Isenschnibbe Gardelegen field barn memorial

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Victims of mass murder, April 22, 1945 in Gardelegen

The Isenschnibbe Gardelegen barn memorial in Gardelegen in Saxony-Anhalt commemorates the murder of more than 1000 concentration camp prisoners in a massacre and death marches around Gardelegen in the last days of the Second World War . It was a Nazi final phase crime .

Until 2015 the site was called the Isenschnibber Feldscheune memorial and memorial site . The Hanseatic City of Gardelegen and the Sachsen-Anhalt Memorials Foundation jointly agreed on their current name in a contract to transfer the formerly municipal memorial to the sponsorship of the State of Saxony-Anhalt.

The massacre

On April 13, 1945, 1,016 concentration camp prisoners were murdered in the Isenschnibber field barn, about one kilometer northeast of the city .

background

In early April 1945, is now close to the front were satellite camp of Mittelbau-Dora in Ellrich - Bürgergarten , Ilfeld , Mackenrode , Nüxei , Osterhagen , Rottleberode , Stempeda and Wieda and a satellite camp of Neuengamme concentration camp in Hannover-sticks in front of the approaching Allied vacated troops. The camp guards of the SS and the Wehrmacht drove the concentration camp prisoners from the camps in the southern Harz foreland, partly in evacuation transports by train to the Altmark , and partly on death marches on foot across the Harz . Their original destination was probably the Neuengamme, Bergen-Belsen and Sachsenhausen concentration camps .

In Wernigerode , the columns of prisoners marched across the Harz Mountains were crammed into freight wagons and transported further north by train. Another group of around 600 sick prisoners from the Hanover-Stöcken concentration camp was loaded directly into freight wagons to be taken to Bergen-Belsen.

After several days of traveling, the transport trains with the concentration camp prisoners from Hanover and the Harz Mountains in the vicinity of Gardelegen - in Mieste , Zienau , Bergfriede and Letzlingen - came to a halt. The original destinations could no longer be reached due to destroyed track systems, defective locomotives and the approaching front. As a result of this situation, there were around 4,000 to 5,000 prisoners in the region.

SS Hauptscharführer Erhard Brauny and other members of the guards, the Wehrmacht and the Volkssturm drove the survivors of the murderous transports on foot on death marches in different directions. Some of the prisoners finally ended up in Gardelegen in the Remonteschule , a barracks for cavalry training . There were between 1,050 and 1,100 prisoners there on April 13, 1945. Many prisoners were murdered along the marching routes, and some managed to escape.

While the prisoners in the barracks had no further clarity about their fate, NSDAP district leader Gerhard Thiele ordered their murder. On the evening of April 13th, the prisoners were herded in columns of 100 people to a field barn on the Isenschnibbe estate on the outskirts. People unable to walk were transported by carts. After their arrival, the prisoners were crammed into the stone building, which was “hard-roofed” with a tiled roof, and locked up. Three of the four large sliding doors were locked.

Course of the crime, perpetrator and those involved

Gardelegen, April 16, 1945

There are different descriptions in detail about the further course of the crime.

According to several accounts, the floor of the barn was covered with straw that had been soaked with petrol by the perpetrators. The guards lit the straw. The prisoners were twice able to prevent the fire from breaking out by suffocating it with clothes, sacks or blankets.

The accounts agree that the guards shot into the barn to kill the inmates. Machine guns, hand grenades, bazookas, signal ammunition and phosphor grenades are named as murder tools. Petrol was certainly brought in from Gardelegen that night to set fire to the inside of the barn and burn the corpses.

Functionaries of the NSDAP, SA men, members of the SS and Waffen-SS , soldiers of the Air Force and the local cavalry school, members of a paratrooper unit, police forces, members of the Hitler Youth , members of the Volkssturm , took part in the murder and the subsequent attempt to remove the traces of the crime. Members of the Reich Labor Service , members of the technical emergency service and the fire brigade. In addition, the perpetrators used 25 Kapos as prison functionaries for their organizational support . The burial of the partly charred corpses after the massacre in anonymous mass pits next to the barn succeeded only imperfectly.

