Nazi forced labor in the Büdingen area
The Nazi forced labor in the Büdingen area is an almost forgotten part of the local history of Büdingen in Upper Hesse and the surrounding communities during the National Socialist era .
This is to be seen against the background of the "deployment of foreigners" in the war economy of the Nazi era. Its enormous proportions are shown in the article Nazi forced labor . The topic has only been increasingly researched by the municipalities since the 1980s and has been publicly discussed in 1999 and 2000 , especially in connection with the compensation of former forced laborers who are still alive: as in Germany , so in the city of Büdingen. In March 2000 they commissioned an investigation, on the results of which this article is based (see web links).
Competent Authorities
Immediately after the start of the war in 1939, the Nazi regime began the long-planned "deployment of foreigners" in the war economy. First, Polish prisoners of war and civilians were deported en masse to work in the Reich. The Reich Ministry of the Interior under Heinrich Himmler took over their distribution. The municipal employment offices then organized their local allocation: there, every farm, business or private household had to request civilian forced labor. Their living and working conditions were also strictly regulated from top to bottom.
A large number of Nazi authorities ensured that state instructions were enforced: the district administrator, the Gestapo , the Darmstadt state police station. The NSDAP district leader Emil Görner was primarily responsible for the Büdingen district . He passed orders from the regime to the party's local group leaders. The district administrator - until 1940 Hans Becker , then until the end of the war Hermann Braun - instructed the mayors of the individual communities to implement various state regulations.
At the time of National Socialism, Büdingen was the district town and administrative seat of the Büdingen district . This only changed in 1972.
Origin and numbers
Forced laborers in Büdingen came from all over Europe , most of them from the Soviet Union and Poland . The first civilian workers came there from December 1939. The first prisoners of war came from France in the summer of 1940.
According to a census on May 17, 1939, the city of Büdingen had 3,702 inhabitants at that time. At least 944 forced laborers were used in what is now Büdingen: During the war, they were a minority that could not be overlooked, especially since most of them lived in the middle of Büdingen.
The table on verifiable forced laborers in Büdingen (city) gives an overview of their countries of origin, the proportions of women and men and the registration years. These figures are based only on the sources still available; Disposals and additions until the end of the war or destroyed source documents are not included. The peak was only reached in 1943 and 1944. The total number is therefore probably a lot higher than the table shows.
| Civil workers | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| origin | Female | Male | total | registration |
| Soviet Union (excluding Ukraine) | 17th | 85 | 102 | 1942-1945 |
| Ukraine | 5 | 10 | 15th | 1940-1944 |
| Poland | 17th | 51 | 68 | 1939-1941, 1944 |
| Estonia / Latvia | 9 | 4th | 13 | 1944-1945 |
| Belgium | 2 | 6th | 8th | 1942-1945 |
| Lithuania | - | 6th | 6th | 1943, 1945 |
| France | 1 | 4th | 5 | 1940, 1944 |
| Netherlands | - | 5 | 5 | 1944-1945 |
| Yugoslavia (excluding Croatia) | 1 | 3 | 4th | 1941 |
| Croatia | - | 1 | 1 | without specification |
| Hungary | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1944-1945 |
| Slovakia | - | 1 | 1 | 1940 |
| Czech Republic | - | 1 | 1 | 1943 |
| "Stateless" (usually: General Government) | 1 | 3 | 4th | 1944-1945 |
| Without disclosures | 3 | 4th | 7th | 1940, 1942-1943 |
| Civil workers (total) | 57 | 186 | 243 | - |
| Prisoners of war | ||||
| origin | Female | Male | total | registration |
| France | - | approx. 70 | approx. 70 | 1940-1942 |
| Soviet Union | - | approx. 60 | approx. 60 | July 1942, 1944? |
| Italy ( military internees ) | - | 3 | 3 | 1945 |
| Prisoners of war (total) | - | approx. 133 | approx. 133 | - |
| total | ||||
| origin | Female | Male | total | registration |
| Forced Laborers | 57 | approx. 319 | approx. 376 | - |
age structure
The table on the age structure of the verifiable civilian workers in Büdingen (city) shows that many of the civilian workers in Büdingen were also very young. Even children were sometimes dragged here with both or one of the parents. Children of forced laborers who were born in Büdingen are not yet taken into account (see Section 3.1 under Mathildenhospital).
