Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp
The Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp , also known as Kola-Fu , was built from March 1933 within the building complex of the Fuhlsbüttel prison in Hamburg and existed until April 1945, i.e. for the entire period of National Socialism . It is named as one of the central places in Hamburg “where the oppression and terror of fascist rule manifested”. In the first few months it was used to house prisoners in protective custody , from September 4, 1933, it was placed under SS guard and formally declared a concentration camp . In mid-1936 Heinrich Himmler ordered the name to be changed to a police prison , as it was under the administration of the Gestapo . It was used under this name until it was evacuated in mid-April 1945, but it was relocated within the building complex several times.
In addition, from October 25, 1944 to February 15, 1945, a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp was set up in another part of the building. The Fuhlsbüttel prison with prison and penitentiary for men existed in parallel for the entire period and has been operated as a correctional facility since 1945 . In 1987, a memorial was set up in the former gatehouse at Suhrenkamp , which has been showing a permanent exhibition on the history of the concentration camp and the lives of various victims since 2003.
Established from March to September 1933
On the evening after the Reichstag election on March 5, 1933 , the National Socialists occupied the town hall , appointed SA Standartenführer Alfred Richter as Reich Commissioner for the Hamburg police and took over police power in the city. The open terror against the political opponents began that same night, on the basis of the ordinance for the protection of the people and the state of February 28, 1933, which was issued after the fire in the Reichstag , and the instrument of protective custody created with it, there were mass arrests. In March 1933 alone 552 people, mostly from the KPD environment and especially their senior officials, were arrested. This went hand in hand with the immediate reorganization and harmonization of the police, the deployment of SA auxiliary police officers and the establishment of a commando z. b. V. (for special use), which was under the state police and was recruited from SA and SS members .
| 1933 | Fuhlsbüttel | Wittmoor | Arrests |
|---|---|---|---|
| March | 48 | - | 552 |
| April | 478 | 20th | 763 |
| May | 571 | 100 | 435 |
| June | 623 | 100 | 244 |
| July | 579 | 110 | 407 |
| August | 414 | 124 | 197 |
| September | 479 | 140 | 123 |
| October | 732 | 110 | 320 |
| November | 820 | - | 280 |
| December | 725 | - | 103 |
The detainees were initially (from 1935 in the headquarters of the State Police State Police control center of the Gestapo) in the townhouse interrogated and brutally mistreated in most cases. They were then placed in the remand prison , soon temporarily in the attic due to lack of space, or in the Hütten police prison . The capacities were quickly exhausted, so that at the end of March the prisoners were sent to an empty section of the Fuhlsbüttel prison building that was slated for demolition, initially in the former penitentiary for men and the factory building opposite in the so-called Sternenbau in the eastern part of the site.
On March 31, 1933, Alfred Richter , who had meanwhile been appointed police senator , ordered the establishment of the Wittmoor concentration camp on the site of a peat processing factory in the north of Hamburg, but the facility did not prove itself, it was closed again in October 1933. The remaining prisoners were transferred to Fuhlsbüttel. The Nazi leadership considered the conditions and locations there to be more suitable and expandable.
Under SA command until July 1934
In the first few months, the prisoners were guarded in Fuhlsbüttel, the prison conditions were normal, the prisoners were not mistreated, and there were hardly any job opportunities, so that complaints were made within National Socialist circles, their opponents led at the expense of the state a "pleasant detention". On August 3, 1933, Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann inspected the facilities in Fuhlsbüttel and Wittmoor and was outraged by the allegedly negligent conditions. He urged that the “concentration prisoners” be placed under a uniform and tight administration in Fuhlsbüttel. The implementation took place on September 4, 1933 with the appointment of his adjutant and confidante, SA leader Paul Ellerhusen , as camp commandant and the replacement of the prison officers by an SS commando under the direction of SS assault leader Willi Dusenschön .
