Repatriation camp in Goldberg

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Schwinzer Heide

The repatriation camp No. 217 in Goldberg was a testing and filtration camp for Soviet prisoners of war and citizens before they were repatriated from Mecklenburg. The camp was located on Hellberg near Goldberg (Mecklenburg) .

background

List of repatriation camps for citizens of the USSR in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, October 2, 1945, State Archives of the Russian Federation, Moscow

In autumn 1945 there were 53 repatriation camps for the citizens of the Soviet Union on the territory of the Soviet occupation zone . There were 14 camps in today's state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania : Camp 208 Ribnitz , Camp 209 Barth , Camp 210 Rostock , Camp 211 Sternberg , Camp 213 Bützow , Camp 214 Laage , Camp 215 Teterow , Camp 216 Krakow am See , Camp 217 Goldberg , Camp 218 Malchin , camp 219 Wittstock / Dosse , camp 220 Neustrelitz , camp 221 Wesenberg and camp 222 Fürstenberg / Havel . Former prisoners of war were kept separate from civilians in all camps.

According to a church chronicle by Pastor Sigurd Havemann (1943–2013), four to six thousand Russian “returnees” were shipped to Dobbin (camp 216, Krakow am See). Both the German and Russian sources are poor for both camps.

In the German Democratic Republic the subject was a taboo.

history

Hellberg brickworks around 1940

On the grounds of the Hellberg brickworks , but above all on the terrain from there to the Seelust boarding school on the beach of the Goldberger See , the 2nd shock army had built a huge camp from May 8, 1945, consisting of 273 barracks and board sheds with bricks. The location of this camp was roughly that on which the buildings for the NVA barracks of the 8th Panzer Regiment were built from 1963. Before that there was a fir forest that the Russians only partially cleared. The dwellings named here as barracks were log houses (typical for Russia) . A major clear cut had been made for the required wood at Ossenbarg, near Alt Schwinz in the direction of Bossow , because firewood was also needed in winter. The roofs of the huts were covered with green reeds. The Hellberg brickworks went bankrupt in 1940 . Due to the war, most of the brickworks stopped producing anyway. The Russians dismantled all the wood from the brick buildings, especially the drying sheds and the roof of the kiln. The kiln itself remained standing, but after the camp was closed it was sold for demolition. The chimney stood until the end of the 1950s. The commandant of the camp lived in Wilhelm Busacker's restaurant “Wilhelmshöh”, Am Strande, that is to the right of the “Seelust” guesthouse. The initially many thefts, especially from cattle, soon subsided. The need for food was very great. So many cows and oxen had been brought from the estates to the paddock between the brickworks and the Lüschow . How many Soviet prisoners of war were smuggled through here is unclear. New batches kept coming and the others marched to Bossow. There the Dobbertin monastery office had a siding on the Güstrow – Meyenburg railway line . The released prisoners were brought back to their homeland by Bossow. The Soviet prisoners of war from repatriation camp 216 near Dobbin near Krakow am See were also loaded into Bossow.

In the files of the Goldberg City Archives, some documents and leaflets in Russian script were found under Urban Buildings . Among them is a note without a date from the clerk Berdnikow to the Goldberg mayor Heinrich Zehbuhr with the request that five girls be made available to work in the kitchen of camp 217. Another letter from the head of the troop service department of Camp 217 of the People's Commissariat for Defense, Major Timoschtschuk, to the commandant of the city of Goldberg, dated June 17, 1945 with the request that officer Suslin be given a blanket, a camp bed, a pillow, two sheets and to hand over two duvet covers. The letter was forwarded to Mayor Zehbuhr. A letter from the head of the inspection and filtration camp, Captain Orlow, to the mayor of Goldberg with the request that camp 217 be provided with five pairs of horses for five days to transport potatoes to camp 217 on June 26, 1945. Note below: the release of five pairs of horses was approved by the city commandant on June 25, 1945.

Based on the order of the Commander-in-Chief of SMAD No. 046 of October 26, 1945, the 2nd Shock Army handed over the accommodations and equipment of the repatriation camps listed above to SMAS Mecklenburg for the purpose of accommodating German refugees. Since these camps were heated stone buildings, the head of the administration of the command office of the SMAD, Major General Gorchow, did not list camp No. 217 Goldberg as a barrack camp. The completion notification was issued on November 9, 1945.

Soviet prisoners of war from 1941

Arrival of Soviet prisoners of war from Stalag II A in Teterow in 1941
Arrival of Soviet prisoners of war from Stalag II A in Teterow in 1941

When the Wehrmacht began the German-Soviet War on June 22, 1941 and marched into Russia, Army Group Mitte recorded 324,000 prisoners in July 1941. The soldiers and officers of the Red Army who were taken prisoner in Germany, unlike the prisoners of war of other nations, had no rights whatsoever. They were given smaller rations and had no access to aid from the Red Cross . So-called Russian camps were set up to accommodate them . From autumn 1941 onwards, regular prisoner-of-war camps also took in captured Red Army soldiers.