| Age at registration | Female | Male | total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10–13 years | 6th | 1 | 7th |
| 14-17 years | 5 | 29 | 34 |
| 18-25 years | 26th | 99 | 125 |
| 26–60 years | 15th | 51 | 66 |
| 61–64 years | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Without specification | 4th | 8th | 12 |
As soon as the people reached their destination through the placement of the employment office, they were recorded by the local administration and also photographed. On July 22, 1940, the district administrator instructed the city to take three photographs for each person, which they transferred to a private photo studio in the old town (Knaf). The photos were needed for the registration cards and a work book.
working area
The table on applications of the detectable civilian workers in Budingen (City) gives an insight into the areas of application of Büdinger civilian workers . A smaller number worked for the municipal gas and water works in "Thiergartenstrasse". Most of them, however, the city used mainly for forest work. The need for this was great, as wood was an important product for warfare. The civilian workers not only had to cut and transport wood in the urban forest, they also had to build paths. Their number grew in the winter months as labor was withdrawn from agriculture and also used in the forest. Conversely, it also happened that forest workers were “taken away” for “other work” in the municipal area. The head of the Hessian Forest Office complained about this in a letter to the mayor of Büdingen on February 26, 1944.
| Areas of application | Number of people |
|---|---|
| Büdingen (city) as a regional authority | 77 |
| Agriculture | 68 |
| Commercial establishments | 23 |
| Commercial enterprises (only during the war in Büdingen) | 21st |
| Private households | 17th |
| Nurseries | 15th |
| Mathildenhospital | 5 |
| Children's home "Frohkind" | 2 |
| Reichsbahn | 2 |
| Without disclosures | 16 |
Accommodation and supplies
The available sources usually do not convey much about the living and working conditions of these people. For a group of "Eastern workers" in Büdingen, however, some documents provide information. In the summer of 1943, the men were relocated from the Magdeburg- Anhalt Gau Labor Office district to Büdingen and housed in a city barracks in the street “Am Hain” next to the “Neue Klippe” inn, which served them. This accommodation was fenced in with barbed wire in accordance with the "Eastern Workers' Decree" and guarded around the clock by guards.
Due to the lack of regular guards, the city administration appointed forest officials and other citizens deemed suitable to serve as auxiliary guards, who carried out their duties armed with firearms. In addition, in accordance with the “camp regulations” from the group of “Eastern workers”, “barracks stewards” and “confidants” were used and “those who show the best posture at work, as in the camp”, were selected. The group of stewards initially consisted of 34 men, which emerges from a payment order issued by the city in early 1944. They could be granted "special benefits in terms of meals, leisure activities and financial donations".
However, it was not they who received the payment, but the landlord of the "New Cliff" (Reinhard Müller senior) for their meals. In December 1943, the city charged 1.70 RM per person per day for this, in March 1944 only 1.50 RM. According to a central regulation, the rations for "Eastern workers" had to be significantly lower than the officially applicable ration rates for the German population: "No other group of foreigners was exposed to such low hunger rations as the Soviet forced laborers."
Control and regulation
"You want to ensure that the employers also maintain the necessary distance with regard to the Polish farm workers deployed in your community."
The authorities regulated the working and living conditions of civil workers very strictly, treating the nationalities differently according to the racial ideology of the Nazis: The regulations for Poles were significantly worse than for Western Europeans (see Poland decrees ), but still better than them of Russians and Ukrainians.
The names and dates of birth of a group of Eastern workers from Büdingen are preserved on a handwritten list. This was evidently to be created by one of the people listed, who knew Cyrillic script . All members of the group were marked with the "Ost-Badge": This square fabric badge with the white inscription "OST" on a blue background was sewn onto the clothing on the left at chest height. It served to prevent contact with other forced laborers and with Germans more easily. Contact with Germans was to be restricted to a minimum that could not be avoided.
In the Büdingen area, the NSDAP district leader Emil Görner consistently enforced orders relating to the ban on contact between Germans and foreigners: for example, the ban on table community with " foreigners ". He checked this himself with the farmers in the district and had "the local group leader [...] report cases of the table communities with relentless severity".
