SS special camp in Hinzert

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Memorial at the site of the Hinzert concentration camp (2008)
Cemetery chapel

The SS special camp Hinzert (also Hinzert concentration camp ) was a German detention and concentration camp near Hinzert near Trier in the Hunsrück (today Rhineland-Palatinate ). It existed with changing assignments from 1939 to early March 1945.

history

Police detention and education camp of the RAD

A barrack camp of the German Labor Front , which had been built in 1938 for workers of the Western Wall , was set up on October 16, 1939 as a police detention and education camp. It was intended for the "disciplinary treatment" and "three weeks of re-education" of so-called " work -shy" people who were forced to work on the Siegfried Line or the Reichsautobahn . Part of the camp was called "SS Special Camp Hinzert"; workers were assigned there who were to be detained for longer as "recidivists, notorious idlers or habitual drinkers".

concentration camp

On July 1, 1940, the camp was taken over by the inspection of the concentration camps , received the status of a concentration camp main camp and since then has fulfilled a variety of tasks as “re-Germanization”, “ protective custody ” and “ labor education camp ”. In addition to “labor education prisoners”, political prisoners were increasingly brought into Hinzert. As of May 1942, over 2,000 prisoners of night and fog from France and the Benelux countries were brought to Hinzert. 800 former French Foreign Legionnaires of German nationality were also temporarily housed. Around 14,000 male prisoners between the ages of 13 and 80 passed through the camp until it was cleared in 1945.

The camp was designed for 560 prisoners, but at times completely overcrowded with 1200 to 1500 people. There is evidence of 321 deaths, but according to prisoners' descriptions, a far higher number of deaths must be assumed. In 1946, the French military administration estimated the number of those killed in the Hinzert concentration camp at 1,000.

Although Hinzert was not an extermination camp and did not have killing facilities such as B. gas chambers , in addition to the murders by the camp staff , there were also “ special treatments ”, etc. a. At the end of 1941 to the killing of 70 Soviet political commissars and in 1944 of 23 Luxembourg resistance fighters . The mass murders were carried out either by shooting or by lethal injection. The bodies were buried in the forest behind the SS special camp.

About 30 external camps, most of them only established in 1944, were organizationally subordinate to the Hinzert camp. The prisoners in the satellite camps were often deployed on airfields to expand runways and level bomb craters.

Prisoners (selection)

  • Victor Abens (1912–1993), Luxembourg politician and industrialist, 1979–1989 member of the European Parliament
  • Jacques Arthuys (1894–1943) French economist and journalist; leading position in the French resistance; died on August 9, 1943 in Hermeskeil Hospital
  • Jean-Pierre "Jhemp" Bertrand (1921–2008), Luxembourg politician
  • Pierre Biermann (1901–1981), Luxembourg professor, writer and publicist
  • Nicolas Birtz (1922-2006), Luxembourg politician and athlete (Olympic participant 1948)
  • Léon Bollendorff (1915–2011), Luxembourg politician, philosopher and philologist; Bearer of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany , the Helmut Kohl badge of honor and other awards
  • Georg Buch (1903–1995), German politician (SPD), President of the Hessian State Parliament, 1960–1968 Lord Mayor of Wiesbaden
  • Christian Calmes (1913–1995), Luxembourg lawyer, economist, historian and author
  • Louis Cartan (1909-1943), French scientist; died on December 3, 1943 in Wolfenbüttel prison
  • Jean Crouan (1906–1985), French politician; was liberated on April 29, 1945 in Dachau concentration camp
  • Eugène Auguste Collart (1890–1978), Luxembourgish farmer, industrialist, politician, diplomat and publicist
  • Jean Daligault (1899–1945), French clergyman and artist, member of the Resistance
  • Michel Edvire (1923–1943), French resistance fighter; executed in Cologne on December 7, 1943
  • Pierre Frieden (1892–1959), Luxembourg politician and writer; Minister of State and Government President in Luxembourg
  • Maurice Jubert (1907–1943) French resistance fighter; died on February 22, 1943 in prison in Saarbrücken
  • Robert Krieps (1922–1990), Luxembourg politician, 1974–1979 Minister for Education, Justice and Culture, 1984–1989 Minister for Justice, Culture and Environment, 1989–1990 Member of the European Parliament
  • Jean Muller (1909–1976), President of the Luxembourg Scouting Association
  • Tony Noesen (August 21, 1905 - February 25, 1944, executed in the Hinzert SS special camp), Luxembourg scout
  • Luigi Peruzzi (1910–1993), Italian-born Luxembourg resister; Witness in the trial of Paul Sporrenberg
  • Césaire Anne Jean de Poulpiquet (1903–1943), escape helper for Allied pilots in France; arrived in Hinzert on July 3, 1943, died in Wittlich on August 5, 1943
  • Alphonse "Foni" Tissen (1909–1975), Luxembourg art teacher and painter
  • Albert Ungeheuer (born March 30, 1915, † May 19, 1944), important Luxembourg resister, escape helper for Luxembourgers who had deserted from the Wehrmacht after being forcibly recruited; executed in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp
  • Auguste Wampach (1911–1988), Luxembourgish Roman Catholic clergyman and resistance fighter
  • Lucien Wercollier (1908–2002), Luxembourgish sculptor
  • Eugen Wipf (1916–1948), Swiss prisoner functionary, later SS sergeant major

