Swallow II (Königstein)

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Sketch of the Königstein satellite camp near Thürmsdorf and the prisoners' daily route to forced labor in the Niedere Kirchleite quarry at the Schwalbe II property (marked in red)

Schwalbe II was an underground plant ( underground relocation object ) of the National Socialist armaments industry intended for Braunkohle-Petrol AG (BRABAG) for the production of aviation fuel as part of the mineral oil safety plan in the sandstone quarry of Niedere Kirchleite near Königstein in Saxon Switzerland .

In almost five months, from November 1944 to March 1945, around 2000 slave laborers from the Königstein , Weißig and Sellnitz satellite camps built a tunnel system for the facility. The word swallow was the code name for high pressure hydrogenation systems. The production plant never went into operation.

history

planning

In 1943 there were suggestions for the construction of underground systems for fuel production in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains and the first safety and surveying work took place at the Niedere Kirchleite quarry near the Struppen district of Strand . The area belonging to the city of Königstein was conveniently located in the immediate vicinity of the Bodenbach-Dresden railway line . The project was declared to the residents as the construction of a pasta factory. The aim was to install an underground system for the distillation of aviation fuel. The completed system would have occupied an area of ​​approx. 80,000 m²; commissioning was scheduled for November 1945. Built for a pressure of 300  atm , it could only process lignite tar . In the first construction phase, which was supposed to start on July 1, 1945, 9000 tons of jet fuel B4 and 1400 tons of propellant gas were to be produced from 12,500 tons of lignite tar per month . A second construction phase was supposed to produce the same quantities again from January 1, 1946. The end of the Second World War ensured the preservation of the Strand district. It was planned that all the buildings in this location would be demolished to make way for a loading station.

construction

On November 15, 1944, an external unit from the Flossenbürg concentration camp began to drive tunnels. Up to 2000 male prisoners were used. The broken rock was transported on two field railway tracks in the direction of Rathen . The valley road in the local area of ​​Strand was raised four to five meters. At the beginning of the tunnel construction, the first five houses, including a restaurant, were demolished because they were in the area of ​​the facility. The families affected did not receive any compensation and were relocated to the surrounding areas. During day and night operations, the tunnel construction was driven forward under SS supervision with jackhammers and blasting. Within a short period of time, 23 tunnels of different lengths were excavated in the approx. 70 meter high quarry walls at the level of the previous heaps, and some were connected to one another. 20 longitudinal tunnels of various lengths (the longest measuring over 130 meters) with a cross-section of around 3 × 3 meters were built. The mouth holes were mostly walled, the entrances are neatly numbered. Some of the tunnels end after a few meters and the existing boreholes for the explosive charges indicate that the project was suddenly abandoned. The cross tunnels are mostly only rudimentary. Around 1.4 kilometers of tunnel cross-section had been excavated by the end of construction.

The tunnels 7, 8 and 9 are connected to an approximately 20 × 15 meter large and 10 meter high hall. In the tunnel 9 is the beginning of a shaft to the surface. Tunnels 3 and 5 are about 20 meters above the floor of the quarry, which suggests that they were used as a weather route . There is a covered niche in the rock wall, which probably served as an observation post. Construction was stopped on March 17, 1945 and the prisoners were transferred to the Leitmeritz ( Litoměřice ) satellite camp, where they were also used in the expansion of underground factory rooms for the tank engine plant in the Richard 1 facility .

Use of prisoners

Forced laborers were used in the construction of the military facility. Concentration camp prisoners, foreign workers and prisoners of war were used. The first subcamps were established in the Pirna district at the end of 1944. The prisoners came from several concentration camps; the newly built satellite camps were assigned to the Flossenbürg concentration camp in Bavaria as the main camp, with new prisoner numbers from Flossenbürg being assigned. In addition to around 1,000 prisoners from the Königstein subcamp , foreign workers from the east and around 800 Italian military internees who were housed in the Weißig camp were deployed. The forced laborers also included foreign workers from France who were housed in Königstein, and American prisoners of war from the Sellnitz camp at the foot of the Lilienstein.

Use after the end of the war

From June to August 1945, by order of the Red Army, all technical systems were dismantled and taken to Rathen station. Equipment belonging to the People's Police at the time was stored in the tunnel until 1953 , after which the NVA secured the site. At the eastern end of the area are tunnels 2 and 4, which were used in the GDR for geophysical measurements (earth movement and earthquakes) by the Central Institute for Earth Physics in Potsdam. The cross tunnel in between is around 180 meters long. Attempts by the forestry company to set up a mushroom cultivation failed for reasons of cost.

Today's condition and usage

The area is fenced and must not be entered. At the west end a tunnel has been used as a shooting range by the Königsteiner Schützenverein since May 1993. Today there are 19 tunnels left. The condition of all tunnels is consistently good, there are no fixtures. The stone and rubble dams are clearly visible from the road despite the trees.

Analog projects

literature

  • Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 4: Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück. CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-52964-X .
  • Hans Brenner: Iron Swallows for the Elbe Sandstone Mountains. Concentration camp prisoners deployed to build fuel plants in the final phase of the Second World War. In: SächsischeHeimatblätter 45 (1999) 1, pp. 13-16.
  • Marc Buggeln: The system of the concentration camp satellite camps - war, slave labor and mass violence (=  discussion group history . Issue 95). Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung - Archive of Social Democracy, 2012, ISBN 978-3-86498-090-9 , ISSN  0941-6862 ( PDF; 6.0 MB ).

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Katharina Klemm: "I won't forget that". In: Sächsische Zeitung online. May 10, 2018. Retrieved November 23, 2018 .

Web links

Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 13 ″  N , 14 ° 3 ′ 52 ″  E