The district administrator, in turn, not only specified state instructions, but often tightened them up and insisted that they be meticulously observed. On March 7, 1940, he wrote to the mayor that they should prevent Poles from visiting each other on Sundays, as they usually had no identity papers, "so that a police check that may be necessary on the way runs into difficulties." They also served alcohol Because of the “monstrous atrocities” committed by Poles against Germans, restaurants and cinema visits should by no means be tolerated any longer, but should be viewed as an unreliable attitude towards the state and threatened with punishment. As a result, the Büdingen mayor Diemer, for his own security, had 21 innkeepers and the cinema operator of his community signed on the letter from the district administrator that was also addressed to him.
On June 22, 1940, the district passed an order from the Reichsführer SS and Chief of the German Police to the district's gendarmerie posts and ordered,
- to notify him immediately that he has left his job in Poland so that he can be reported to the Gestapo,
- Arrest Poles who would be found without ID or residence permit and "take them to the nearest police or, if necessary, the nearest judicial prison for police custody",
- to transfer the arrested persons to their service area or to a concentration camp or labor education camp.
A copy of this catalog of measures went to the local mayor in their capacity as "local police administrator".
Examples of this are two names on the above list: "Kotschkin, Hawriil" and "Nikitschin, Hrihorij". The responsible district forester marked this with the note "Police custody" and the comment: "The two Eastern workers [...] were brought [to] the secret state police in Giessen and are currently in the Heddernheim educational institution. Telephone information from the Geh. State Pol. Gießen on March 29, 1944 - Tel. No. 4441 Gießen, signed Hofmann (district forester). "
On October 9, 1940, “further explanations and additions” followed from a “circular” by Himmler of September 3, 1940. He made the mayor particularly responsible for “the strict implementation of the order regarding the identification of the Poles [...] in view of the repeated complaints "And added:
“If the fight against unwillingness to work and stoppages cannot be resolved on the spot, I instruct you to investigate the cases of such phenomena and also offenses and crimes committed by the Poles, such as B. to notify me immediately of moral offenses , acts of sabotage , arson, etc. "
It also said:
“There is reason to point out that the Poles must strictly comply with the obligation to stay at the place of work. [...] It could be established that the workforce of Polish people goes to the nearby cities in their free time, where they are exposed to the impressions of the city and the whisperings of Poles working there.
[…]
In connection with this, it should be noted that owning bicycles has often made it easier for Poles to leave their jobs. It is therefore […] to take precautions that Poles do not come into possession of bicycles; if they have already purchased bicycles, they have to sell them.
[…]
The Reich Minister for Church Affairs has meanwhile issued a decree on April 13, 1940 on the treatment of the Polish national workforce. The prohibition of any participation by Polish workers in church services for the German population issued by the local police regulations must be adhered to until further instructions.
[…]
In individual districts, where closed accommodation has not proven possible, care has been taken to ensure that male workers of Polish nationality who are employed in companies run by German women (without male help from relatives) are employed Get quarters in other establishments run by German men. I consider this measure to be very useful in order to prevent the known unpleasant conditions, and if possible I request that the appropriate action be taken. "
Marked clothing, surveillance of private life, no contact with one another, no means of transport, no leisure activities, no religious practice, no contact with the opposite sex, especially not with German women: Even the Polish forced laborers were completely enslaved and the arbitrariness of "employers" and total Police state suspended.
Their mail was also strictly controlled, censored and limited. On July 22nd, 1941, the district administrator wrote to the mayor that previous postings by the Poles had led to unrest in their homeland and will therefore in the future
"[...] all Polish civil workers deployed in this area are only allowed to write to their home country once a month [...]
These letters should be recorded in such a way that the Poles deployed here have to deliver the letters to their employers. These in turn will be forwarded through the local police authority and through me to the Secret State Police - Darmstadt State Police Station [...] I instruct you to signify the employers of Polish civilian workers accordingly [...]
