New Bremm

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Gestapo camp Neue Bremm (photographed from the opposite side of the street, undated between 1942 and 1944)

The Neue Bremm camp was a Gestapo camp (an "extended police prison") on the Goldenen Bremm in Saarbrücken near the French border. Since the camp was not operated by the SS , but by a police authority (Gestapo), it was formally not a concentration camp in the narrower sense, although both belonged to the same leadership under Himmler . Even if the name KZ for the Neue Bremm camp still prevailed for a long time in the population, the research work on the camp typology during the Nazi era (especially by Elisabeth Thalhofer) and the subsequent public relations work of the Neue Bremm initiative have continued to this day established the concept of the Gestapo camp in public discussion.

history

Gestapo camp Neue Bremm (aerial photo from August 1944, with map)

1940–43 the Neue Bremm camp was initially used as a labor camp for foreign and forced laborers , then for prisoners of war ; partly also for the "evacuation" of prisoners from the Saarbrücken prison Lerchesflur . The camp made up of barracks (a men's and a women's camp) was relatively small. From February 1944 to November 1944, the National Socialists spoke of an "extended police prison". It now also served as a transit camp for the concentration camps in Alsace ( Natzweiler-Struthof ), in Dachau , Mauthausen , Buchenwald , Ravensbrück and the like. a. The camp existed until the Allied troops marched in in the winter of 1944/45. The prisoners (among others from France , the Soviet Union , Poland and England ) were tortured, mistreated and in some cases killed. Most of the prisoners were then transported to a concentration camp . The number of those murdered is estimated at a few hundred, the total of the inmates around 20,000 prisoners.

The German camp staff (some ranking SS) was founded in 1946 before the " d'Tribunal Général du Gouvernement Militaire de la zone Occupation Française " in Rastatt for war crimes , crimes against humanity, accused of theft, prisoner abuse, murder and manslaughter and predominantly sentenced . Of the 36 accused, 14 were sentenced to death by shooting , among them the camp leader, SS-Untersturmführer Fritz Schmoll , his assistant Peter Weiss and the leader of the guardsmen Karl Schmieden . All death sentences were carried out.

Memorial forms

The Gestapo Camp Neue Bremm memorial

Memorial with obelisk, wall and former extinguishing water pond

In 1947 an obelisk with a memorial plaque was erected; A documentary published in 1984. Another memorial was planned and erected from 1998. Except for a water pond, no structures have been preserved. The foundations of the men's barracks were and are exposed and cleaned every year in voluntary actions. Today there is a hotel on the grounds of the women's camp . The Gestapo-Lager Neue Bremm memorial was redesigned by Nils Ballhausen and Roland Poppensieker as the result of an international architects and artists competition under the direction of the Berlin architecture historian Michael S. Cullen with the successful contribution "Hotel of Remembrance" and on May 8, 2004 Presented to the public in the presence of then Prime Minister Peter Müller and over 40 survivors of the camp. Scientific symposia, lecture events, the establishment of a prisoner database and the identification of further foundations of the prisoner barracks marked stages in the remembrance work of the Neue Bremm initiative. Another milestone was the marking of the remaining prisoner barracks, which are located in the traffic area or in the industrial vicinity of the memorial site. This measure, completed on October 21, 2018, was made possible by funds from the federal, state and state capital of Saarbrücken.

The French inscription on the 1947 memorial stone reads:

"Dans ce camp / sur des ordres venus d'outre-Rhin / furent traînés vers la mort / les défenseurs / de la dignité et la liberté humaines, / victimes de la barbarie nazie. / Monument / érigé par le comité de la Nouvelle Brème, / inauguré le 11 novembre 1947 ” (translation: “ In this camp, on orders from across the Rhine, defenders of human dignity and freedom were dragged to their deaths, victims of National Socialist barbarism. Memorial, erected by the Neue Bremm camp committee, inaugurated on November 11, 1947 " )

Wall

Wall of the memorial with inscription

An approx. 65 meter long and, depending on the embankment height, 2.50 to 3.00 meters high, made of anthracite-colored exposed concrete, was built. The side facing the camp site serves as an information area. The side facing the street bears an electrically blue glowing tape at night, which indicates the eventful history of the place:

" HOSTAL HOSTILE HOTEL HOSTAGE GOSTIN OSTILE HOSTEL HOSTIL HOST "

The words stand for: HOSTAL = Spanish: guest house, hotel; HOSTILE = French: hostile, English: hostile; HOTEL = German, English, French; HOSTAGE = English: hostage; GOSTIN = stem of Slavic words, e.g. B. GOSTINICA, common for hotel in Russian; OSTILE = Italian: hostile, hostile; HOSTEL = English: hostel; HOSTIL = Spanish and Portuguese: hostile, hostile; HOST = English: host, host, Czech: guest.

