Föhrenwald camp

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Monument to the Föhrenwald camp by Ernst Grünwald (1998)

The Föhrenwald camp in the Waldram district in the town of Wolfratshausen in Upper Bavaria, as an initial urban settlement , became a camp for forced laborers and after 1945 a camp for refugees and is now a housing estate again.

Forced labor camp

Built in 1937, the complex was initially a single-family and terraced housing estate to accommodate employees of the explosives and ammunition factories of Deutsche Sprengchemie GmbH (DSC) and Dynamit Actien-Gesellschaft (DAG) in the state forest of Wolfratshausen. For the employees it was forced laborers , members of the Reich Labor Service in the era of National Socialism and to civilian employees (mainly in the administration). In addition to the Föhrenwald camp, the Buchberg camps also existed nearby on what is now known as the Böhmwiese opposite the Geretsried town hall and Stein (today a part of Geretsried).

Camp for displaced persons

After the end of the Second World War, the Föhrenwald camp became a reception camp for so-called displaced persons (DP) who had escaped the National Socialist extermination policy. This is why the Föhrenwald camp is also referred to as the DP camp in the literature .

Immediately after the end of the war in Bavaria, the American army placed freed forced laborers in the camp. At the beginning of May 1945, after the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp , some survivors of the death march were also housed in the Föhrenwald camp. Over time, more and more Jewish survivors of the Holocaust came to Föhrenwald, so that the camp was declared a Jewish Displaced Person Center in September 1945.

Plan of the Föhrenwald camp

From November 1945 an international aid organization, the UNRRA , took over the administration of all DP camps in the American occupation zone . The Föhrenwald camp was then largely self- governed by a local council chaired by Henry Cohen . These changes were related to the implementation of the proposals of the Harrison Report , which had sharply criticized the general situation in the DP camps in Germany and Austria. Between 1946 and 1948, Föhrenwald was one of the largest DP camps in the American occupation zone with around 5,600 residents .

For most of the residents of the Föhrenwald camp, repatriation to their countries of origin or staying in Germany was out of the question. The majority tried to emigrate to Israel (initially still a British mandate ) or to the United States or Canada. However, many of the emigrants returned illegally to Föhrenwald after personal setbacks or as a result of health problems. Another part of the residents was weakened or sick from the injustice suffered. These people were therefore permanently dependent on the support of the American Joint Distribution Committee and German welfare.

In addition to those who were still waiting to leave the country, between 1949 and 1953 a total of around 3,500 so-called “returnees” had to be temporarily housed in Föhrenwald. These were people who had already emigrated to other countries - mostly to Israel - but who had not been able to establish themselves there or had to return for health reasons.

Attached to the Föhrenwald camp was also a barracks settlement near Königsdorf , the former highland camp that was built in 1936 for the purposes of the Hitler Youth and the BDM . After the war, officers were trained by the Hagana in the highland camp for the upcoming conflicts over the establishment of the state of Israel .

From December 1951, the Föhrenwald camp came under German administration and was declared a “government camp for homeless foreigners ”. The Föhrenwald camp was officially dissolved in 1956, but the last residents did not leave the camp until February 1957.

Resident numbers

Period Residents
November 1945 3,000
January 1946 5,300
July 1946 4.147
October 1946 4,651
February 1947 4,192
September 1947 4,296
October 1948 3,980
March 1949 4.033
December 1949 3,863
March 1950 3,413
February 1951 3,531
May 1951 2,751
February 1952 1,950
December 1952 1,700
July 1954 1,309

Street names

1939-1945 1945-1956 from 1956
Föhrenallee Pennsylvania Street Faulhaberstrasse
Tiroler Strasse Kentucky Street Steichelestrasse
Sudetenstrasse (southern part) Tennessee Street Törringstrasse
Sudetenstrasse (northern part) Ohio Street Weldenstrasse
Metz street Ohio Street Steinstrasse
Kärntner Strasse Missouri Street Scherrstrasse
Steierer Strasse Florida Street Gebsattelstrasse
Wiener Straße Wisconsin Street Gebeckstrasse
Ostmark Street Auerbach Street Bettingerstrasse
Lothringer Strasse Indiana Street Dean White Street
Luxemburger Strasse Michigan Street Wolframstrasse
Alsatian street Illinois Street Andreasstrasse
Memeler Strasse New York street Rupertstrasse
Danzig freedom Independence Place Kolpingplatz
Saarpfalz Street New Jersey Street Korbinianstrasse
Adolf Hitler Square Roosevelt Square Seminar place / Thomastraße

Housing estate for displaced persons

The site and the farm buildings had already been acquired in October 1955 by the diocesan settlement agency founded by Cardinal Joseph Wendel and the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising , which later also set up the St. Matthias late-career seminar with a grammar school and college here. From April 1956, displaced families were resettled on the site , so that at times displaced persons and German displaced persons lived together on the site of the Föhrenwald camp.

The buildings were renovated and sold to expellees and Wolfratshausen families at favorable terms. In the course of the post-war period, the former Föhrenwald camp became the Wolfratshausen district of Waldram on November 7, 1957.

The areas of the former factories are now part of the urban area of ​​Geretsried (see there history path ).

literature

  • Heike Ander, Michaela Melián (Ed.): Föhrenwald. Revolver, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-86588-185-8 .
  • Angelika Königseder, Juliane Wetzel : Courage to live in the waiting room - The Jewish DPs (Displaced Persons) in post-war Germany. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-16835-X .
  • Sybille Krafft , Wolfgang Schäl-von Gamm: Under the yoke. Forced labor in the Wolfratshauser Forest. ed. v. Historical Association Wolfratshausen. Self-published, Wolfratshausen 2008, OCLC 645292068 .
  • Joachim Schroeder: The Föhrenwald DP camp 1945-1951 . In: Julius H. Schoeps (ed.): Life in the land of perpetrators: Jews in post-war Germany (1945-1952) . Berlin: Jüdische Verl.-Anstalt, 2001, pp. 47–62

Exhibitions

  • The children from the Föhrenwald camp . The exhibition conceived by Kirsten Jörgensen and Sybille Krafft is dedicated to the long neglected aspect of growing up Jewish children after the end of the war in Upper Bavaria, especially in the Föhrenwald camp. The photo documentation shows previously unpublished pictures from private collections and international archives. It is intended as a traveling exhibition and can be borrowed from the Bürger association for the Waldram-Föhrenwald bathhouse .

Web links

Commons : Lager Föhrenwald  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ www.archivportal-toel-wor.de Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen district> Archive> The Föhrenwald settlement. Accessed July 20, 2014.
  2. ↑ Hans-Peter Föhrding / Heinz Verfürth + When the Jews fled to Germany + p. 260ff, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2017, ISBN 978-3-462-04866-7
  3. ^ Föhrenwald - Jewish DP camp after-the-shoah.org
  4. ↑ http://www.badehauswaldram.de/2014_pdf/bawa_flyer_2014.pdf
  5. ↑ http://www.bseb.de/ov/waldram/geschichte
  6. ↑ http://www.badehauswaldram.de/

Coordinates: 47 ° 54 ′ 1 ″  N , 11 ° 26 ′ 42 ″  E