Riederloh

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Riederloh was the name of two camps that supplied the gunpowder and ammunition factory of Dynamit AG (DAG) in Kaufbeuren ( Bavaria ) with slave labor during the Nazi era . The two camps were called "Riederloh" and "Riederloh II". Riederloh II was a subcamp camp and was also known as "Riederloh partial camp" or "Lager Steinholz".

Riederloh

"Riederloh" was a residential camp operated directly by the DAG. It existed from 1939 to 1945 and was located at the southern end of the DAG site. The Riederloh camp housed the German employees of the construction companies involved during the construction phase (1939–41) and then German and non-German forced laborers, mainly from Poland and the Soviet Union, as well as Italian military internees (1941–45).

Riederloh II

"Riederloh II" was a satellite camp of the Dachau concentration camp and was operated accordingly by the SS . It existed from September 20, 1944 to January 8, 1945 and was located about 2 km east of the DAG site. The Riederloh II subcamp was built with the aim of destruction through labor . In addition to four residential barracks , there was a camp kitchen as well as washrooms and accommodation for the SS camp personnel. The inmates were deployed in the nearby DAG primer factory, in forest work and in road and track construction. Between autumn 1944 and January 1945, 472 of the approximately 1,300 Jewish concentration camp prisoners who originally came mainly from Poland and Hungary and had been brought from Auschwitz to Kaufbeuren after surviving the selection process perished there. The main causes of death were malnutrition and physical weakness combined with hard physical labor and the extremely cruel treatment by the SS camp personnel. After the dissolution of the SS camp between January 8 and 11, 1945, the 200 to 300 survivors were brought to the Dachau concentration camp and were placed in quarantine. After the prisoners were able to work again, they were then taken to other subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp. The abandoned barracks at Riederloh II have now been occupied by Ukrainian forced laborers.

The first camp leader was SS-Hauptscharführer Wilhelm Wagner until the end of November 1944 , who was later sentenced to death in the Dachau main trial and executed at the end of May 1946. His successor and last camp leader in Riederloh II was SS-Hauptscharführer Edmund Zdrojewski who was later sentenced to death and hanged in Krakow .

After 1945

Sudeten Germans displaced from Gablonz in Czechoslovakia after 1946 were settled on the grounds of the DAG factory and the Riederloh camp . Their settlement developed into one of the larger districts of Kaufbeuren and was later called Neugablonz . More Sudeten Germans were settled in and around Riederloh II. This much smaller settlement became the part of the municipality of Mauerstetten, now known as Steinholz . For this reason, Riederloh II is sometimes referred to by the unofficial name "KZ Mauerstetten-Steinholz".

Memorial culture

On the southwest edge of Mauerstetten-Steinholz, not far from a nursing home ( Lage ), there is a cemetery with a memorial stone that commemorates the death of the 472 Jewish victims of Riederloh II. The victims of presumed occupational accidents on the part of the non-German residents of the Riederloh camp are commemorated by a plaque in the Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Neugablonz. Mentally ill workers from the Riederloh camp or people who had suffered a nervous breakdown were taken to the Kaufbeuren-Irsee nursing and sanctuary run by Valentin Faltlhauser and killed there in Aktion Brandt if they did not recover within four weeks.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Directory of the concentration camps and their external commandos in accordance with Section 42 (2) BEG , No. 1218: Riederloh
  2. ↑ a b Edith Raim: Riederloh In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel : Der Ort des Terrors. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. , Munich 2005, p. 470f.

Coordinates: 47 ° 54 ′ 5.9 ″  N , 10 ° 38 ′ 59.1 ″  E