Nazi forced labor in Rees

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Drawing of the floor plan of the Nazi labor camp in Rees-Groin
Memorial column for the forced laborers deported to Rees-Groin, Apeldoorn market square
Information box in front of the site of the former Groin forced labor camp 1944–45, set up on February 28, 2010 on Melatenweg in Rees

In the winter of 1944/45 of the Second World War , a men's labor camp , the Rees camp (also: Groin labor camp , Dutch Kamp Rees ), was set up in Rees on the lower Lower Rhine in order to be able to build defensive positions.

Historical background

In the war summer of 1944, the German army was increasingly pushed back from the occupied territories in both Eastern and Western Europe. The landing of the Allied troops in Normandy (June 6, 1944) and Operation Dragoon (August 14, 1944) in southern France lead the liberation ( La Liberation ) forward and mark a turning point psychologically. The air-to-ground operation Market Garden from September 17 to 27, 1944 in the Dutch provinces of Noord-Brabant and Gelderland (and, to a very limited extent, on the Lower Rhine ) drove the German troops back further and further. With the dwindling resources, the Germans try to stop the overpowering attacking troops. Starting in autumn 1944, civilian populations were forcibly recruited in various cities in the occupied Netherlands to build defensive positions and trenches to stop the advance.

Rees camp / "Groin foreigners camp, Röhrig section, Heinze unit"

The "Rees camp" was located east of the Rhine in the then community of Groin, which bordered the city of Rees . The camp was not a prison camp but a labor camp. The prisoners had to do entrenchment work (building defensive positions) there. The location of the warehouse was a brick factory belonging to the Boers family from 1850 on Melatenweg in Groin. The area was used as a labor camp from November 1944 to March 23, 1945. The storage area on Melatenweg was delimited by a wetland, hedges and the Rees- Empel small train line.

On December 18, 1944, the camp officially received the status of "camp" with the name "Ausländerlager Groin, Röhrig construction section, Heinze unit". The name was derived from the names of the two camp managers. A number of prisoners were housed outside the Groiner camp in various halls in the villages of Bienen and Millingen , north of the town of Rees.

Raids

Towards the end of the Second World War, the Nazi regime decided on numerous measures to stop the advance of the Allied troops. This also included the construction of defensive positions, such as tank ditches and trenches , in the border area of ​​the Lower Rhine. As early as 1940, the German occupying power had used Dutch civilians as forced laborers for various activities. Dutch people should be used for the fortification work in the vicinity of the city of Rees. For this purpose, with the support of the National Socialist Movement (NSB), violent raids were carried out in several cities in the country.

The example of Apeldoorn

On October 2, 1944, during a raid in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, men between the ages of 16 and 55 were gathered on the market square to build defenses in Doesburg and Zevenaar . For this purpose, the city was surrounded by Wehrmacht troops and members of the police and people were driven out of their homes house by house. As a deterrent, the bodies of eight executed resistance fighters were exposed on the streets. Around 4,000 forced laborers were taken away in this action. Most of the men were released after a few weeks, but urban life was severely affected during this time. Another major raid was carried out on December 2, 1944. The day before they had distributed leaflets with the order to be ready for transport to work the next day. In the morning hours, the men were taken out of their apartments by Wehrmacht soldiers. Most of the men were unprepared for the pressures that awaited them at Rees. A contemporary witness reports the following: "You didn't expect that to happen ... What is war? War is fighting between two groups of soldiers ... But the citizens stay out of it." Under the strictest guard, the men were taken to the train station and from there they were taken to Germany by train. On the way, the first train in Werth near Bocholt was shot at by English fighter bombers because the train was mistaken for a military transport. At least 20 Dutch people lost their lives. Some residents of Werth helped the injured at risk to their own lives. The trains went to Elten and Zevenaar , where the forced laborers were separated according to age. The older ones stayed while the younger ones were taken to Rees camp on foot the next day. Similar raids were carried out in several Dutch cities from autumn 1944.

Number and origin of prisoners

During the period in which the camp existed, approximately 5,000 men of various nationalities were held captive in Rees. The majority (over 50 percent) consisted of Dutch people who came from the cities of Haarlem , Scheveningen , The Hague , Leiden , Delft , Rotterdam , Twello , Groningen , Arnhem and Apeldoorn , among others . Then there were also Russians, Romanians, Poles, French and Italians there.

Camp management

The camp commandant Arnold F. Heinze was in charge of the management and administration of the camp in Rees . Draconian punishments for arbitrary reasons were the order of the day under his leadership. The construction section manager Petrus D. Röhrig was responsible for organizing the forced labor. In the sources he is described as the embodiment of brutality and inhumanity. Most of the 30-strong guards were unfamiliar and were mainly recruited from NSDAP men , especially the SA . With a few exceptions, they are described as violent monsters.

