Oflag VI C

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Oflag VI C was an officer camp in the Osnabrück district of Atter . It is unusual that 400 Jewish men were able to maintain a Jewish community life here until 1944.

history

The barracks in Landwehrstrasse was built for the Wehrmacht in 1935. After the French campaign , French prisoners of war were brought in. They lived in 30 barracks, most of which were made of wood. 140 to 200 people lived in each of the barracks fenced off with barbed wire. "Only the generals slept individually", a documentation from a branch of the Ratsgymnasium in Eversburg is quoted, which reports on the time when "6,000 Serbian officers" had to live here. Up to 400 Jewish men lived here under the name of Oflag VIc. The food was bad, it is said. An air raid on December 6, 1944 was particularly horrific. Because bunkers for prisoners and guards were not provided, 118 prisoners were counted dead. The dead are buried in the Eversburg cemetery. In 1945 the camp was closed. Many Serbian officers stayed in Osnabrück and later founded their own Serbian Orthodox community there. The British Army took over the Wehrmacht barracks. Initially, displaced persons were housed here and, from 1950, British soldiers, at which time the camps and barracks were renamed "Quebec Barracks". The British Rhine Army used the "Quebec Barracks" as barracks until 2008.

An appraiser from the Lower Saxony State Office for the Protection of Monuments was astonished to find out: "Of all places, the largest Jewish community in the Reich survives in a prison camp within an officers' camp."

“The Jewish officers were able to maintain a community life here and had a rabbi. They buried their dead in a Jewish cemetery. ... While only five Jewish citizens survived the war in the city of Osnabrück, from 1941 to summer 1943 the "Holy Family of OFLAG VIC" grew from 140 to 400 parishioners. "

- Elmar Stephan

Demand for a memorial

“It must have been a strange picture: men in strange, presumably somewhat tattered uniforms push a hearse through the streets, guarded by Wehrmacht soldiers. It goes from the Osnabrück district of Atter in the northwest across the city to the Magdalenenstrasse cemetery in the southeast, in public. They are Serbian officers of the Jewish faith who are interned in the officers' camp "Oflag VI C" in Atter and who have buried their dead in the middle of Osnabrück until 1944 according to the Jewish rite. "

- Frank Keil

In the rest of Germany, trains with Jews head east to the concentration camps , and the Jewish officers in OFLAG VI C on the outskirts of Osnabrück can celebrate Shabbat and the Jewish holidays - there is even a prayer barracks. Zvi Asaria (state rabbi in Lower Saxony from 1966 to 1970) works as a military chaplain under the name of Hermann Helfgott in the captain's rank.

“The Jewish prisoners were housed separately in the camp. One of the barracks served as a house of prayer. The prisoners were allowed to practice their religion in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. ... Church services were celebrated with the tolerance of the commandant and Jewish holidays were celebrated as far as possible. The dead could be buried with an escort of at least 10 Jewish men, the " Chewra Kadishah ", in the Jewish cemetery on Magdalenenstrasse (Johannisfriedhof). "

The “Bürgerforum Osnabrück-Atter e. V. ”has been trying since 2008 to set up a memorial at this location. From 2010 the efforts of the association “Anti-War Barrack Atter-Osnabrück” were continued. The Osnabrück Monument Preservation refused to place the buildings as a whole group under monument protection in 2009 because too many conversions and modernizations had taken place. Barrack 35, however, is best preserved and should be designated as a single monument, even though it was a guard barrack that did not house any prisoners of war. Due to the peculiarity that a large group of Jewish prisoners of war were excluded from the persecution of the Jews, the city of Osnabrück has also shown its willingness to convert Barrack 35 into a memorial. In 2011 she dealt with the topic at several meetings. The city asked itself the questions: "How can the history be scientifically processed?" And "How can the public be informed about the history of OFFLAG VI C?"

literature

  • Elmar Stephan: Jewish community in the camp: Association fights for memorial , Weser-Kurier, December 13, 2011
  • Frank Keil: Battle for Barrack 35, former internment camp in Osnabrück , taz from May 6, 2011
  • Department of Culture of the City of Osnabrück, draft resolution “Conversion of Quebec barracks; OFLAG VI C prisoner of war camp “of May 12, 2011

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d A barracks waiting , report in the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung on September 20, 2008 (PDF; 892 kB)
  2. ^ A b c Elmar Stephan: Jewish community in the camp: Association fights for memorial in Weser-Kurier, December 13, 2011
  3. a b c d e f draft resolution of the city of Osnabrück “Conversion Quebec barracks; POW camp OFLAG VI C "of May 12, 2011"
  4. List of the Yugoslav prisoners killed in the attack on December 6, 1944 ( memento of the original from September 28, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 16 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.spc-osnabrueck.de
  5. a b Frank Keil: Struggle for Barrack 35, former internment camp in Osnabrück , taz from May 6, 2011
  6. The distance between the camp and the cemetery is about 8 kilometers.

Web links

Coordinates: 52 ° 17 ′ 59.9 ″  N , 7 ° 59 ′ 10.6 ″  E