Police detainee
Police prisoner was the common synonym for " remand prisoner " during the Nazi era .
Basically, these were people who were arrested by the state police or the Gestapo in order to subject them to a state investigation and prosecution. They were sent to town halls , district courts and police prisons, as well as concentration or labor education camps. Committed to concentration camps, they were allowed to keep their civilian clothes and in Auschwitz concentration camp , where only inmate numbers were tattooed, they were not given their numbers on their skin.
The most well-known occurrence of police prisoners comes from the Neuengamme concentration camp , who formed their own group of prisoners there, were specially marked and were not allowed to work outside the camp, even if they were then transferred to other prisons or concentration camps.
In Thuringia , a case is known where a police prisoner committed suicide in a "cell in the town hall" of the city of Apolda in 1942 .
At the turn of the year 1942/43 the police prisons in occupied Poland were so overcrowded due to raids and waves of arrests that the police prisoners who had been brought in were transferred to Auschwitz. There they were housed separately and were given the identification "PH-M" (male) or "PH-F" (female police prisoner) on their clothing in addition to the prisoner number.
The history of the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp tells us that the civilian worker Walter Karsch, who was employed in Dora, was sent to the concentration camp as a police prisoner. Although his status was changed to the much less favorable “ protective custody ” category after a month , Karsch survived.
In countries occupied by the Wehrmacht there were also police prisoners at times, such as the Grini police prisoner camp in Norway , which served as a prison for political prisoners from 1941 to 1945.
literature
- Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum : Auschwitz Death Books , Volume 1, Reports, ISBN 3-598-11262-9 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-neuengamme.de/?id=475 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ City Archives Apolda, death book 1942, No. 235.
- ↑ State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau: Auschwitz Death Books , Volume 1, Reports, p. 111.
- ^ Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of death. The Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp , p. 515, ISBN 978-3-8353-0118-4 .