The letters mentioned are franked, open to me by the mayor's usual service mail to send in. I will collect them [...] and forward them to the Darmstadt state police station for control. "
Atrocity propaganda
In order to show the “Volksgenossen” the character of the Polish “subhuman” and to prevent any sympathy from the start, the authorities also resorted to propaganda lies from the front. On May 18, 1940, the district administrator wrote another “circular” to the mayors of the Büdingen district, which preceded a text from the high command of the Wehrmacht with the following statements from the district administrator:
“Below I am giving you a copy of an interrogation protocol about the murder of German soldiers in Uniejow. In addition to this, the High Command of the Wehrmacht announced by order of April 5, 1940 that an opponent who must be held responsible for such atrocities will not be shaken and will not be granted any special benefits. "
This does not only apply to prisoners of war, but requires
"[...] that the necessary distance must also be kept to the Polish civilian workers. You want to ensure that the employers also maintain the necessary distance with regard to the Polish farm workers deployed in your community. [...] "
The Wehrmacht text followed:
“On September 10, 1939, the Polish troops advanced again and penetrated Uniejow. Here, German soldiers were taken prisoner by the Poles. A certain Jew Jtzik Lewin from Uniejow helped the Polish soldiers in so far as he showed them where the German soldiers were hiding. The Polish soldiers then took the German soldiers out of their hiding places and took them to a shed. In total, they locked around 30 to 35 soldiers in the shed. At that time the shed was filled with wood, because the carpenters from Uniejow were working in there, so that there were also a lot of wood shavings lying around.
When the Polish soldiers had crammed the German soldiers together in the shed, they threw hand grenades into the shed from outside. The shed caught fire. The Polish soldiers had surrounded the shed to prevent the German soldiers from breaking out. A German soldier tried to escape death in flames and jumped out of the upper window onto the street. There he was immediately picked up by the Polish soldiers and thrown into the flames.
On the same day two drivers of the German troops from Dombier drove into Uniejow. They broke down and stopped at a forge. While they were doing the repairs, the Polish soldiers surprised and captured them. The Poles tore the pliers out of the hand of one German soldier and ripped out both ears of the German soldiers. They were led away to the forest with blows of the butt, but it has not yet been possible to determine whether they were shot there. The Volksdeutsche Keil from Uniejow is an eyewitness to these two events.
Since the witness Keil did not know which of the three Lewin brothers from Uniejow showed the Poles the hiding places of German soldiers, a comparison of the Lewin brothers was carried out. It turned out that the escaped Jtzik Lewin was a possible perpetrator.
It can be assumed that the two Lewin brothers know exactly where their brother is. As a result, they were temporarily arrested and held until their brother turns up.
Since this act constitutes a crime and the matter has been obscured, the provisional arrest is justified. Reference is made to the hearing of the witness Keil.
signed M.,
Gend.-Hauptwachm. "
The unmistakably invented course of action twisted the facts of the attack on Poland in a cynical way in order to get the Germans in the mood for keeping their distance from the forced laborers. However, the preliminary remarks of the district administrator show that, despite traditionally widespread prejudices against the "Polack", it was necessary to justify the officially merciless attitude towards them for the local population. Peasants who received Polish forced laborers should not regard and treat them like German servants, but rather as "subhumans" full of insidiousness and bestiality.
On August 14, 1940, the mayor of Büdingen, Diemer, issued a circular with the subject “air raid protection measures” to citizens of the city who employed Polish civilian workers. It said:
“According to the findings made by the police, Poles in the city of Büdingen were hanging around the street during the air raid alarm. The security of the city requires that prisoners, even civil prisoners, be kept away from the street under all circumstances during an alarm, especially since the local population is also forbidden to go on the streets. I therefore expect in the future that you will keep the Poles employed by you in the house and monitor them. A shared stay with the other residents in the air raid shelter is not permitted. It must be left to you to take the necessary measures to ensure that the Poles remain safely housed in the house in the event of an air raid. "
That might mean locking them up in their quarters and leaving it to chance whether they would survive a bombing raid.
Further letters from the district administrator, the Gestapo, Darmstadt state police station and the NSDAP district leader Görner to the mayor led until February 1945 that individual Poles, but also other foreign workers, were given unjustified driving licenses for the train and left their place of work illegally on Sundays, to meet with compatriots, still illegally in possession of bicycles or even radios, or so that individuals could escape. So it was necessary until the end of the war to urge those responsible on site to strictly observe the regulations. Presumably, some of these letters were supposed to indicate that the respective superiors in the Nazi bureaucracy were busy.