In addition, the inmates were transferred from the Sternenbau to the former women's prison in Fuhlsbüttel, which is also planned for demolition, in the southern part of the site, where the guards were also housed. The abuse started immediately. As soon as they first went to roll call, the inmates were told that they would be treated inexorably and harshly, and the SS guards immediately gave them butt and kicks. The prisoners were classified into three groups of varying levels of detention: the first group should receive normal food, once a month mail and writing permission, as well as smoking permission during the free period, if properly guided. The second group did not receive any “perks” such as post, writing and smoking permits, and included those who had violated the prison regulations or were classified here because of the severity of their “predecessor offense”. The third group, the “insubordinate” group, was held in solitary confinement and only had “warm food and soft bed” every third day. An additional tightening could be imposed by dark detention .
On December 1, 1933, the judicial authorities were deprived of their supervision of the concentration camp and placed under the authority of the Hamburg State Police, headed by Bruno Linienbach. It was then that a regime of terror began in Kola-Fu . Arbitrary abuse and harassment were commonplace. At that time, the Hamburg concentration camp was considered one of the most brutal camps in the German Reich . The Hamburg regional court ruled in 1962 in its judgment against Dusenschön :
- “The prisoners had to stand at attention in the courtyard for hours, they were slapped [...] in the face or kicked in the buttocks. […] But people also started to abuse individual prisoners under the most humiliating circumstances with whips, ox peaks, belts and chair legs in a beastly manner, sometimes until they collapsed unconscious. [...] Prisoners were taken out of their cells at night by so-called roll commands and beaten up there. "
With an occupancy between 732 and 820 prisoners, ten people died in the last quarter of 1933. In many cases, suicide was given as the cause of death. Contrary to the current regulations, the corpse of this cause of death was immediately handed over to the crematorium for cremation to prevent investigations. The death of Fritz Solmitz , editor of the social democratic daily Lübecker Volksbote , was announced on September 19, 1933 as a "self-direction", but after it was handed over to the widow, notes were found in his pocket watch that document the systematic torture.
Changes in the years 1934 and 1935
The conditions in the concentration camp were not hidden from the public. At the end of 1933, judges, lawyers and pastors received anonymous circulars in which a former prisoner described the attacks. In March 1934 a doctor filed a complaint that an abused victim died in the hospital. Since this was a member of the NSDAP who had been imprisoned for his homosexuality , the case was not covered up, but the proceedings were put down at the behest of Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann in autumn 1934. The accused, the commandant Ellerhusen and the SS-Sturmführer Dusenschön, had already been transferred in the summer of 1934. Dusenschön later worked for the guards at the Esterwegen and Sachsenhausen concentration camps .
In July 1934, criminal secretary Johannes Rode was appointed camp commandant. Rode belonged to the Hamburg Political Police, which from 1935 was officially run under the name Gestapo. The abuse continued, albeit to a lesser extent, under his leadership. The opinion, which is partly expressed in the literature, that the change in command "put an end to the brutal acts of violence" is refuted by the high death rate and numerous prisoners' memories. From 1935 to September 1939 59 deaths are documented, making Fuhlsbüttel the highest death rate of the pre-war camps. In particular, Rode's personal hatred of pimps, homosexuals and Jews persecuted for “ racial disgrace ” led to serious attacks.
Police prison from 1935 to 1945
From 1934 onwards, Fuhlsbüttel had a special position in the concentration camp system, as it was not subordinated to the “ Inspector of the Concentration Camps ”, Theodor Eicke, as an independent and shielded concentration camp, but to the Hamburg State Police as “a kind of police prison for the custody of the prisoners until they were transferred to them the courts or transfer to a Prussian concentration camp ” . The right of the judiciary to surrender the buildings used, as these would be required by the increasing number of prisoners, could not prevail against the Gestapo. Following instructions from Heinrich Himmler in the summer of 1936, the camp was officially called "Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison", but in common usage it remained Kola Fu , so that in 1940 another decree was issued stating that Fuhlsbüttel was not called a concentration camp permitted.
