SS military training area at Lake Camp

Coordinates: 57 ° 31 ′ 0 ″  N , 22 ° 21 ′ 0 ″  E

SS military training area at Lake Camp​

Latvia

Dondangen Castle, the former headquarters of the SS military training area

In autumn 1943, the construction of the SS training area at Seelager began in Latvia . The SS military training area was built around the village of Dondangen .

At the turn of the year 1942/43, a significant increase in personnel in the Waffen SS units began. In order to realize this massive increase in troop strength, the existing accommodations and training capacities had to be expanded or new ones created. Therefore, the SS leadership main office decided to set up four new military training areas. These included the Kurmark SS training area near Lieberose in Brandenburg, the West Prussian SS training area near Bruss in West Prussia, the Seelager SS training area in Dondangen (Latvia) and the Moorlager SS training area near Bereza Kartuska in the Generalgouvernement of Poland . The command post of the military training area was set up in Dondangen Castle. The residents of the communities of Dondangen, Lubessern and Erwahlen were forcibly resettled in order to establish the practice area. All three municipalities are located on the northern tip of the Kurland peninsula . Forced laborers from Western Europe and around 6,000 Jews from the Kaiserwald concentration camp near Riga were used for the construction work. SS-Hauptzscharführer Gustav Sorge was the commander of the camps Dondangen I and the smaller Dondangen II , which were set up for this purpose . The work on the training grounds and a planned model colony of German farmers in the sense of Himmler's settlement in the east were canceled after the successes of the Red Army in the summer of 1944.

literature

• Margers Vestermanis: The SS-Seelager Dondagen - a model for the planned Nazi “reorganization of Europe” : In: Military history 2/1986, pp. 145–146, here p. 145 above. Latvijas PSR Revolucijas Muzeja, Riga, Inv. No. 8663/12600
• Kathrin Reichelt: Latvia under German occupation 1941–1944: The Latvian part in the Holocaust. Metropol, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-940938-84-8

Web links

• Dundaga II

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bernd Wegner: Hitler's political soldiers: the Waffen-SS 1933–1945. Concept, structure and function of a National Socialist elite. 9th edition (unchanged reprint of the 8th edition 2008). Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-76313-6 (At the same time: Hamburg, University, dissertation, 1980: The leader corps of the armed SS 1933-1945 ).
2. ^ Kathrin Reichelt: Latvia under German occupation 1941–1944: The Latvian Part in the Holocaust. Metropol, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-940938-84-8 , page 278
3. ^ Kathrin Reichelt: Latvia under German occupation 1941–1944: The Latvian Part in the Holocaust. Metropol, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-940938-84-8 , page 278