Working and living conditions
These orders for the "deployment of foreigners" concerned the life and work of the Poles, but even more so of the Soviet citizens of that time: Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians. Your actual situation was also determined by local factors: the type of work that had to be done, the accommodation and the behavior of the German employers or superiors. One could be used as a hard worker in the forest without adequate footwear or as a maid of a middle-class household. You could come across an employer of integrity who z. B. ignored the ban on table community despite his personal risk, or be at the mercy of a superior or guards who were prone to arbitrary punitive actions and humiliation. Your own fate also depended on whether you were seriously injured in an accident at work, whether a forced laborer became pregnant - which was severely punished - or whether you got caught up in the mill of the Gestapo for whatever reason.
Official dealings with pregnant women, mothers and small children
Dealing with pregnant women and newborns among the slave laborers is one of the most depressing chapters of Nazi slave labor. Until the end of 1942, pregnant female forced laborers were mostly deported from all over the Reich to their countries of origin. But as the war progressed, every manpower was increasingly needed. Therefore, local and regional authorities often avoided the deportation.
After the defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad and the proclamation of total war , this loophole to escape forced labor was officially closed: Fritz Sauckel , Plenipotentiary for Labor Deployment in Germany, ordered in early 1943 that
"[...] that [these] should no longer be deported and maternity and children's institutions should be set up instead."
Since this would have placed an additional burden on the municipalities, pregnant female forced laborers were pressured into forced abortions with massive threats from around March 1943, but often even before that.
While all other pregnant women were granted nutritional supplements, these were not granted for Polish women, Eastern workers and Jews. If a forced laborer nevertheless decided to carry the child to term, officially only a very limited maternity leave of two weeks before and six weeks after the birth applied to her. Even during this time, however, it could be used for “reasonable” activities. In practice, the mothers had to return to their place of work after eight to ten days. In fact, they did not enjoy maternity leave.
Dealing with the newborns was now strictly regulated according to the aspects of Nazi racial ideology : their children were taken away from the mothers and brought to homes. The mothers were only allowed to check on their children after their work, provided they were housed nearby. “Bad-race” Polish and Soviet children were deliberately neglected and poorly fed in special primitive institutions, so that almost all of them starved to death within a short time. “Good-breed” children, on the other hand, especially those whose mother made a “good-blooded impression” or who had a “Germanic ethnicity” father, were separated from their mothers and “raised as Germans” in special care homes. The Reich Security Main Office issued this at the end of 1942 after an agreement between Sauckel and Himmler .
Such measures are also documented in Büdingen and the surrounding area: almost all of them in Düdelsheim . There the sources of all Büdingen districts are most completely preserved, so that further, undocumented cases in other districts can be assumed.
The first receipt dates from July 18, 1940. The Nidda Landkrankenkasse pointed out in clauses that the birth of female forced laborers was undesirable. a. to the mayors of the Büdingen district:
“It has turned out on several occasions that some of the Polish farm workers who are housed in my circle are about to give birth in the near future. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in all cases there is no claim to the Reichsgesetzl. Weekly allowance exists and, even in the event of childbirth, the weekly allowance cannot be paid.
[...]
If, in some cases, the delivery takes place in the clinic [at that time in Gießen], the costs that arise cannot be borne by my health insurance fund. "
Pregnant Polish women deported to the Büdinger district were treated as a "problem" in the first few months after their arrival. When she was recruited in Poland, no consideration was given to any pregnancy. She still believed she could afford to be deported in order to get rid of the "problem". It was generally believed that the war would be victorious in the foreseeable future.
