Camp 7503/11 Anzhero-Sudzensk

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The NKVD / MWD - Camp 7503/11 Anzhero-Sudschensk was a labor camp in Siberia , in the Kemerovo Oblast , about 500 km east of the city of Novokuznetsk , directly on the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway .

It was a forced labor camp and was part of the Gulag system . The camp inmates had to work mainly in coal shaft 9/15.

Until 1946 there were deportees in the camp who came from the former Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans (ASSR) . In March 1947, around 1,000 able-bodied German interned civilians were deported there from Soviet special camp No. 1 in Mühlberg , mostly young people. There were numerous such camps in Siberia. The total number of those deported from Germany to labor camps is estimated at 20,000 to 23,000.

Volga Germans

After the outbreak of the German-Soviet War in 1941, the Volga Germans were accused of collaborating with the Germans, the Volga German Republic dissolved and the people deported to Siberia, whereby more than 30% were killed. Until 1946, many of the Volga Germans were still housed in camps. They were discriminated against until 1956 by the fact that they were obliged to register, restricted to exit and restricted freedom of travel. Even after the rehabilitation by the Soviet authorities in 1964, the Volga-German Republic was never re-established, although the Russian-Germans very often pushed for the restoration of their autonomous republic.

Deported Germans

prehistory

The NKVD / MWD had taken many German civilians into custody in “ special camps ”. They were brought there after extensive interrogation without being convicted by Soviet tribunals. Most of the interrogations were conducted using torture. There was no defense. The arrested were thus at the mercy of the questioning officers.

Many young people were among the inmates of the special camps because they had received pre-military training in military training camps in 1945 . The Soviets suspected that this training was for the purpose of forming " partisan groups " ( werewolf ). In special camp No. 1 Mühlberg, examinations by Soviet doctors took place in January 1947 with the aim of separating prisoners who were still able to work.

The health of the camp inmates was so poor, however, that out of around 12,000 prisoners, only around 800 were declared fit for work. Most of them were members of the camp commandos (i.e. they had tasks within the camp) in Mühlberg, who had to be in a relatively good state of health as a result of minimal additional provisions. About 200 prisoners were brought to Mühlberg from other camps. The approximately 1000 prisoners selected for deportation were mainly composed of young people born in 1928/29 who had been accused of belonging to the werewolf, small officials of the NSDAP and other civilians whom the NKVD / MWD had arrested as unpopular people.

On February 8, 1947, prisoners were loaded into cattle wagons in the fur hat transport in Neuburxdorf , which arrived at the Anhero-Sudschensk freight station after 33 days . The prisoners on the transport had previously been equipped with cotton clothing and fur hats of the German Wehrmacht to protect them from the severe cold during the transport.

Conditions of detention

The camp regime was strict, but not nearly as brutal as in Mühlberg. While the warehouse fence in Mühlberg consisted of five wire fences, an electric fence and a screen, in camp 7503/11 the fence was fitted with a screen, but only with a wire fence, but had the obligatory watchtowers at the four corners.

Medical care for the inmates was provided by a German camp doctor. A Soviet doctor was in control of the doctor. Medicines and medical equipment were hardly available, however. Difficult cases as well as major operations were referred to the local hospital. The prisoners' beds were equipped with straw sacks and blankets. While the prisoners in Mühlberg suffered from a great plague of fleas, it was lice and bed bugs that troubled the deportees here.

The rations consisted of half a liter of soup or kascha three times a day, as well as 570 g of bread for surface workers and 1070 g for mine workers. Even if these bread rations appeared to be plentiful, it should be noted that there were no spreads. The warm food was very one-sided and there was either barley, cabbage or millet for months. This type of food promoted the spread of dystrophy and other deficiency diseases, which in many cases led to death.

The guard on the way to the workplaces was carried out by guards with rifles. Depending on the international situation, bayonets were attached to the rifles and shepherds were also brought along. The treatment of the prisoners by the guards was, apart from a few attacks, entirely humane.

While the surface construction sites were demarcated by markings and guarded by the camp guards, there was no need to guard the shaft due to the local circumstances. During the first winter, the prisoners were left with the winter clothing they had received in Mühlberg, while in the following years they were given out cleaned winter clothing that had previously been worn by Soviet prisoners. From 1948 it was possible to write postcards home. The postcards were provided with a return receipt on which the relatives could reply. The issue of postcards to the prisoners was dependent on their work performance.

There was an Antifa-Aktiv ( anti-fascist active) in the camp , which enforced the political demands of the Soviet political officer . All detainees had to take part in political training courses which this active carried out. Aktiv was also instrumental in assigning the prisoners to the appropriate work details, so that unpopular people were assigned poor jobs and could not earn any money with it. The prisoners were able to borrow books by Soviet and Russian authors in German from the camp library. This was a major improvement over the camps in Germany.

Labor input

The aim of the Soviet organs in the camp was to keep the prisoners as workers in order to deploy them in important factories in the city of Anhero-Sudschensk. After about four weeks of quarantine, the internees came to work in the coal shaft 9/15, in a central mechanical workshop and on surface construction sites. Three-shift operation was carried out in the shaft.

