Büderich prisoner of war camp
The Büderich prisoner of war camp was the northernmost of the so-called Rhine meadow camps .
history
The camp was set up by the Americans on April 20, 1945 for captured German soldiers. The approximately 90 hectare warehouse was located on the Meerfeld on the outskirts of Büderich, bounded by the then long-distance road 58 , the Boxteler Bahn or the Haltern – Venlo railway , the Borth salt mine and the town of Büderich. It was surrounded by barbed wire. Around 80,000 prisoners of war had to live unprotected on bare fields until the camp was dissolved on June 15, 1945 and the prisoners were marched to the Rheinberg camp.
The conditions in the camp are described as inhumane. There was no roofing, and the prisoners of war were not allowed to keep their tent sheets either, so that they sought shelter from the weather in poorly dug holes in the ground. The food supply was also inadequate. The soldiers who were taken prisoner after the unconditional surrender were called Disarmed Enemy Forces , i.e. disarmed enemy forces; they were initially not treated as prisoners of war in accordance with the Geneva Convention . According to official information, 128 soldiers died in captivity.
memorial
On August 26, 1965, the memorial to the memory of the Büderich prisoner-of-war camp was inaugurated in the presence of around 300 former inmates. Mayor Bernhard Große Holtforth welcomed the guests and guests of honor, including District Administrator Rolf Soltau , District Director Hübner, Father Christ, the mayors and community directors of the neighboring communities of Borth and Menzelen as well as Pastors Heistrüwers, Quante and Maas. Father Christ, who had campaigned for better conditions in the camp, was also present. In his address he said: "Why now the memory of that time? So that such chaos never occurs again! Today one has to make use of the experiences of the past."
The erection of the memorial goes back to an initiative of the deputy mayor Josef Hackstein, in 1961 he made the corresponding application in the local council. Landowner Hans Heicks made the land available for the erection of the memorial, which was designed by the architect Bernhard Schott.
literature
- St. Pankratius-Schützenbruderschaft Gest eV: Festschrift Gest and the St. Pankratius-Schützenbruderschaft 1684-1984 eV , 1984
- Heimatverein Büderich u. Gest eV: Büderich prisoner of war camp, result of a wrong track , 1995
- Alexander Berkel: War on your own doorstep - Rhine crossing and air landing on the Lower Rhine in 1945 , publisher: Stadt Wesel, revised and expanded edition 2004, ISBN 3924380228
- Paul Hunter ; Wiltrud Woisetschläger [edit.]: Wanderer between the worlds: the memoirs of the Landau architect Paul Jäger / recorded by Wiltrud Woisetschläger . Impflingen 2005, ISBN 3-00-016451-0 .
- Rüdiger Gollnick: Foreign in enemy country - foreign in home country (DP camp and Rheinwiesen camp search for traces on the Lower Rhine) . Pagina Verlag GmbH, Goch 2017, ISBN 978-3-946509-11-0 .
Web links
- Pits under the Büderich bypass - archaeologists deal with the traces of the prisoner of war camp and document them in the NRZ from July 21, 2012
Coordinates: 51 ° 37 '23 " N , 6 ° 33' 57.1" E
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://www.wesel.de/de/stadtportrait/mahnmal-zur-erinnerung-an-das-kriegsgefangenenlager-in-wesel-buederich/
- ↑ http://www.rp-online.de/nrw/staedte/wesel/80-000-lagen-auf-blankem-acker-aid-1.1084782
- ↑ http://www.denkmalprojekt.org/2013/buederich_kriegsgeflager_stadt-wesel_kreis-wesel_wk2_nrw.html
- ↑ http://www.rp-online.de/nrw/staedte/wesel/80-000-lagen-auf-blankem-acker-aid-1.1084782