The prisoner structure also changed from mid-1934, so from August 1934 a separate department for female “protective custody prisoners” was set up. Trials had been opened against some of the political prisoners; after their conviction, they were sent to prisons or penitentiaries or transferred to other concentration camps. Others were released or, still without a trial, transferred to the Esterwegen concentration camp or other camps. This reduced the number of political prisoners. The occupancy rate changed from month to month in the years up to 1936 and fluctuated between 65 and over 700 people. Statistically, the daily average was almost 20 new prisoners, the fluctuation was extremely high, 7,000 people passed through the camp every year. Between 1935 and 1938 it was Jehovah's Witnesses , homosexuals and those arrested as "anti-social" who made up large groups of inmates. With the “Arbeitsscheu Reich” campaign in June 1938, 900 beggars, convicts, numerous Sinti and Roma and other stigmatized minorities were brought to the Fuhlsbüttel camp for protective custody. After the November pogroms in 1938 , 700 Jews were brought in.
With the beginning of the Second World War , the composition of the prisoners changed again, violations of the wartime economic order or special provisions such as the decomposition of military strength could lead to imprisonment. Around 400 arrested Swing youth also passed through the police prison in 1941. Also from 1941 there was an increase in the number of men and women from the Soviet Union and Poland and also from Western European countries who were accused of resistance, breach of employment contract and other offenses. By the end of the war there were several thousand forced laborers in Fuhlsbüttel under protective custody. From 1942 onwards, in connection with the breaking up of resistance groups, there were large waves of arrests, in particular several hundred suspects were arrested from around the Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen group and the White Rose Hamburg .
The commanding officer, Johannes Rode, took over the newly established Langer Morgen labor education camp in April 1943 , and his previous deputy Willi Tessmann , who had started his service as an SS guard in 1934 , was the new head in Fuhlsbüttel . At the end of 1944, due to the overcrowding of the Kola-Fu, mainly political prisoners were transferred to the Neuengamme concentration camp , and some women were transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp , without any court hearings or convictions.
Fuhlsbüttel penal institutions from 1933 to 1945
In addition to the concentration camp and police prison, the Fuhlsbüttel penal institutions continued to exist. The demolition was decided before 1933 because the structural requirements no longer met the requirements of the penal system - the buildings were erected between 1869 and 1906 - and several houses in the complex had already been cleared, but this measure was stopped by the ruling National Socialists. The general tightening of criminal prosecution almost doubled the number of prisoners. On March 10, 1933, 1,909 prisoners were registered; on December 31, 1933, 3,302 were counted without the protective prisoners. Convictions by special courts, for example as “insidiousness” when expressing displeasure against the Nazi regime, could lead to imprisonment, as could “preparation for high treason” in the case of suspected political opposition. Some of the prisoners were not released after their imprisonment but were transferred to Neuengamme concentration camp and others as preventive detention; Jewish prisoners were mostly deported to Auschwitz after their imprisonment .
Fuhlsbüttel subcamp from 1944 to 1945
On October 25, 1944, warehouse G on Dessauer Ufer, in which a branch of the Neuengamme concentration camp had been set up with 2,000 forced laborers since September 1944, was partially destroyed in a bomb attack. 150 prisoners died in this attack, 1,300 of the survivors were housed in a building in the Fuhlsbüttel prison on the same evening. The subcamp Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel of the Neuengamme concentration camp set up in this way existed at this location until February 15, 1945. The prisoners, most of whom were deployed according to the Geilenberg program , were transported by S-Bahn to their workplaces in the port and used to build anti-tank trenches and to clean up refineries and companies in the port area.
This means that in the winter of 1944/1945 there were three parallel detention sites on the grounds of the Fuhlsbüttel prison: the police prison / Kola-Fu, the judicial prison with penitentiary and the subcamp . In these four months alone, it is known that 267 people died in the persecution facilities.