Since most of the Germans were at war, the Soviet prisoners of war classified as fit for work by the German Wehrmacht were distributed to work detachments throughout the German Reich from 1939 to 1945. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania there were three prisoner-of-war camps for soldiers and NCOs (crew main camp), Stalag II A in Neubrandenburg, Stalag II C in Greifswald and Stalag II E in Schwerin during the Second World War . Firms, communities and farms applied for workers at the labor offices and received them from the prisoner of war camps.

In 1941, French prisoners of war were initially employed by the state estate administration in the Dobbertin monastery office . The Schwerin Labor Office, Parchim branch, had to hand them over to the industry and received only 14 of the 25 Russian prisoners of war applied for on March 27, 1942 . For this purpose, the estate administration in Dobbertin set up a new Russian camp in the former Müller residence. As noted in the 1942 economic report of the estate inspector Adolf Rode from the Dobbertin estate administration. The Russian prisoners of war mostly had it good there. Although prohibited, they also ate together. In the 1943 economic report, there were 20 Russian prisoners of war, but at the end of 1943 5 prisoners were handed over to the Lübz sugar factory and two Russian prisoners of war were transferred to the hospital because of illness. Through the mediation of the district farmers, four more Russians were added in February 1944, one of whom was transferred to the hospital in December 1944. As early as March 1944, the Dobbertiner estate administration was in dire straits due to the withdrawal of 10 prisoners of war by the Parchim employment office, as reported by the estate inspector Rode. Dobbertin with the monastery and all the existing needy residents as well as all relocated refugees and bomb victims and the existing maternity home (maternity ward for flak helpers from the Baltic Sea) is an exception in the whole country, please bear in mind that with the departure of the 10 Russians here in Dobbertin an extraordinary emergency will arise.

The Soviet prisoners of war and civil Russians arrived in batches and, after delousing, left the Dobbertin monastery and, after the inspection period, also the repatriation camp, so that new ones could move up. Many of the returnees came back into the Red Army or were put into labor battalions. A small part was convicted and sent to Stalinist gulags in Siberia . The Hellberg camp only existed until autumn 1945 and was handed over to the city of Goldberg in the summer of 1946. The 273 barracks were gradually cleared, probably for demolition as firewood. In August 1946 there was nothing to be seen of the many barracks.

Conditions at that time

The first French prisoners of war from the western campaign came to Goldberg in June 1940 . They were housed in the house of the chemical factory, had to assemble every morning on Schützenplatz and then went to the assigned workplaces. These were mostly private companies, bakeries, etc. The French weren't actually guarded at all and lived very well here.

It is not yet known why this large SMAD repatriation camp No. 217 was stationed at Hellberg. But there were Soviet command offices in Goldberg and neighboring Dobbertin . In Goldberg, the district court building was chosen as its seat, including the houses Parkstrasse, Schulstrasse and Hoher Wall; there were barriers there. The residents had to leave their homes within 24 hours. There was a reason that the Russians were able to loot in Goldberg for a week: Although the white flags had already been hoisted when a Soviet troop marched in from Dobbertin, the troops were shot at from above from the window on Güstrower Strasse. As a result, every home was looted. Most of the Goldbergers fled to Buchholz or hid elsewhere. In 1946 the commandant's office left Goldberg, so that school could start again in October (the schoolhouse was one of them). In Dobbertin, the headquarters was stationed in the apartment of the master baker Ernst Müller in the monastery.

The Soviet soldiers had confiscated the entire area of the Dobbertin monastery . On May 3, 1945, the monastery was evacuated within two hours, only the monastery office bakery and monastery gardening shop were allowed to stay to supply the troops. The combat troops were replaced by occupation troops. At the beginning of May 1945, a large transit, delousing and clothing camp was created behind the monastery church, where tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war, civil Russians and Latvians were taken care of and smuggled through. The last contemporary witness, Kurt Müller, who lived in Dobbertin, son of the monastery master baker at the time, Ernst Müller, still knew the locations of the disinfection system and the open latrines in the monastery park. But where did the people come from and where were they taken?

According to a situation report by the Cologne refugee pastor Carl Köhler of August 31, 1945 to the Oberkirchenrat in Schwerin, around 82,000 (?) People are said to have been processed there in the four months. These numbers cannot be proven, but the disinfection system was proven to have passed. A large open-air stage was set up on the square in front of the church for cultural support.

The occupation troops stayed longer in Dobbertin than in Goldberg, but only until the beginning of 1947; because in the spring of 1947 the Dobbertiner See was frozen over and the Goldbergers also came to plunder. Master bricklayer Robert Schramm was shot dead in the brickworks on May 2, 1945. He was buried with another Goldberger behind the Zieglerhaus and reburied in the Goldberg cemetery in May 1946.

