Saint-Paul, Luxembourg 1979.
  • Przemysław Mnichowski: Obóz koncentrayjny i więzienie W Sonnenburgu (Słońsku) 1933–1945 [The concentration camp and penitentiary in Sonnenburg (Słońsk)], Warsaw 1982.
  • Klaus Drobisch , Günther Wieland : System of Nazi concentration camps. 1933-1939. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-05-000823-7 .
  • Kaspar Nürnberg: Branch of the Berlin Police Headquarters: The "state concentration camp" Sonnenburg near Küstrin. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (Ed.): Dominion and violence. Early concentration camps 1933–1939. Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-932482-82-4 , pp. 83-100 ( History of the Concentration Camps 1933-1945. Part 2).
  • Christina Morina : The "Torture Hell Sonnenburg". Memorial of the former Sonnenburg / Słonsk concentration camp 1933–1945. Published by the Rotary Club Frankfurt (Oder) and the city of Słonsk. Frankfurt (Oder) 2004.
  • Kaspar Nürnberg: Sonnenburg. In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 2: Early camp, Dachau, Emsland camp. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52962-3 , pp. 200-207.
  • Hans Coppi , Kamil Majchrzak (ed.): The concentration camp and penitentiary Sonnenburg. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-86331-227-5 .
  • Kamil Majchrzak: Possibilities of European Remembrance Work. The German concentration camp and penitentiary of Sonnenburg . In: information. Scientific journal of the German Resistance Study Group 1933–1945, Issue 89, 2019.

Web links

Commons : Zuchthaus Sonnenburg  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ TK25 sheet 3454 Sonnenburg - edition 1938 ( Memento of December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Gerhard Paul : “These shootings didn't affect me at all anymore.” The Gestapo's end-of-war crimes in 1944/45 . In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Gerhard Paul: The Gestapo in the Second World War. "Home Front" and Occupied Europe. Primus-Verlag, Darmstadt 2000, ISBN 3-89678-188-X , pp. 543-568, here p. 557. The number of those killed is given as 740 (without evidence).
  3. ↑ Names in: Wolfgang Schumann, Olaf Groehler (lead): Germany in the Second World War. Volume 6: The smashing of Hitlerite fascism and the liberation of the German people (June 1944 to May 8, 1945). Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1985, p. 644. The number of those killed is given as 810 (without evidence).
  4. ↑ Sonnenburg massacre - mass murder still deep in memory after 70 years . In: Luxemburger Wort , January 30, 2015; accessed October 27, 2015.
  5. ↑ Kamil Majchrzak: The legal (non-) processing of the crimes in the Sonnenburg concentration camp and prison. In: Hans Coppi , Kamil Majchrzak (ed.): The concentration camp and prison Sonnenburg. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-86331-227-5 , p. 200.
  6. ↑ Kamil Majchrzak: The legal (non-) processing of the crimes in the Sonnenburg concentration camp and prison. In: Hans Coppi , Kamil Majchrzak (ed.): The concentration camp and prison Sonnenburg. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-86331-227-5 , p. 202.
  7. ^ Message from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) in Szczecin (OKŚZpNP S 24/14 / Zn ipn.gov.pl ( Memento of December 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive )) regarding the resumption of the proceedings after their suspension, regarding Nazi crimes in Sonnenburg prison in Słońsk from 1942–1945.
  8. ^ A b Gerhard Hoffmann: Antifascist Resistance in Frankfurt / Oder and Surroundings , 1999, p. 75.
  9. ↑ Gerhard Hoffmann: Antifascist Resistance , 1999, p. 4.

Coordinates: 52 ° 33 ′ 52 ″  N , 14 ° 48 ′ 36 ″  E