The victims of the massacre came from Poland, the then Soviet Union , France, Hungary, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia , the Netherlands, Spain and Mexico. The identity of the names of only 305 murdered people could be determined after the crime scene was discovered. According to various sources, the number of survivors of the massacre is given as 7 to 33.

The Allies in Gardelegen

On April 14, 1945, at 17:00 took the 102nd Infantry Division of the US Army under its commander Brigadier General Frank A. Keating a Gardelegen. The city surrendered around 7 p.m., exactly 24 hours after the start of the mass murder . On April 15, US soldiers from Company F, 2nd Battalion, 405th Regiment, 102nd Infantry Division discovered the scene.

According to eyewitness reports, 20 SS men who were involved in the mass murder were shot on the spot by the Americans. The person primarily responsible for the mass murder in Gardelegen, the NSDAP district leader and SS Obersturmbannführer Gerhard Thiele , was able to go into hiding with false papers; he was never caught, died in 1994 and was only exposed afterwards. SS-Hauptscharführer Erhard Brauny , one of the transport leaders , was sentenced to life imprisonment in Dachau in 1947 and died in 1950.

The cemetery of honor

Memorial book with the names of the murdered in front of the graves in the cemetery of honor

After the massacre was discovered, the Americans forced the residents of Gardelegen to visit the crime scene. All male residents over the age of 16 - 250 to 300 people - were ordered to the barn with sheets, spades and grave crosses and had to exhume the victims, some of them still lying in the barn, some of them already buried, and bury them in dignified individual graves not far from the burned-out barn. The graves were each marked with a white cross or, if the person was Jewish, with a white Star of David . This was also filmed. The film shows rescues of entire corpses, but also scenes in which body parts become detached. These scenes are part of the documentary The Death Mills . The burials lasted four days. When the cemetery was officially inaugurated on April 25, 1945 by the American troops, it was given the status of a military cemetery of honor , and severe penalties were threatened for desecrating. From the initially American military administration, residents of Gardelegen were obliged to care for a certain grave personally and for life. Later, during the existence of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) , this task was transferred to individual groups of the Free German Youth (FDJ) .

In its May 7, 1945 issue, the US magazine Life reported on the massacre and referred to it as The Holocaust of Gardelegen .

The original memorial plaque of the Americans, who declared the place a military cemetery and threatened the population with penalties for any desecration of the cemetery, was removed in 1965 by a resolution of the SED district leadership and replaced by a new plaque. It did not mention that civilians from the region had also participated in the murder of concentration camp prisoners in April 1945. The arrival of the American troops in Gardelegen and the burial of the murdered ordered by them were no longer mentioned. Instead, it said on the new board: “THE POPULATION HAVE BURIED THEM AND ESTABLISHED THEM A MEMORIAL. THIS SITE SHOULD ALWAYS BE A REMINDER AND OBLIGATION IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND WAR, FOR PEACE AND A HAPPY LIFE FOR ALL PEOPLE IN SOCIALISM. ”The original plaque of the Americans was used as building material for a shed wall in the city cemetery. A copy of the original plaque was reattached to the memorial in 1990.

A naming of the individual graves in the honorary cemetery has only been successful in around a third of the victims. These names have been recorded in a metal name book on the edge of the cemetery since 2011. Some victims from Belgium and France known by name were exhumed after 1945 and brought back to their homeland.

The field barn

Isenschnibber field barn after the arrival of the Americans

The barn, which was not completely destroyed by the fire, was used by Soviet soldiers after the war. a. were deployed on the adjacent Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide military training area. A significant part of the ruins served the population in the post-war years as an unofficial quarry for other buildings. In order to protect the remaining structural remains from increasing deterioration, local authorities suggested the establishment of a reminder and memorial site on the site of the historic crime scene in 1949. For this, part of the barn facade was refurbished and secured with retaining walls.

