Neckargartach camp

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Memorial in the concentration camp cemetery on Böllinger Strasse

The camp Neckargartach was a concentration camp of the SS and went as SS labor camp Capricorn in history. The camp was located on the outskirts of Heilbronn and is named after the Neckargartach district.

history

In July 1944, a Neckargartach concentration camp was opened at the end of the village in the direction of Bad Wimpfen as an external unit of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace: the Steinbock SS labor camp. The Neckargartach concentration camp external command belonged to the so-called Neckar camps , to which the prisoners of the Natzweiler concentration camp and its external commandos located in occupied France were relocated before the approaching Allied armies in late summer 1944. The total of nineteen barracks belonging to the concentration camp external command stood on the site, surrounded by board and barbed wire fences and four watchtowers.

The first 200 concentration camp prisoners came to Neckargartach on September 4, 1944 from the Kochendorf concentration camp . Transports with 600 prisoners from the Markirch subcamp of the Natzweiler concentration camp followed by mid-September . Several hundred prisoners from Longwy and Deutsch-Oth in Lorraine and from Wesserling-Urbis in Alsace followed in the same year. In the winter of 1944/45 the occupancy rose to 1,000 to 1,100 prisoners. Under the direction of the Organization Todt (OT) and the civil engineering company Berger, they were used in two tunnels of the Neckargartach salt mine, where IG Farben AG produced armaments and the food company Tengelmann stored goods. The prisoners were also used for other work, including the construction of tunnels for the underground relocation of the production of armaments and later for clean-up work and to rescue the bomb victims after the heavy air raid on Heilbronn on December 4, 1944. The work took place under the worst living and working conditions which resulted in the death of numerous prisoners by the time the camp was cleared in April 1945. In addition to the work on the Steinbock relocation project , the prisoners on Wimpfener Strasse also had to expand an air raid shelter for OT members and civilians. You yourself were generally not allowed to use these shelters.

In the first week of April 1945, the SS cleared the camp. Some of the prisoners were taken to the Dachau concentration camp on foot in the so-called Hessental Death March and some in freight wagons. The camp was officially closed on April 6, 1945. What happened to the other 842 prisoners who were once among the inmates of Neckargartach has not been clarified.

After being transported to the Dachau concentration camp there, on April 27, 1945, the arrival of 258 Neckargartach prisoners was registered.

Today nothing is left of the concentration camp. A memorial in the concentration camp cemetery on Böllinger Straße commemorates the 246 dead who were reburied there. The last of the former prisoner barracks on Böllinger Strasse was demolished in 1986. The camp was located on the outskirts of Neckargartach between Böllinger and Wimpfener Straße near today's sports field.

literature

  • Local history guide to sites of resistance and persecution 1933–1945 . German Resistance Study Group. Vol. 5/1, Baden-Württemberg I, administrative districts of Karlsruhe and Stuttgart. VAS, Frankfurt 1991, ISBN 3-88864-032-6
  • Heinz Risel: concentration camp in Heilbronn. The SS Steinbock labor camp in Neckargartach. Eyewitness reports - documents - facts with material about Kochendorf and Bad Rappenau . Self-published, Nordheim 1987, ISBN 3-9801585-0-0
  • Maurice Voutey: Prisonnier de l'invraisemblable ou l'extravagance du rêve. Quatre seasons à Dachau et dans les camps du Neckar . Éditions de l'Armançon, Précy-sous-Thil 1995, ISBN 2-90659-448-2
  • Roger Farelle: Je suis un Rescapé of bagnes you Neckar . Editions Volets Verts 2000, ISBN 2-91009-015-9

Web links

Coordinates: 49 ° 10 ′ 30 ″  N , 9 ° 11 ′ 54 ″  E