Eviction of the police prison in April 1945
At the end of the war, the Gestapo had the police prison, which had around 1,000 prisoners, evacuated on the instructions of SS group leader and lieutenant general of the police, Georg-Henning von Bassewitz-Behr . Few people were released. From April 12, 1945, around 800 prisoners in groups of 100 to 200 had to begin a multi-day death march to the Nordmark labor education camp in Kiel-Hassee, the sick or exhausted were shot on the way, and more people died after arriving in Kiel due to the hardships and insufficient supplies.
71 prisoners were listed on a separate list, there were 13 women and 58 men, most of whom came from Hamburg resistance groups or were considered “particularly dangerous” but had not been brought to justice. They were taken to Neuengamme concentration camp on April 18, 1945, and murdered in the detention bunker between April 21 and 23, 1945, with the participation of the protective custody camp leader Anton Thumann .
Criminal penalties
Willi Tessmann , the camp commander from 1943 to 1945, was sentenced to death and executed by the British military tribunal in 1947 for crimes against members of the Allied Nations, as were two of his subordinates. Other police prison guards during the war were sentenced to prison and prison terms. Count Bassewitz-Behr was acquitted, but handed over to the Soviet authorities for the murder of 45,000 civilians. He died in a labor camp in Eastern Siberia in 1949 .
Between 1948 and 1952, 19 out of 80 guards stood before German courts in addition to commandant Paul Ellerhusen . Ellerhusen was sentenced to twelve years in prison in January 1950 under the provisions of Control Council Act No. 10 for crimes against humanity . In other judgments, the punishment ranged from one year in prison and ten years ' imprisonment . After August 31, 1951, it was no longer possible to apply the Control Council Act . Nevertheless, criminal offenses such as "willful bodily harm in office", "bodily harm by means of a dangerous tool" or extortion of testimony led to comparably high penalties. Nonetheless, all of the convicts were released by the mid-1950s.
The head of the guards at the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp from 1933 to 1934, Willi Dusenschön , had been sentenced to life-long forced labor by a French military court because of his assignments in various concentration camps. In 1961 Dusenschön was charged with the murder of Fritz Solmitz; the trial took place in the fall of 1962 before the Hamburg district court. He was acquitted because there was no evidence of a direct connection between Dusenschön's influence and Solmitz's death, which would have been regarded as murder. Other offenses were statute-barred.
memorial
The old gatehouse at Suhrenkamp was the common main entrance to the area of the penal institution as well as the concentration camp and later police prison. After 1945 the penal system was reformed and the Fuhlsbüttel prison continued to operate as a correctional facility. In the 1960s, the administration moved the main entrance to the former side entrance at Am Hasenberge . The monument protection office raised objections to the planned demolition of the now unused gatehouse, as the brick building was an important architectural example.
In 1983, as part of the Hamburg plaque program, a commemorative plaque was attached to the “old gate house”. In March 1985, the Senate decided to set up a memorial at this location. This opened its first exhibition on November 6, 1987. In the barred entrance area there are boards with reminders and the names of victims as well as a wreath deposit. In 2003 the exhibition was redesigned.
By 1939, at least 76 prisoners had died in the concentration camp or the Gestapo remand prison. A memorial book lists around 250 people who were murdered by the end of the war, most of them resistance fighters and Jews. A total of over 500 women and men were killed in the Fuhlsbüttel detention centers as a result of abuse, murder or being driven to their deaths.
Some stumbling blocks in the Hamburg city area in front of the last places of residence of the victims are reminiscent of those murdered in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp .
literature
- Willi Bredel : The exam . Publishing house Cooperative of Foreign Workers in the USSR. Moscow 1935.
- Herbert Diercks : memorial book "Kola-Fu". For the victims from the concentration camp, Gestapo prison and Fuhlsbüttel subcamp. Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, Hamburg 1987.
- Herbert Diercks: The guards of the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp in court from 1948. In: Kurt Buck (Red.): The early post-war processes. Published by the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial. Edition Temmen, Bremen 1997, ISBN 3-86108-322-1 , pp. 75-92. ( Contributions to the history of the National Socialist persecution in Northern Germany 3)
- Herbert Diercks: Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 2: Early camp, Dachau, Emsland camp. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52962-3 , pp. 112-119.