Camp commanders

Functional staff

Prosecution

Hermann Pister was sentenced to death in the main Buchenwald trial in 1947 and died before the sentence was carried out. Egon Zill, who later became a commandant in the Natzweiler and Flossenbürg concentration camps , was sentenced to life imprisonment in Munich in 1955, but was released in 1961. Paul Sporrenberg was not arrested until 1959; he died before he had to answer to court in Trier. A French tribunal tried in Rastatt in June 1948 around 15 and in September of the same year against a further seven SS members of the camp. Six of the defendants were acquitted; four death sentences were commuted to prison terms in the second instance. In further trials, the former camp doctor, the camp capo Eugen Wipf and other perpetrators had to answer individually before courts.

memorial

"Scattered Cross"

Monument (bronze), by Lucien Wercollier

Foreign prisoners, such as French prisoners of the “ Night and Fog Action ” and, above all, Luxembourg citizens, made up a large proportion of those imprisoned and those killed. For this reason, the so-called "Hinzerter Kreuz" was erected by Luxembourgers as early as 1945, and the memorial stone is not only inscribed in German, but also in Luxembourgish .

Cemetery of honor

In 1946 the French military government had a cemetery of honor built on the site of the former crew camp, where all the corpses found in the mass graves that could not be identified were buried. The cemetery chapel was inaugurated on November 4, 1948. Even today, the Hinzert memorial is misleadingly listed on many maps as the “Ehrenfriedhof”, which does not quite do justice to its role as a memorial for the special camp.

Documentation and meeting place

On October 11, 1986, a memorial to the former Luxembourg prisoner Lucien Wercollier was inaugurated as a central memorial in the cemetery at the memorial . The inscription is in Latin and German ; it reads “In ardorem humanitatis, pacis et iustitiae” or “Imbued with humanity, peace and justice”.

1989 founded private citizens on their own initiative the development association documentation and meeting former concentration camp Hinzert e. V.

In 1991/1992, the Rhineland-Palatinate State Center for Civic Education presented a memorial concept for Rhineland-Palatinate and the two concentration camp memorials located there in Osthofen and Hinzert. Following this conception, the installation of an information system began in 1994, which explains the “places of inhumanity” in the vicinity of the former camp in several European languages ​​(German, English, French, Polish).

The official documentation and meeting center (designed by the Saarbrücken architects Wandel, Hoefer and Lorch , who received the German Steel Construction Prize in 2006), was opened on December 10, 2005 in the presence of former prisoners from Luxembourg , France and the Netherlands . There is now a permanent exhibition on the camp, the story of the suffering of its inmates and the atrocities committed by the perpetrators.

Picture gallery

  • Badge at the entrance

  • Clothes of a prisoner from Luxembourg in the documentation center

  • Catafalk for 321 dead

  • Memorial plaque for the surviving French victims

  • Documentation center

  • Documentation center from behind

  • Memorial and documentation center

  • Historic road sign

literature

Web links

Commons : Hinzert concentration camp  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Uwe Bader, Beate Welter: The SS special camp / Hinzert concentration camp , p. 31.
  2. ^ Street sign today in the National Resistance Museum in Esch / Alzette, Luxembourg.

Coordinates: 49 ° 41 ′ 56 "  N , 6 ° 53 ′ 34"  E