On August 8, 1945, the head of the command service department of the Soviet military administration in Germany issued an order to all military commanders in the towns and districts of the [sic] Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania province:

“Since some small groups of repatriates and individual people try to stay on German territory during the transport home, I order that all such persons be uncovered and transferred to assembly and dispatch points of the army.

All repatriates who are employed at the military headquarters are also to be handed over to the assembly and dispatch points of the army.

The reports about the transferred persons are to be made every five days from August 9th, 1945.

The reason: Directive No. 1/03928 of the administration of the commandant's office of the SMAD dated August 4th, 1945. "

- Major General Enschin

In the forest of the Schwinzer Heide near the town of Kleesten , five escaped soldiers and an officer were shot and buried years later in the Kirch Kogel cemetery.

Later use of the site

former Artur Becker barracks of the NVA 2012
former NVA barracks 2017

From 1962 onwards , the National People's Army built numerous barracks on the wasteland. Goldberg enjoyed great growth as a garrison. Since the reunification and the dissolution of the NVA, the buildings have been empty and dilapidated.

literature

  • Pavel Polian : Deported home. Munich 2001.
  • Ulrike Goeken-Haidl: The way back. Essen 2006.
  • Natalja Jeske: Caught in the war. Soviet prisoners of war in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 1941–1945 . Series of publications by the Regionalmuseum Neubrandenburg, No. 44. Neubrandenburg 2015. ISBN 978-3-939779-24-7 .
  • Friedrich-Wilhelm Borchert, Udo Steinhäuser, Werner Schulz, Renate de Veer and Thomas Reilinger: Brick making history (s): former brickworks on Lehm- and Brickstrasse . Buchberg Verlag, Buchberg / Mecklenburg 2011. ISBN 978-3-9807459-1-8 . GoogleBooks
  • Horst Alsleben , Ralf Berg: New Schwinz with Hellberg brickworks (2012)

swell

Unprinted sources

  • State Main Archive Schwerin (LHAS)
    • LHAS 5.12-4 / 2 Department of Agriculture, Domains and Forests. No. 8607 Economic reports of the Dobbertin State Estate Administration 1939 - 1945. No. 8624 The Dobbertin State Estate Administration.
  • State Church Archives Schwerin (LKAS)
    • LKAS, OKR Schwerin, Dobbertin, Prediger, Volume 2, 1945–1998.

See also

Remarks

  1. ↑ Fürstenberg came to Brandenburg in 1950.
  2. ↑ The church chronicle with Dobbin's post-war history is preserved on CD.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ List of repatriation camps for citizens of the USSR in the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany, October 2, 1945, State Archives of the Russian Federation, Moscow (GARF) f. 9408 op. 1, d. 26th
  2. ↑ Natalja Jeske: Caught in the war. Soviet prisoners of war in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 1941–1945 . Neubrandenburg 2015, p. 65, no.216 (Krakow) and no.217 (Goldberg)
  3. ↑ Mostly Russian files in the Goldberg City Archives, taken over at the bathing beach in 1945/46. StA Goldberg, inventory of urban buildings, file No. 41
  4. ↑ a b c d Recording of a conversation between Thomas Reilinger and Erwin Drögmöller from Alt Schwinz, later Passow in November 2010
  5. ↑ Stadtarchiv Goldberg, inventory of municipal buildings, file no. 41. List 1 - 9, barracks camp 273 barracks and board sheds, Goldberg am Badestrand, April 2, 1946
  6. ↑ GARF, inventory 7103, list 1, file 746, sheet 21, State Archives Moscow of the Russian Federation.
  7. ↑ a b Natalja Jeske: Caught in the war. 2015, p. 6
  8. ↑ a b LHAS 5. 12-4 / 2 Ministry of Agriculture, Domains and Forests. No. 8607.
  9. ↑ Kurt Müller: Reflections and experiences from the last years of the war in the monastery area. Dobbertin February 16, 1995.
  10. ↑ Horst Alsleben: The long way home. The fate of Soviet prisoners of war after their return home was decided in the Goldberg repatriation camp. SVZ, Mecklenburg-Magazin, November 10, 2017, p. 24.
  11. ↑ Carl Köhler: Situation report on Dobbertin to the Oberkirchenrat Schwerin from August 31, 1945. Dobbertin, Volume 2, Preacher, No. 158.
  12. ↑ Horst Alsleben: The long way home. The fate of Soviet prisoners of war after their return home was decided in the Goldberg repatriation camp. SVZ, Mecklenburg-Magazin, November 10, 2017, p. 24.
  13. ^ Goldberger Friedhofsakten
  14. ^ State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF), Moscow: GARF, inventory 7103, directory 1, file 76, sheet 186

Coordinates: 53 ° 36 ′ 40.8 "  N , 12 ° 6 ′ 36.8"  E