Prisoner of War camp "Hope Valley"
The prisoner of war camp "Hoffnungsthal" was a Wehrmacht camp in Rösrath near Cologne during World War II . "Hope valley" was the unofficial name, in the administrative language the camp was called "Work Command 281 of the Wahn military training area".
There is a district of Rösrath, which is called hope valley, but is a few kilometers away. The history association Rösrath therefore considers the naming of the camp to be “Nazi cynicism”.
The warehouse
The prisoner of war camp "Hoffnungsthal" was located on the former Wahn shooting range and was used as such from 1940 during the Second World War . The buildings had been built before the First World War and were used one after the other for different purposes.
Initially, French prisoners of war were housed in the camp, followed by around 1200 Poles in May 1941, who stayed in the camp until mid-1944. "Hope valley" was the central prisoner of war camp for Polish ensigns in Germany. In total, the inmates came from at least eleven different countries. When, from the end of 1944, mainly Soviet prisoners were added, conditions in the camp deteriorated rapidly. The food became worse than before, and torture and executions occurred. The case of a man who was tied to a stake, doused with water and froze to death on a January night in 1945, has been passed down orally.
The roof of the prisoner-of-war camp was clearly marked with the inscription "POW" (Prisoner of War = German: prisoner of war), which is why the area was largely spared from bomb attacks. Next to the prisoner-of-war camp there was a military radio defenses that listened to English radio traffic.
The prisoners were housed in simple wooden barracks that could hardly be heated. They were used as forced laborers and worked in numerous companies in the area: “They often worked their way to death.” On the other hand, this gave the workers the opportunity to get a modest amount of food by swapping or hamstering. Most, however, were so exhausted that they suffered from jaundice or diarrhea.
There were numerous attempts to escape. Those prisoners who were taken again were given blue French booty uniforms from the First World War, which were additionally marked with a red cross or the inscription "KG". This group was housed separately and specially guarded and called the "Blue Division". Its members were only used to work in the heath itself, to make it difficult for them to flee again.
In September 1944, American soldiers who had been captured in unsuccessful parachute attacks were also detained in the camp.
On April 12, 1945 around 1,500 prisoners of war were released from the camp by US troops. On their return home, many of the Soviet prisoners were deported to gulags or immediately executed on Stalin's orders , as they were allegedly "traitors". German prisoners of war were again housed in the camp until shortly afterwards the “Pestalozzi Children's Village” for orphaned and homeless children and young people was built on the site.
Exhibition and memorial
The former warehouse has belonged to the Stephansheide children's village run by Diakonie Michaelshoven since 1950 . The Wahner Heide is now a nature reserve . First in the Stephanus chapel and now in another building of the children's village, an exhibition on the prisoner-of-war camp "Hoffnungsthal", which was opened in 1993 by the Rösrath history association , can be seen. The exhibition was opened in the presence of three former Polish prisoners and the then Polish cultural attaché. This was followed by a visit by a Russian delegation headed by Marshal Viktor Georgievich Kulikov .
The former camp cemetery is now a memorial and bears the name Kalmusweiher . 112 prisoners, 109 of them Soviet victims, are buried on its property. Most of them died in the final months of the war.
On the memorial stone of the honorary complex it is written that the camp dead were "victims of hunger, disease and violence": "Their suffering is a reminder for peace."
Web links
- List of 34 dead Russian prisoners of war from the Hoffnungsthal / Kalmusweiher / Stephansheide military cemetery, according to the gravestones. floerken.eu, accessed on May 18, 2014 . (with links to further lists)
Coordinates: 50 ° 53 '25 " N , 7 ° 8' 58.3" E
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g Guido Wagner: Subject: POW camp Hopesthal 1940–1945 , On the opening of the memorial exhibition in the Stephansheide Chapel on October 3, 1993, Rösrather Denkmäler 3, History Association for the Community of Rösrath and Surroundings eV, Rösrath 1993, ISBN 3-922413-37-4
- ↑ a b Thomas Rausch: An idyll with an eventful history. Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, August 9, 2013, accessed on May 18, 2014 .
- ↑ Wahn military training area. (No longer available online.) Porz am Rhein, archived from the original on June 8, 2015 ; Retrieved May 19, 2014 .
- ↑ a b c d e Russian forced laborers / prisoners of war in Porz and in the Hoffnungsthal camp. minderheiten-in-porz.de, accessed on May 18, 2014 .
- ↑ Thomas Rausch: Stephansheide: Almost like in a real family. In: ksta.de. May 11, 2010, accessed July 13, 2019 .
- ^ Commemorative exhibition for the prisoner of war camp Hopesthal. Landschaftsverband Rheinland, accessed on May 18, 2014 .