Stukenbrock Social Work
The Stukenbrock social work was a refugee and reception camp between Bielefeld and Paderborn . It existed from 1948 to 1970.
history
At the instigation of the Ministry of Social Affairs of North Rhine-Westphalia, a reception and refugee camp , the Stukenbrock social work , was set up in 1948 in Eselsheide between Bielefeld and Paderborn (today Holte-Stukenbrock Castle ) . In addition to the Evangelical Relief Organization of Westphalia, Caritas, the German Red Cross , the Workers' Welfare Association and the Westphalian Blind Association were involved from the start . It was the first time that the various umbrella organizations worked so closely and cooperatively with one another.
The Russian prisoner-of-war camp Stalag 326 was located here from 1941 to 1945 . After the war, this camp was initially used as an internment camp for Nazi executives and people suspected of having committed war crimes.
After the internment camp was closed, the first refugees were taken in in the summer of 1948 after extensive clean-up work. 140 barracks and 130 Nissen huts in miserable condition, mostly unfurnished, were available on a good 500,000 square meters of floor space. The hygienic conditions were initially catastrophic. The first facilities that refugees and displaced persons could move into included the “Bethesda” old people's home with 282 places, a home for the blind, the “Mother and Child” home for single, mostly widowed mothers with their children, and the state youth home , in the 14th - Family and homeless children and young people up to the age of 18 were accommodated and brought up.
In the years that followed, up to 2500 people were housed in the Stukenbrock welfare organization. As a rule, they stayed for several weeks or months until a job and new accommodation were found in the immediate and sometimes further area. In the press there was therefore talk of the “bridge to a new home”.
In the first few years after 1948, the Nissen huts were demolished, the barracks renovated and the grounds provided with paths and planted. Because of the steady flow of refugees from Eastern European countries, the camp was expanded at the beginning of the 1960s and part of the barracks was replaced by a type of prefabricated building. A shopping street, a cinema, a reading hall and a bathhouse were built.
There was a makeshift hospital for medical care for the refugees. In addition, the Stukenbrock social work initially had a makeshift school, which later became a primary school, and later a kindergarten. Services were celebrated in a Protestant and a Catholic church, both housed in converted barracks. The Protestant church has been preserved and is a listed building.
Since the closure of the Stukenbrock social welfare work in 1970, the training center "Erich Klausener" of the NRW police force has been located on the site.
The Stalag 326 documentation center is located in a preserved building from the time of the prisoner-of-war camp.
Web links
- Stukenbrock Social Work
- "Brücke zur neue Heimat" - a film by Udo Plückelmann about the "Sozialwerk Stukenbrock", 1962
- Documentation center Stalag 326 (VI K) Senne
Coordinates: 51 ° 51 ′ 53 " N , 8 ° 40 ′ 40" E