The main section doctor responsible for the camp, Dr. Hans E. Brunner is one of the doctors who acted as vicarious agents of the regime against the Hippocratic oath during the Nazi dictatorship . He was responsible for the deaths of numerous slave laborers because he always judged them to be fit for work, no matter how weak or sick they were. Brunner, Heinze and Röhrig were sentenced to long prison terms after the war.

Punish

Flogging was usually carried out by the security personnel, but sometimes by Heinze and Röhrig themselves. Sometimes in front of the other inmates. But they were also carried out in a specially designed room. The prisoners were placed there on an inverted tipping lore and beaten with clubs or broken shovel handles. As contemporary witnesses report, beating camp inmates developed into a sadistic sport for the guards and the camp management. As a result of the beatings and its consequences, prisoners repeatedly died.

"The Hell of Rees"

The memories of the Dutch slave laborers make it clear that sadists of the worst kind spread fear and terror in the camp . The people who ran the camp are responsible for making it the "Hell of Rees" (Dutch: 'De hel van Rees') for the slave laborers. The number of prisoners killed in the 4-5 months that the camp existed is estimated at 250 to 500 people.

Living conditions

The living conditions in the camp were bad. It was a boggy area with a single poorly working water pump and a couple of makeshift latrines . We spent the night in tents or under the dry roofs of the brickworks, which were open on all sides. The clothing was not given out by the camp administration; it was about the private things that the prisoners had carried during raids in the Dutch cities. The daily food ration consisted of some bread and diluted potato or cabbage soup. Many inmates fell ill as a result of the adverse circumstances.

As in other camps, there was a fixed structure every day:

  • 6:15 am wake up
  • 07:15 am to roll call
  • 07:30 am roll call
  • 7.45 a.m. march to work
  • 8:00 a.m. start of work
  • From 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. break
  • 1:00 p.m. work
  • 4:00 p.m. march to camp
  • 6:30 p.m. Pick up bread or soup

Outside help

Although the guards were strict and the sanctions for “helping the enemy” were severe, various residents in the area still dared to provide help in the form of food or clothing. It was also partially possible to send messages to and from home.

Escape

Shortly after being captured on the way to Germany by train, some prisoners managed to make the dangerous escape by jumping out of the train, which was moving slowly at various points. From December 1944 on, the first prisoners managed to escape via Millingen and Megchelen in the direction of Gaanderen . They were picked up in the Netherlands and an underground network was established. In the last days of the war it was easier to escape from the camp because of the low level of security. The exact number of refugees is not known.

The Megchelen Emergency Hospital

In the entire Achterhoek border region , a lot has been done for the people in the Rees camp, and the helpers often risked their own lives. People from 's-Heerenberg , Dinxperlo , Silvolde , Ulft , Gendringen , Megchelen , Netterden etc. helped the men who had fled Germany with clothing, food or medical help. In Megchelen, the first place across the border, an emergency hospital (Noodziekenhuis) has been set up for refugees from Rees.

Another, official emergency hospital existed from February 2, 1945 until the liberation by the Canadian soldiers on April 1, 1945 and beyond that until June 18, 1945 in the monastery of the White Fathers (Dutch: Witte Paters) in 's-Heerenberg . This hospital was official because sick people were admitted there with the consent of the Germans. From 's-Heerenberg some patients were referred to the (also official) evacuation hospital in Harreveld (Lichtenvoorde), as the medical treatment options were better there.

liberation

Rhine crossing on the Lower Rhine , March 24-28, 1945

On February 16, 1945, in preparation for Operation Plunder, Royal Air Force bomber groups attacked the city of Rees and destroyed it almost completely. During the fighting in and around Kleve and the Reichswald , Allied troops gathered on the left bank of the Rhine and prepared to cross the Rhine. On March 23, 1945, the Allies finally crossed the Rhine in Rees, near Xanten and Wesel. There was still fierce house-to-house fighting in downtown Rees and in bees. On March 25, 1945 at 12:00 noon, the Rees camp was liberated and the German soldiers still present were taken prisoner.

A tent camp was set up for the prisoners. The surviving Dutch were first transported to Kevelaer , which had been occupied earlier, and from there they were brought to their places of origin.