The following inscription was placed on the facade: “YOU ARE STANDING IN FRONT OF THE REMAINS OF THE WALL OF A FIELD BARN IN WHICH, ON APRIL 13, 1945, ONE OF THE CRUEST CRIMES OF FASCHISM WAS PERFORMED. IN THE NIGHT BEFORE THEIR LIBERATION, A FEW HOURS BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF THE ALLIED FORCES, 1016 INTERNATIONAL RESISTANCE AGENTS AGAINST FASCISM WERE BURNED ALIVE HERE. SHOULD YOU EVER AGREE TO FASCISM AND IMPERIALIST WAR RISK OF INDIVIDUALITY OR WEAKNESS, YOU WILL BRING NEW STRENGTH TO OUR UNFORGETTABLE DEAD. "

The memorial

GDR-era building elements in the Isenschnibbe Gardelegen memorial site

On April 14, 1946, a memorial stone was inaugurated in the honor cemetery on the first anniversary of the massacre in the presence of surviving prisoners.

During the GDR era, between 1949 and 1971, a memorial and memorial was erected on the site of the historic crime scene in several construction phases. It consisted of the remains of the façade of the barn, which was inaugurated as a memorial wall in 1953, the cemetery, a shelter with memorial plaques and the overview map with the places in the immediate vicinity of Gardelegen where other concentration camp prisoners were murdered during the death marches. The central design element was a meeting place in front of the memorial wall. The names of the states (with historical names from the 1970s) from which the victims came can be found on land stones along the former parade route to this square. In front of the barn facade is a bronze statue by the sculptor Joachim Sendler , erected in 1971 , whose facial features are inspired by Albert Kuntz . For ceremonies during the existence of the GDR, such as the swearing-in of soldiers, a wide circular path and a stone speaker's platform were laid out and two braziers were installed.

During the existence of the GDR, commemorative events were held annually around April 13th, organized by the SED and attended by companies, the administration and other institutions. In the years after reunification , the commemorative events for the anniversary of the massacre took place less centrally organized. Since 2016, the Isenschnibbe Gardelegen Memorial Site has been organizing the annual commemorative events for the anniversary of the massacre in cooperation with the Hanseatic City of Gardelegen.

The concept of the memorial and the new labeling of display boards on the site were long controversial in the 2000s. In December 2008, the City of Gardelegen and the Sachsen-Anhalt Memorials Foundation agreed to redesign the memorial. On April 13, 2011, a new visitor guidance system was inaugurated on the site of the memorial.

A resolution of the Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt in December 2012 provided for the previously municipal memorial and memorial site to be included in the sponsorship of the state's own memorial foundation. The resolution was implemented on May 1, 2015. The foundation is currently building a visitor and documentation center with a permanent exhibition and other information and educational offers on the site of the memorial.

The start of construction for this new building suddenly appeared to be in jeopardy at the end of 2016 when it became publicly known that the state government unexpectedly did not intend to plan any funds for the project in the 2017/2018 dual budget of the state of Saxony-Anhalt. The state parliament resolution of 2012 had already made the construction of a documentation center a condition for the transfer of the formerly communal memorial site to the sponsorship of the state. In addition to the city council of the Hanseatic city of Gardelegen and the district council of the Altmarkkreis Salzwedel , several regional citizens' initiatives, numerous family members of those murdered in the massacre from many countries and international associations of concentration camp survivors spoke out in favor of the construction project being carried out according to plan. This broad public support was particularly visible in January 2017, when several hundred people with candles gathered in a chain of lights on the construction site in the memorial and recreated the plan of the planned building. After this peaceful demonstration by civil society, the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt approved the budget for the construction of the documentation center.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the new building took place in April 2018, the foundation stone was laid in June 2018, the keys were handed over in October 2019. The complete commissioning and ceremonial opening of the completed documentation center with built-in permanent exhibition and visitor center by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier should take place as part of a public Commemoration ceremony for the 75th anniversary of the Gardelegen massacre on April 6, 2020. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany , this event had to be canceled in March 2020 and the memorial had to be temporarily closed to visitors. That is why the memorial is now increasingly offering offers on the Internet and is organizing a digital hands-on commemoration on the 75th anniversary of the massacre. A new opening date has not yet been set.