A second receipt comes from the head of the Giessen employment office dated August 12, 1940. He informed the mayor of Düdelsheim under the subject "Deployment of Polish agricultural workers / your letter of July 30, 1940":
"Please, those at the farmer Herm's. K. Koch in Düdelsheim employed a Polish farm worker, because she is pregnant, to march here so that I can arrange for her to be transported back. "
A certificate, issued on December 4, 1940 by the mayor of Büdingen, reads:
"At the request of the Giessen Employment Office [...] the Pole Katarcyna Cichara, b. on March 10, 1914, certifies that due to pregnancy she will be transported back home on December 8, 1940 at 8:17 pm. […] The above-mentioned was employed here in Büdingen by the family farmer Ludwig Kaufmann (Sandhof) from March 24th to December 7th, 1940. "
The following documents reflect the brutally aggravated situation of pregnant Eastern workers since the turn of the war. The "Head of the Family Aid Office" Niemeyer from the main office for "People's Welfare" of the NSDAP wrote on January 13, 1944 to all mayors of the Büdingen district with the subject "Treatment of foreign workers and illegitimate children of the same":
“Difficulties have arisen […] in the placement of illegitimate children of foreign workers in agriculture. In the industry, this could partly be remedied by special facilities: delivery rooms, crèches, kindergartens and after-school care centers. In agriculture, however, such facilities have not yet been created. [...] In rural conditions the difficulties are greatest, as far as they have already been reported to me in individual cases, because one day the farmers lose part of their labor because the mother is occupied with caring for the child and the separate upbringing of the German children would cause trouble. On the other hand, however, it is by no means permitted to raise German children together with foreign ones. In order for a remedy to be found, the Gauamtsleitung [...] needs an overview of the actual conditions in agriculture. […] In particular, I would ask you to pay attention to whether such children have come to German nursing homes for babies or toddlers or family care centers. I consider the possibility to be given after individual communication. […] When reporting, it must be ensured that the Poles to be Germanized are not included here.
[...]
I would ask you to state separately the children whose sire is German, giving precise details of their personal details and origin, so that if the children are of good race the NSV can take care of them. "
On March 10, 1944, the mayor of Düdelsheim wrote to the Giessen employment office , Büdingen branch:
“Re: pregnancy of the Polish woman Bronislawa Mrugal with the farmer Hch. Ms. Krämer in Düdelsheim. [...] Krämer has already reported the pregnancy there. I urge you to ensure that this Polish woman leaves in good time and may ask for a timely notification. Kramer recently received notification that his son had fallen. Therefore I would like to spare his family new fuss. "
On March 14, 1944 he wrote again:
"Re. Use of Polish farm workers here: Mrugel B., geb. March 10, 1926
Vorg. My letter of February 17, 1944. […]
On February 17, 1944 I applied for the abovementioned termination of pregnancy. I would like to hear what you have achieved on this matter.
Copy: The Mayor of Düdelsheim for information.
As soon as I have your message on the above letter, I will let you know.
Erl. To the file
March 21, 1944 [name sign of Mayor Düdelsheim] Görner [signature] "
Apparently the Polish woman mentioned was forced to have an abortion despite her advanced pregnancy. This probably happened in the “infection barracks” - also popularly known as the “east barracks” - in Büdingen. There were only civil workers from Poland and the Soviet Union. The district was also the catchment area for births.
Previously, 48 deliveries of civilian workers in the area of the Büdinger hospital were proven. Twins were born in one childbirth. Leokardia Karaciak from Poland gave birth to a boy on January 13, 1944 on the transport from Mittel-Gründau to Büdingen, who was born dead: this was noted by the Büdingen registry office. The woman giving birth was a civil worker on the Schudt estate in Mittel-Gründau in what was then the district. On April 13, 1944, Stefonia Gontasch, a Polish civil worker in Eschenrod, gave birth to her son Izeslaw on the Gießen – Gelnhausen train. Both mothers were probably on their way to the "Ostbaracke" in Büdingen. There is evidence that 27 people died there, including 12 men, 6 women and 9 children: 2 of them died on the day of birth, one after 3, 18 and 26 days; 3 children died at the age of 9 months and one died at the age of 4¾. These were probably by no means all deaths there, as probably not every case was officially recorded.
Mrs. Legwantovna gave birth to 2 children, Chalina and Sophia, who both later perished. Due to the incomplete sources, the circumstances of death can only be guessed at. There are many indications that they were victims of the Nazi racial madness. Chalina was officially separated from her mother and taken to the Frohkind children's home, where she died after about a year and a half: presumably because of lack of care. She might have been classified as "good-bred" because the producer was German. Her sister Sophia suffered a comparatively short ordeal: She died after 29 days of life - presumably because the mother had to return to her place of work a few days after her birth and therefore had to leave the newborn in the “infection barracks” without adequate care.