Memory of the Nazi era and the forced labor camp

  • At the Rees bus station there is a memorial for the Jewish citizens who came from Rees and who fell victim to the National Socialist regime. There, too, the approx. 5,000 forced laborers are commemorated, mainly men from the Netherlands , who had to build defensive positions in the Rees area from late 1944 to March 1945.
  • A display case on Melatenweg in Rees- Groin reminds of the forced labor camp there.
  • Remembrance tour Rees - Megchelen: Every spring, the Dutch and Germans remember the victims of the Nazi forced labor camp in Rees-Groin with a "Herdenkingstocht" (memorial tour).

See also

Web links

literature

  • Dick Verkijk: De Sinderklaas raid van 1944 , Soesterberg 2004. (Dutch)
  • Arend Disberg / André Horlings / Stichting Dwangarbeiders Apeldoorn 1940–1945 (eds.): De Verzwegen Deportatie. Apeldoornse nachtmerrie in Rees , incl. CD Apeldoorn 1st edition 2005, 510 pages, ISBN 978-90-90-19359-5 (Dutch)
  • Hermanus M. Krimp: Waar bleven onze mannen? , Bloemendaal / Haarlem / Heemstede 1947. Eyewitness report (Dutch)
  • Jan Krist: De Hel van Rees. Dwangserbeiderskamp , edited new edition (together with Karel Siegelaar), Verlag Profiel, Bedum 1989, ISBN 978-90-70287-83-2 (first edition 1946).
  • ders. (German): The Hell of Rees. Memories of a forced labor camp . From the Dutch by Erwin u. Marie-Elisabeth Rehn, Labhard-Verlag, 2nd edition, Konstanz 1989, ISBN 3-926937-19-X .
  • Dietrich Zielke (Ed.): An Italian in Rees , Rees 1985. (Report by the Italian Secondo Marianaz on the liberation of the Rees camp)
  • Wim Winands / Oudheidskundige Vereiniging Gemeente Gendringen: Het Arbeitslager Groin (Kamp Rees) en de slachtofferhulp (= series: Deülleveer), Megchelen 2008. (Dutch)
  • Karel Volder: Van Riga tot Rheinfelden , Verlag Stadsuitgeverij Amsterdam 1996, 940 pages, ISBN 978-90-5366-066-9 .
  • Carina Baganz: Camp for foreign civilian forced laborers. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 9: Labor education camps, ghettos, youth protection camps, police detention camps, special camps, gypsy camps, forced labor camps. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-57238-8 , pp. 248-270.
  • Norbert Behrendt: The misery on the doorstep - jumps until you drop. In: War fates from Millingen and the surrounding area. Retellings from interviews with contemporary witnesses from Millingen and the surrounding area. Soldiers, refugees, expellees, prisoners of war, forced laborers, Jews. , ed. v. KAB St. Josef Millingen, Millingen 2013, pp. 316–333.
  • Harald Fühner: Follow-up. Dutch politics and the persecution of collaborators and Nazi criminals, 1945–1989 (= Netherlands Studies, Vol. 35), Münster a. a. 2005.
  • Stefan Kraus: Nazi unjust sites in North Rhine-Westphalia. A research contribution on the system of tyranny 1933–1945: Camps and deportation sites , Essen 2007.
  • Klaus Kuhlen: The Groin Forced Labor Camp (Part 2). In: Reeser Geschichtsverein RESSA (ed.), Reeser Geschichtsfreund (Jahrbuch 7, 2014), pp. 48–85.
  • Susanne-Sophia Spiliotis: Time of Responsibility. On the history of forced labor compensation by the German economy. In: Forced Labor in Europe in the 20th Century. Coping and Comparative Aspects , ed. v. Hans-Christoph Seidel / Klaus Tenfelde, Essen 2007, pp. 103–114.
  • Lukas Bergmann: 1944/1945: The forced labor camp in Rees. Between repression and remembering - a little-known Lower Rhine site of injustice and the history of its coming to terms with it in Germany and the Netherlands (= Bachelor thesis at the University of Duisburg-Essen), 2014. Published with the permission of the author on the website of the Dutch Forced Laborers Apeldoorn Foundation .
  • Ruben Thiel / Johannes Gohl / Kai Kempkes / Benedikt Rösen, The situation towards the end of the war in the Rees area. Everyday life in National Socialism . Rees 1983 (107 A4 pages). See above all: Part III: The events surrounding the forced labor camps near Rees towards the end of the war (pp. 68-104).
  • Herbert Bernhard: 1945. The decisive battle on the Lower Rhine, Wesel 1976, ISBN 3-921660-00-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See also the articles: Battle in the Reichswald , Operation Blockbuster and the three-part film "War on the Lower Rhine"
  2. ↑ See also the Wikipedia article Organization Todt . Camp manager Röhrig and camp doctor Brunner belonged to the Organization Todt office .