The memorial is located on the north-eastern outskirts of Gardelegen at the end of the urban access road "An der Gedenkstätte" which branches off from Landesstraße 27 (Gardelegen– Neuendorf am Damm ).

literature

  • Daniel Blatman: The Death Marches 1944/45. The last chapter of the National Socialist mass murder. Reinbek 2011, ISBN 978-3-498-02127-6 , (Chapters 9 and 10; pp. 520-607).
  • Andreas Froese-Karow: "Shaping commemoration." The new visitor and documentation center of the Isenschnibbe Gardelegen Memorial Site, in: Gedenkstättenrundbrief No. 183 (2016), pp. 35–43, accessed on February 12, 2018.
  • Diana Gring: The Gardelegen massacre. Approaches to the specification of death marches using the example of Gardelegen. In: Detlef Garbe, Carmen Lange (ed.): Prisoners between annihilation and liberation. Bremen 2005, ISBN 3-86108-799-5 , pp. 155-168.
  • Diana Gring: The death marches and the Gardelegen massacre - Nazi crimes in the final phase of the Second World War , Gardelegen 1993.
  • Diana Gring: "One cannot imagine that the night will ever end": The Gardelegen massacre in April 1945, in: Detlef Garbe, Carmen Lange, Carmen (ed.): Prisoners between annihilation and liberation. The dissolution of the Neuengamme concentration camp and its satellite camps by the SS in spring 1945, Bremen 2005, ISBN 3-86108-799-5 , pp. 52–56, available digitally (PDF; 47 kB) , accessed on October 3, 2015.
  • Thomas Irmer: New sources on the history of the Gardelegen massacre , in: Gedenkstättenrundbrief 156 (2010), pp. 14-19.
  • Ulrich Kalmbach, Jürgen M. Pietsch: Between forgetting and remembering. Places of remembrance in the Altmarkkreis Salzwedel , Delitzsch 2001.
  • State Center for Political Education Saxony-Anhalt (Hg). Located. Remembrance and commemoration in Saxony-Anhalt. Magdeburg 2004.
  • Joachim Neander: Gardelegen 1945. The end of the prisoner transports from the "Mittelbau" concentration camp, Magdeburg 1998.
  • Andrea Rudorff (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 16: Auschwitz concentration camp 1942–1945 and the time of the death marches 1944/45 . Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-036503-0 (documents VEJ 14/237, 238, 239, 252, 270).
  • Ingolf Seidel: Isenschnibbe field barn memorial - expansion with obstacles , LaG magazine, special edition from March 15, 2017, accessed on February 12, 2018.