Prisoners of war
In addition to civilian workers, prisoners of war were also transferred from camps near the front via transit camps to team main camps (Stalags) in Germany to be used as forced laborers. The German Reich deprived them of the protection of international law by z. B. declared that the state of Poland or Yugoslavia had ceased to exist (see Crimes of the Wehrmacht ). The Wehrmacht was responsible for them, and their headquarters assigned the prisoners to work details. They left them to the local authorities, whose employment offices they passed on. For this, the Stalag Command received “ compensation ” per prisoner of war and day. If the distance between the main camp and the place of deployment was too great, the work details were housed in satellite camps close to the place of deployment, where they were also guarded. Since the Wehrmacht was only able to do this to a limited extent, selected civilians were appointed as auxiliary guards on site.
The first Polish prisoners of war in the Büdingen region came from Stalag IX A in Ziegenhain (Schwalm), but then mostly from Stalag IX B in Bad Orb on the "Wegscheide", which was completed on December 1, 1939. After their arrival in the district of Büdingen, district manager Görner wrote to the mayor of the district on September 29, 1939:
“In order to remedy the labor shortage, foreign workers […] have been accommodated in many municipalities. In order to avoid the risk of intermingling with foreign ethnicities, intensive education of the population is necessary. [...] You must therefore be expected to inform all residents of your community that keeping German blood clean is a National Socialist requirement. The prisoners of war must therefore be housed and guarded separately so that communication between the local residents and the prisoners is avoided in every way. [...] If it should happen that honorable and art-forgotten women [...] injure the public feeling with the prisoners of war by attempting to offer them, the [...] Secret State Police must be prompted to intervene immediately. "
Various French work details worked in Büdingen until the end of the war: 12 to 15 prisoners of war were housed in the cutting mill (today paper mill) in Büdingen and employed by Viehverwertung GmbH since autumn 1940. The work detachment No. 236, which came to the city at the end of 1940, also consisted of French. They worked in the Wittchen sawmill on Düdelsheimer Strasse and were initially housed on the company's premises. From 1942, some of them were quartered in a barrack at the “Neue Klippe” inn on “Am Hain” street, while others were quartered in the “Zum Hirschgraben” inn on Obergasse. Another work detachment of up to 34 French was mainly employed in agriculture, a small number - one time eight, another time five men - also worked as woodcutters in the city. The work command No. 666 comprised 25 French prisoners of war who were housed from December 1941 to May 1942 in the "Alte Klippe" inn, also on "Am Hain" street. They were then ordered back to their agricultural workplaces.
In August 1940, the commandant's office of Stalag IX B wrote to the mayors and local farmers leaders and others about their proper accommodation and their correct (non-) handling . a.
“Attitude of the population:
Principle: always keep your distance from prisoners of war! So:
a) no table community: prisoners eat, if at the same time, in another room; otherwise before or after.
b) no joint visits to churches, events, pubs!
c) No letter smuggling for the benefit of prisoners of war: all prisoner-of-war mail (incoming and outgoing) must be routed through the camp as intended for inspection.
[...]
As soon as the community has been filled with prisoners of war, as should already be pointed out, officers will check whether these requirements of the Wehrmacht have been completely met. "
Soviet prisoners of war were treated hardest of all. From the winter of 1941/1942 onwards they came to Stalag IX B and were housed there in a separate "Russian camp". Here they had to vegetate on the ground or in self-dug holes in the ground. Around 1,400 died of starvation, dysentery and typhus. A work detachment was less cruel for the Russians than this camp situation, as they were then fed, albeit in a worse quantity and quality than other prisoners of war. Today there is a Soviet military cemetery in the form of a memorial near the former camp. The association "Die Wegscheide warns" reminds of the catastrophic conditions in the neighboring Russian camp on an information board with eyewitness reports from French prisoners of war.
Work-up
The documents on Nazi forced labor in Büdingen are incomplete. At least for the district, many pieces of evidence were probably destroyed towards the end of the war and until 1969. The remaining documents were mostly found in the city archives and in the Princely Ysenburg Archives, a few also in the Hessian State Archives in Darmstadt . Registration cards, registration books in the mayor's offices and log books of the municipal councils of today's districts noted all accesses by people, usually also forced laborers. However, they are only incomplete, not at all for some parts of the city and only up to July 8, 1942 for others.