With the exception of a few older prisoners, the work details consisted of unqualified people, because hardly anyone had worked in the shaft or on construction sites. Within a short time, however, specialists had developed among the prisoners who were in no way inferior to the Russians in their work performance, and were even superior to them. This went so far that some sections in shaft 9/15 had major problems with plan compliance when, at the end of 1948, German prisoners were no longer allowed to work in the shaft. A shaft explosion in the Donets Basin , in which many German prisoners of war are said to have died, was assumed to be the reason for the shaft ban .

In shaft 9/15 there were many contacts with Volga Germans who forgot their German language skills as soon as a natshalnik (Soviet climber) approached. In exceptional cases, friendships developed with the German pals. Japanese prisoners of war were employed exclusively as timber tugs in shaft 9/15. The encounters between Germans and Japanese turned out to be very friendly. The Soviet civilian mine workers did not like this. In general, money was made in the mechanical workshop, because there were mainly German workers who had learned a metal trade. In the shaft it was different, there a good or bad job often decided whether money could be earned or not.

The camp administration withheld 495 rubles from the wages earned for food, clothing, accommodation and reparations. Additional earnings were credited and occasionally paid out at 150 rubles each. In the camp canteen you could buy food and tobacco products to a limited extent.

Victim

During the camp in the SU (1947–1952), 122 people died from transporting fur hats to the Mühlberg camp.

The dead of the camp 7503/11 were buried makeshiftly by fellow inmates on the so-called “Japanerberg” in Anhero-Sudschensk. There were no commemorations. The relatives received no news. The dead from the Japanese camp were also buried on the Japanese Mountain. The Japanese had erected a memorial stone at this point, but it was repeatedly damaged. The dead were then exhumed, the bones burned and the ashes transferred to Japan. There is still no solution for the German dead. The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. intends to erect a memorial here.

Dissolution of the camp

Camp 7503/11 was closed in mid-1949. Some of the prisoners who remained in the camp were transported to Kemerovo , Stalinsk , and others to camp 7525/7 Prokopyevsk .

After it became possible to visit the camp as a result of the turning point in 1989, former camp inmates traveled to Anhero-Sudzensk in May 1997. The two-story barracks had meanwhile been torn down, and stone houses were now in their place. Some old women who lived there now could still remember the former camp.

Further literature and eyewitness reports on the topic (selection)

In the past, some works that reflect the events of that time have been published by renowned publishers. Furthermore, reports from contemporary witnesses can be found in self-publishing and other media, which reflect the story from the direct experience of those affected. These are the only sources of the inner life in the Gulag camps.

  • Peter Hilkes: After the collapse of the Soviet Union. Problems of the Russian Germans in shaping their future in the successor states . In: Ethnos-Nation 2, H. 2, 1994, ISSN  0943-7738 , pp. 61-73.
  • Helmut Leppert: Odyssey of a Youth. 5th edition. Initiative group camp Mühlberg / Elbe e. V. 2008.
  • Erhard Krätzschmar: ... from Wurzen via Mühlberg to Siberia ... those affected remember. (Bitter youth 1945–1950) . Swing, Colditz. 1995. Web link (PDF; 13.6 MB), accessed on March 23, 2013
  • Günter Polster, Herbert Hecht: "We were already half Russians ..." Deported and survived in GULAG ., 1998, booklet to the film of the same name by Dirk Jungnickel , 63 pp.
  • Siegfried Rulc: Under suspicion of werewolf - an incomplete chronicle of our years 1945 to 1950 . Mironde-Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3937654188
  • Bernhard Sauer: Seduced by Hitler - punished by Stalin. From the life of Rudolf Freitag . In: Geschichte-Wissen August 2017. Weblink (PDF; 17.2 MB), accessed on October 9, 2017.
  • Werner Keller: Deported to Siberia. (Contemporary witness report) In: Meeraner Blatt. no year
  • Herbert Hecht: Sibirische Blocken (contemporary witness report), self-published, Gernrode 2006.
  • Siegfried Müller: Committed to the truth. From Schwarzenberg to the Gulags of Siberia. (Contemporary witness report), Books on Demand Verlag, ISBN 978-3-8448-7155-5 , Norderstedt. 2011

Sources used and individual references

  • Peter Hilkes: After the collapse of the Soviet Union. Problems of the Russian Germans in shaping their future in the successor states . In: Ethnos-Nation 2, H. 2, 1994, ISSN  0943-7738 , pp. 61-73.
  • Herbert Hecht: Siberian bells . Self-published, Gernrode 2006. Weblink (PDF; 28.5 MB), accessed on March 23, 2013
  • Siegfried Rulc: Incomplete Chronicle, 1945–1950. A diary about the werewolf legend. 3rd, supplemented edition. Self-published, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-00-002235-X .


Coordinates: 56 ° 4 ′ 38 "  N , 86 ° 1 ′ 53"  E