  3. ↑ [1] See: "De verzwegen Deportatie. De hel van Rees. Achtergronden" - It is estimated that between 1940 and 1945 500,000 Dutch people were forced to do forced labor all over Europe, 144,000 of them in the autumn of 1944 to build defenses.
  4. ^ Report on the Boers brickworks in the roof tile archive, excerpt from Panneschöpper 1993, pp. 38–61
  5. ↑ January to March 1945: After a raid in The Hague, 500 slave laborers were housed in two event halls.
  6. ↑ Between Jan. 28 and Feb. 12, 1945 there was another branch in the Seegers restaurant with around 300 forced laborers.
  7. ↑ For a short time, forced laborers were housed in Emmerich-Praest and Empel (Rees), where Empel served as an emergency hospital.
  8. ↑ See in the following the book D. Verkijk: De Sinderklaas razzia van 1944 , Soesterberg 2004 u. the chap. 2 (raids) in: L. Bergmann, 1944/1945: The forced labor camp in Rees
  9. ↑ L. Bergmann, 1944/1945: The forced labor camp in Rees, chap. 2.1
  10. ↑ The exact number of prisoners is not known. Depending on the source, numbers between 3,500 and 5,500 prisoners are given.
  11. ↑ See below the report by L. Bergmann.
  12. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated February 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Camp commandant Arnold Friedrich Heinze, b. on June 7th, 1904 in Hamborn , was sentenced in 1949 as a war criminal to 11 years by the BG / BS Amsterdam for "mistreating prisoners and tolerating such mistreatment by his subordinates". On July 2nd, 1954 he was deported to Germany. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www1.jur.uva.nl
  13. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated February 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Petrus Dominicus Röhrig (Organization Todt), b. on January 22nd, 1898 in Dieblich , was sentenced in 1949 by the BG / BS Amsterdam as a war criminal to 17 years for "Completely inadequate accommodation and nutrition as well as abuse of slave laborers and tolerance of such abuse by his subordinates". On 07.06.57 he was deported to Germany. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www1.jur.uva.nl
  14. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated February 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. See NL194 / NL 195 / NL 196 War crimes proceedings against Robert Johann Altmeyer, Nikolaus Schneider and Peter Schulte, b. on June 15, 1889 in Emmerich, in: Dutch criminal proceedings against Germans and Austrians for Nazi crimes committed during World War II @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www1.jur.uva.nl
  15. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated February 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Main section physician Dr.med. Hans Otto Eduard Brunner (Organization Todt), b. on October 6, 1900 in Kassel , 1949 was sentenced to 18 years as a war criminal by the BG / BS Amsterdam. Subject matter of the proceedings: "As the main section doctor, responsible for the medical care of the forced laborers employed in the construction of the Westwall, was responsible for the very poor hygienic conditions and for the inadequate medical care in the Empel-Rees camp. Theft of medicines after the evacuation of the city of Arnhem". On March 22nd, 2007 he was deported to Germany. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www1.jur.uva.nl
  16. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated February 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Proceedings NL127 (Heinze), NL198 (Brunner), NL239 (Röhrig) - Dutch criminal proceedings against Germans and Austrians for Nazi crimes committed during World War II @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www1.jur.uva.nl
  17. ↑ [2] Sa: Overzicht van oorlogsmisdadigers uitgezet naar Duitsland (= overview of the war criminals who were extradited to Germany)
  18. ↑ See the book Jan Krist: De hel van Rees, Bedum 1989.
  19. ↑ [3] Burial places of the deceased, as far as known. Source: A. Disberg u. a. (Ed.): De Verzwegen Deportatie (Dutch)
  20. ↑ See e.g. B. on this: N. Behrendt, Kriegsschicksale, 325ff.
  21. ↑ See: [4]
  22. ↑ See also: Henny Bennink, Bezetting en verzet. De gemeente Lichtenvoorde en omliggende gemeenten in de Tweede Wereldoorlog , Verlag Fagus, Aalten 2005. (Dutch)
  23. ↑ See the article Air raids on Rees .
  24. ↑ See also: List of stumbling blocks in Rees by Cologne artist Gunter Demnig .
  25. ↑ Report on the Herdenkingstocht 2016 , from: dwangarbeidersapeldoorn.nl, March 13, 2016. (Dutch)
  26. ↑ Lukas Bergmann, 1944/1945: The forced labor camp in Rees

Coordinates: 51 ° 46 ′ 44 "  N , 6 ° 24 ′ 25.6"  E