The actual numbers of forced laborers used in Büdinger districts were accordingly higher than the available sources say. Nevertheless, some of these allow very detailed conclusions to be drawn about the overall situation of local Nazi forced labor.
The "research and documentation of the fate of the people who were used for forced labor in Büdingen and the - formerly independent - districts during the Nazi era" goes back to an initiative of the district administrator of the Wetterau district, Rolf Gnadl . First research in the city archive quickly showed that there was forced labor in all of today's parts of the city of Büdingen. At least 42 civilian so-called Eastern workers have been found in the city itself .
Thereupon the city council decided further research and a symbolic contribution to the foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” of 30,000 DM . She wanted this to be understood "not as solving the forced labor problem with money", but as a "contribution that enables the former forced laborers who are still living today to ease their often very difficult living conditions, especially in Eastern Europe ."
See also
- Nazi forced labor in Kiel
- Nazi forced labor in the Münsterland
- Nazi forced labor in Bochum and Wattenscheid
- Forced labor in the time of National Socialism
- concentration camp
- ghetto
- List of ghettos during the National Socialist era
literature
- Reiner Bajus: Nazi forced labor in Büdingen and the surrounding communities: Report on an almost forgotten part of local history . April 16, 2004 ( gruene-buedingen.de ( memento of October 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) [PDF; 1.9 MB ]).
- Klaus D. Rack, Monica Kingreen, Dirk Richhardt: Far from home under duress: the "deployment of foreign workers" during the Second World War in the Wetterau . History Association for Butzbach and the Surrounding Area, Butzbach 2004, ISBN 3-9802328-8-3 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mark Spoerer: Forced labor under the swastika . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart / Munich 2001, ISBN 3-421-05464-9 , pp. 125 .
- ↑ Reiner Bajus: Nazi forced labor in Büdingen and in the surrounding communities . April 16, 2004, p. 1 .
- ^ Collection of regulations on Nazi law on foreigners . Verlag der Deutschen Arbeitsfront, Berlin 1942 ( excerpt ).
- ^ Emil Görner: Letter from the Chief Public Prosecutor of the Giessen Regional Court to the General Public Prosecutor in Darmstadt dated November 7, 1942 . In: Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt (Ed.): Attorney General at the Darmstadt Higher Regional Court . G 24, no. 1528 .
- ↑ Reiner Bajus: Nazi forced labor in Büdingen and in the surrounding communities . April 16, 2004, p. 9 ff .
- ↑ a b Reiner Bajus: Nazi forced labor in Büdingen and in the surrounding communities . April 16, 2004, p. 10 ff .
- ↑ Reiner Bajus: Nazi forced labor in Büdingen and in the surrounding communities . April 16, 2004, p. 17 .
- ↑ a b Reiner Bajus: Nazi forced labor in Büdingen and in the surrounding communities . April 16, 2004, p. 11 ff .
- ↑ a b c Reiner Bajus: Nazi forced labor in Büdingen and in the surrounding communities . April 16, 2004, p. 12 ff .
- ↑ a b c Reiner Bajus: Nazi forced labor in Büdingen and in the surrounding communities . April 16, 2004, p. 14th ff .
- ↑ a b Mark Spoerer: Forced labor under the swastika . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart / Munich 2001, ISBN 3-421-05464-9 , pp. 206 ff .
- ↑ Reiner Bajus: Nazi forced labor in Büdingen and in the surrounding communities . April 16, 2004, p. 26th ff .
- ↑ a b c Reiner Bajus: Nazi forced labor in Büdingen and in the surrounding communities . April 16, 2004, p. 27 .
- ↑ a b Reiner Bajus: Nazi forced labor in Büdingen and in the surrounding communities . April 16, 2004, p. 28 .
- ↑ a b c Reiner Bajus: Nazi forced labor in Büdingen and in the surrounding communities . April 16, 2004, p. 30th ff .
- ↑ a b c Resolution of the city council of Büdingen at the request of the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group for the 43rd meeting of the city council of Büdingen on August 18, 2000, printed matter I-II / 105, item 12.
