Monday hole
The Monday hole in the Rüttenscheid district of Essen denotes, on the one hand, a valley at the former Montagshof in the Lührmannwald on Lake Margarethensee, which is now part of the Grugapark .
On the other hand, this is about the location of Eastern Europeans who were murdered by the Essen Secret State Police (Gestapo) at the end of the Nazi era .
history
The name montagsloch probably stems from the still in the 19th century on the site of the later Gruga stadium located Montaghof ago, mentioned for the first time in 1359 and was canceled 1905th
On March 12, 1945, 35 Russian forced laborers, recognizable by their clothing, and possibly other people, were murdered and buried by the Essen Gestapo at this point, at today's deer enclosure within the Grugapark .
After the end of the war in April 1945, the American occupiers found 34 heavily decayed corpses here in one of the numerous rainwater-filled bomb craters. The Americans had Essen citizens dig graves, whereby they had to fetch the dead from the bomb crater without tools. About 40 members of the provisional city administration were brought by truck from a meeting in the Deutschlandhaus on April 30, 1945 to have the dead buried by hand. Before that, they had to kneel in front of the corpses and pray.
Orthodox grave crosses were erected before the dead were transferred to the honor cemetery of the southwest cemetery on November 3, 1949 . The exact identity of these killed Eastern Europeans remains unclear to this day. They did not perish in air raids, but were executed by the Secret State Police (Gestapo).
In May 1945 another corpse was found as well as other bone fragments in 1962 during excavation work during the redesign of the Grugapark, which could no longer be assigned. Already in 1948 those responsible were sentenced to long prison terms by a British military court, but proceedings against the Gestapo leadership were discontinued in 1960.
literature
- Ernst Schmidt: March 1945: The bloody act in the Monday hole. In: Historical association for city and monastery Essen eV (Ed.): Essener contributions. Contributions to the history of the city and monastery of Essen. tape 112 . Essen 2000, p. 203-217 .
- Ernst Schmidt: Essen remembers: Places in the history of the city in the 20th century . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2002, ISBN 3-89861-073-X .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Willi Bonczek: Eating in the mirror of the cards. Historical maps and engravings from the Middle Ages to modern times. Bacht, Essen 1975.
- ^ Marlies Holle: Rüttenscheider Monument Paths - hiking guide to the historical sites in Rüttenscheid ; Citizens and Tourist Association Rüttenscheid e. V., Essen 2004
Coordinates: 51 ° 25 ′ 29 ″ N , 6 ° 59 ′ 41 ″ E