An oversized family photo is attached above the neon sign tape, which is now in a desolate condition (as of 2020). The snapshot was taken in 1943 - it shows a woman, a child and a small dog on a summer's day; the prisoners' barracks of the Neue Bremm camp can be seen in the background. Everyday life and terror were closely interwoven during the Third Reich. The breach of civilization was not limited to the centers of excessive violence and mass killing, but occurred in front of everyone.

With the inclusion of the hotel area, the area of ​​the former women's camp is also brought back to the fore. Spruce trees that used to block the view were cleared so that today the view from the site of the former women's camp is free. A portrait of Yvonne Bermann, a former prisoner in the Neue Bremm women's camp, was attached to the hotel facade. An information board reports on their fate. A plaque was put up in the foyer of the hotel itself with information about the history of this place in 1943 and 1944.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Yvelines Pendaries (1995), pp. 155-164.

literature

  • Yveline Pendaries: Les Procès de Rastatt (1946-1954). Le jugement des crimes de guerre en zone française d'occupation en Allemagne (Collection Contacts. Série II - Gallo-Germanica, Vol. 16; in French). Peter Lang, Bern-Berlin-Frankfurt / M.-New York a. a. 1995. ISBN 3-906754-18-9 .
  • Elisabeth Thalhofer: Neue Bremm - Gestapo terror site. An extended police prison and its perpetrators 1943-1944 . Röhrig University Press, St. Ingbert 2002. ISBN 3-86110-320-6 .
  • Elisabeth Thalhofer: Dachau in Rastatt. The trial against the staff of the Gestapo camp Neue Bremm before the Tribunal Général de la Zone Française in Rastatt , pp. 192–209 in: Ludwig Eiber u. Robert Sigel (Ed.): Dachauer processes. Nazi crimes before American military courts in Dachau 1945-1948. Procedure, results, aftermath (Dachau Symposia on Contemporary History 7) . Wallstein, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3835301672 (link last checked on October 9, 2011).
  • Elisabeth Thalhofer: Breaking the boundaries of violence. Gestapo camp in the final phase of the Third Reich . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2010. ISBN 3-50676-849-2 .
  • Burkhard Jellonnek: The Hell of Saarbrücken. History of the Gestapo camp Neue Bremm on the German-French border (PDF; 1.3 MB) . State Center for Civic Education of Saarland (Series No. 1), Saarbrücken 2008 (link last checked on April 28, 2017).
  • Horst Bernard (Ed.): Neue Bremm ... A hellish address: Former inmates of the Gestapo camp Neue Bremm remember . Aphid, Saarbrücken 2010. ISBN 978-3930771615 .
  • Béatrice Fleury & Jacques Walter: Le camp de la Neue Bremm. Mémoire et médiation 1945–1947. in Patricia Oster & Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (eds.): At the turning point. Germany and France around 1945. On the dynamics of a 'transnational' cultural field - Dynamiques d'un champ culturel 'transnational', L'Allemagne et la France vers 1945. Yearbook of the France Center of the Saarland University . Transkript, Bielefeld 2008, ISBN 9783899426687 , pp. 85-114.

notes

  1. ^ The Neue Bremm as a transnational, regional place of remembrance. While there was intense transnational communication about the Neue Bremm in the immediate post-war period, it largely fell asleep between 1950 and the 1970s. It was not until the 1980s that a discussion between the state government, regional historians and contemporary witnesses revived. This essay in French

Web links

Commons : Gestapo-Lager Neue Bremm  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files


Coordinates: 49 ° 12 ′ 40 ″  N , 6 ° 57 ′ 56 ″  E