Web links

Commons : Isenschnibber Feldscheune memorial  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Clear the way for the creation of a visitor center. Volksstimme, April 29, 2015, accessed on August 1, 2017 .
  2. ^ Official homepage of the Isenschnibbe Feldscheune Gardelegen memorial. Retrieved July 30, 2019 .
  3. ^ Official homepage of the Sachsen-Anhalt Memorials Foundation. Retrieved July 30, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Routes of the Death Marches ; (PDF; 1.3 MB); Retrieved October 3, 2015.
  5. ↑ Torsten Haarseim: Gardelegen 1945 - Documentation of the incomprehensible. edition winterwork, 2015, ISBN 978-3-864-68907-9 , p. 8 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  6. ^ Herbert Becker: Gardelegen. Sutton Verlag GmbH, 2011, ISBN 978-3-866-80840-9 , p. 5 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  7. ↑ As recently comprehensive in Daniel Blatman: The death marches 1944/45. Reinbek 2011, ISBN 978-3-498-02127-6 , chapters 9 and 10, here p. 553.
  8. ↑ A witness attributed the smell of gasoline to the fact that the barn had previously served as a fuel store. See Diana Gring: The death marches and the Gardelegen massacre - Nazi crimes in the final phase of the Second World War. Gardelegen 1993. p. 20 note 42 and note 40.
  9. ↑ Gardelegen Isenschnibbe-Feldscheune ( Memento from August 4, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) (accessed on April 7, 2012) / Daniel Blatman: The death marches 1944/45. P. 554.
  10. ↑ Daniel Blatman: The death marches 1944/45…. P. 541ff, p. 594.
  11. ↑ Essay by Diana Gring "One cannot imagine that the night will ever end." - The Gardelegen massacre in April 1945
  12. ↑ Number of survivors: cf. Diana Gring and hunt in the underground - Still on the wanted list of the judiciary: SS henchmen, doctors, Nazi murderers
  13. ↑ Diana Gring; s. Literature; P. 22.
  14. ↑ Diana Gring: The Death Marches…. P. 33.
  15. ↑ Steffen Könau: " The Torgauer prisoner urns ." In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung , April 12, 2005; Accessed August 16, 2007.
  16. ↑ Diana Gring: The death marches… - Photo series: marching column with spades, sheets and wooden crosses.
  17. ^ The (restored) US Army plaque at the cemetery ; Image on Wikimedia Commons
  18. ^ Map on the obligation to care for graves in the Wikimedia Commons
  19. ↑ Life Magazine . May 7, 1945, p. 35 .
  20. ↑ Aerial photos of the airfield adjacent to the military training area ( memento from May 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on April 30, 2014.
  21. ↑ Notes on the housed Soviet soldiers on the barn wall , picture in Wikimedia Commons
  22. ↑ Remnants of the barn's facade secured with retaining walls , picture in Wikimedia Commons
  23. ↑ a b Reinhard Jacobs MA: Terror under the swastika - places of remembrance in Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt , (PDF, 385 kB); Retrieved April 29, 2014.
  24. ↑ Ulrich Kalmbach, Jürgen M. Pietsch: Between forgetting and memory. Places of remembrance in the Altmarkkreis Salzwedel . Delitzsch 2001, p. 14 .
  25. ↑ We will remember the victims - article in the Volksstimme of April 13, 1961.
  26. ↑ Modeled on the ordeal of the fathers - article in the Volksstimme's online archive from April 15, 2015; accessed on August 29, 2015.
  27. ↑ Caroline Vongries: Somehow bad - The city of Gardelegen in Saxony-Anhalt has not been able to remember one of the worst Nazi crimes for years , in: Die Zeit 30/2007, July 23, 2007.
  28. ↑ J. Marten: "Sensitizing people". In: Volksstimme . December 11, 2008, archived from the original on February 1, 2015 ; accessed on February 1, 2015 .
  29. ↑ Biggest possible compromise. Volksstimme, April 8, 2011, accessed August 1, 2017 .
  30. ↑ Foundation takes over memorial. Altmark-Zeitung, April 30, 2015, accessed August 1, 2017 .
  31. ↑ Internet site of the Isenschnibbe barn memorial in Gardelegen. Retrieved August 1, 2017 .
  32. ↑ Cornelia Ahlfeld: Langer: A heavy blow. In: Volksstimme. December 3, 2016, accessed December 25, 2019 .
  33. ^ Stefan Schmidt: Protest from the district assembly and city council. In: Altmark newspaper. December 14, 2016, accessed December 25, 2019 .
  34. ↑ Marc Rath: Setting an example with candles. In: Volksstimme. January 16, 2017, accessed December 25, 2019 .
  35. ↑ Stefan Schmidt: "This is the breakthrough". In: Altmark newspaper. February 1, 2017, accessed December 25, 2019 .
  36. ^ Petra Hartmann: Start of construction on the memorial. In: Volksstimme. April 11, 2018, accessed March 17, 2020 .
  37. ^ Elke Weisbach: Milestone for a culture of remembrance. In: Altmark newspaper. June 5, 2018, accessed August 16, 2018 .
  38. ^ Doreen Schulze: Handing over the keys to the visitor center. In: Volksstimme. October 17, 2019, accessed March 17, 2020 .
  39. ^ Hendrik Lasch: A death march as a graphic novel. The Isenschnibbe Memorial in Saxony-Anhalt is finally getting a visitor center. In: Neues Deutschland, 4./5. April 2020, p. 23.
  40. ↑ Ina Tschakyrow: Digital Memory: Exhibition in the barn is built. In: Altmark newspaper. April 7, 2020, accessed April 9, 2020 .
  41. ↑ Gardelegen Memorial: # Gardelegen45 - Digital commemoration and remembrance to participate in the 75th anniversary of the massacre in the Isenschnibber field barn. In: Homepage of the Gardelegen Memorial. April 1, 2020, accessed April 9, 2020 .
  42. ↑ Gardelegen Memorial: Cancellation of the event with Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on the 75th anniversary of the Gardelegen massacre on April 6, 2020. In: Homepage of the Gardelegen Memorial. March 12, 2020, accessed March 25, 2020 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 32 ′ 16 ″  N , 11 ° 25 ′ 19 ″  E