- Detlef Garbe : Institutions of Terror and the Resistance of the Few. In: Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg (ed.): Hamburg in the Third Reich. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-903-1 .
- Werner Johe: Neuengamme. On the history of the concentration camp in Hamburg. 2nd continuous Edition of the State Center for Political Education, Hamburg 1981
- Hilde Sherman Zander: Between Day and Dark, Girls' Years in the Ghetto , Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-548-20386-8 .
- Henning Timpke: The KL Fuhlsbüttel. In: Martin Broszat (ed.): Studies on the history of the concentration camps. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt , Stuttgart 1970, (basic) series of the quarterly books for contemporary history , 21, ISSN 0506-9408 , pp. 11–28.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Ludwig Eiber : Kola-Fu. Concentration camp and Gestapo prison Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel 1933–1945. published by the Museum for Hamburg History, Hamburg portrait issue 18/1983.
- ↑ Detlef Garbe: Institutions of Terror and the Resistance of the Few. In: Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg (ed.): Hamburg in the Third Reich. Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-903-1 , p. 519.
- ↑ Henning Timpke (Ed.): Documents for the Gleichschalt des Landes Hamburg 1933. Publications of the Research Center for the History of National Socialism in Hamburg, Hamburg 1983, ISBN 3-7672-0811-3 , p. 266.
- ^ A b Speech by the President of the Prison Office, Max Lahts, on September 4, 1933; quoted from Henning Timpke (Hrsg.): Documents for the Gleichschaltung des Landes Hamburg 1933. Publications of the Research Center for the History of National Socialism in Hamburg, Hamburg 1983, p. 248 f.
- ^ Herbert Diercks: Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel. Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52962-3 , p. 118.
- ↑ Henning Timpke: The KL Fuhlsbüttel. In: Martin Broszat (ed.): Studies on the history of the concentration camps. Stuttgart 1970, pp. 15/16.
- ↑ printed by Henning Timpke: KL Fuhlsbüttel. Pp. 26-28.
- ^ Lothar Gruchmann: Justice in the Third Reich. 3. verb. Edition Munich 2001, ISBN 3-486-53833-0 , pp. 374-379.
- ↑ Detlef Garbe: Institutions of Terror and the Resistance of the Few. In: Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg (ed.): Hamburg in the Third Reich. Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-903-1 , pp. 530 and 755 f. (Fn. 14)
- ↑ Henning Timpke: The KL Fuhlsbüttel. P. 24.
- ^ Herbert Diercks: Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel. Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52962-3 , p. 118.
- ↑ Detlef Garbe: Institutions of Terror and the Resistance of the Few. In: Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg (ed.): Hamburg in the Third Reich. Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-903-1 , p. 532.
- ^ "Kola-Fu" memorial book. ed. vd Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, Hamburg 1987.
- ^ Ulrich Bauche : Work and Destruction. P. 208.
- ↑ Uwe Fentsahm: The "Evacuation March from Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel to Kiel-Hassee (April 12-15, 1945). In: Information on contemporary history in Schleswig-Holstein. Issue 44, Kiel 2004.
- ^ Hermann Kaienburg : The Neuengamme Concentration Camp 1938–1945. Bonn 1997, p. 259ff.
- ↑ Hamburger Abendblatt, Historical Archive No. 242 of October 16, 1962, p. 1: PDF ( Memento of the original of March 4, 2012 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.
- ↑ Ulrich Bauche et al. (Ed.): Work and destruction. Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-87975-356-3 , p. 37.
- ↑ Kola-Fu memorial book. P. 13.
- ↑ Detlef Garbe: Institutions of Terror and the Resistance of the Few. In: Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg (ed.): Hamburg in the Third Reich. Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-903-1 , p. 532.
Coordinates: 53 ° 37 ′ 21 ″ N , 10 ° 1 ′ 8 ″ E