Special camp Jamlitz

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The special camp Jamlitz near Lieberose was as special camp No. 6 in post-war Germany one of ten special camps of the Soviet military administration in the Soviet zone of occupation . The camp was set up by the Soviet secret service NKVD in September 1945 on the site and in the barracks of the former Lieberose concentration camp , a former satellite camp of the National Socialist Sachsenhausen concentration camp , north of Cottbus . The special camp No. 6 was previously (since May 17, 1945) in Frankfurt (Oder) on Polish territory and was moved in September 1945 to Jamlitz , about 50 km away . The approximately 3400 inmates had to cover the distance on foot. The Jamlitz camp existed until April 1947, around 1,000 of the remaining prisoners being deported to Russia and 4,400 being distributed to the special camps in Mühlberg and Buchenwald . According to the death lists handed over by the Russian authorities, at least 3,380 of a total of 10,300 inmates perished in just under two years.

Plan of the camp

Imprisoned

In the special camp Jamlitz the German civilian population was held, in addition to former members of the NSDAP primarily many arbitrarily arrested persons, also young people (for arrest with the accusation "You werewolf " could already lead to membership in the HJ or BDM ) and above all politically unpopular who the The establishment of the Stalinist system in the Soviet zone of occupation were critical or could have stood in the way.

Some well-known detainees were the officer's wife and teacher Margret Bechler , the economist Bernhard Benning , the jurist Justus Delbrück , the politician Walter Erdmann , former Wurzener Mayor Armin Graebert , the actor Gustaf , the prehistoric researcher Amandus Haase , the Freiberg Mayor Werner Hartenstein , the Editor and author Gerhard Joop , the youngster Walter Jurisch , the industrialist and inventor Friedrich Emil Krauss , the journalist and politician Georg Krausz , the chemist Oskar Lecher , the writer Gertrud Lehmann-Waldschütz , the doctor and Gestapo spy Paul Reckzeh , the painter Richard Sachs , the officer Ulrich von Sell and his colleague Paul Poensgen , the designer Eduard Seppeler , the Bunzlau mayor Walter Siemianowsky , the actress Marianne Simson , the photographer Karl Spieß , the dentist and chief dentist Ernst Stuck , the detective Friederike Wieking and the director Hans H. Zerlett .

Conditions of detention

The Jamlitz camp is considered one of the special camps whose prison conditions were devastating. As a result of the deliberately allocated hunger rations, the prisoners suffered from the agony caused by constant hunger , diseases such as dystrophy , dysentery and tuberculosis , furunculosis , shingles and water retention in the body, which rose from the feet to the lungs. In this last stage, people "drowned" and died. Bugs, dirt, cold and isolation from the outside world were other factors that contributed to the high mortality rate. In addition, there was standing for hours in all weathers during the daily roll calls. There was no radio, newspapers, paper, writing materials or contact with relatives, so the uncertainty about the fate of their families wore the prisoners even more down. We slept without straw sacks on the boards of three-story wooden cots. All inventory that had been in the barracks at the time of the camp under Nazi rule had been removed. The punishment bunker was located near the entrance to the camp. One to ten days of imprisonment in the cold, in the dark with even less food, had to be spent there in the event of "offenses".

Victim

Around 10,300 prisoners in Jamlitz (including over 900 women), brought in from the camps in Frankfurt / Oder, Ketschendorf , Bautzen (around 2000 on September 21 and 24, 1946), Posen and the assembly points in the surrounding interrogation cellars of the occupying forces, died In the only two years since the end of the war at least 3,380 prisoners known by name and published in a death register who were buried in mass graves, a further 46 who died during transports and after deportation and two former inmates who were executed are also known by name. In the worst month of February 1947, an average of 25 people died daily, a total of 699; on the worst day 36. The above information and the death register are based on the death lists published by the Russian authorities, the completeness of which cannot, however, be verified. The historian Jan von Flocken gave a figure of around 5,000 deaths in 1991.

In April 1990 some of the graves were found in the forest on the basis of clues and a memorial was set up. A memorial ceremony takes place there every year on the second Saturday in September.

Dissolution of the camp

When the prisoners were dissolved in April 1947, around 1,000 of the surviving prisoners were deported to the USSR and 4,400 were distributed to two other NKVD special camps: 400 came to No. 1 Mühlberg and around 2,000 each on April 3 and 7, 1947, to No. 2 in Buchenwald (the former National Socialist Buchenwald concentration camp which was still used by the Soviet occupying forces ). When the camp was cleared, the prisoners were led to the Lieberose train station under guard and were seen by passers-by, who wept at the sight of them or who hurried away.

During the GDR era, the use of the Jamlitz camp by the Soviet occupying forces was kept silent. The barracks were demolished and smaller houses built on the site.

Commemoration

Memorial stone at the Jamlitz cemetery to the victims of the Soviet special camp

After 1990, smaller memorial sites were created at the known locations of the mass graves of the special camp. After a lengthy discussion phase due to the double history of the camp in Jamlitz, an open-air exhibition for special camp No. 6 Jamlitz and another open-air exhibition in memory of the Lieberose concentration camp were opened on June 22, 2003. 11 information boards are dedicated to the special camp.

literature

  • Andreas Weigelt: There are no retraining camps. On the history of the Soviet special camp No. 6 in Jamlitz 1945–1947. Brandenburg State Center for Civic Education, Potsdam 2001, ISBN 3-932502-29-9 ( PDF file, 1.46 MB ).
  • Karl Wilhelm Fricke : Politics and Justice in the GDR. On the history of political persecution from 1945 to 1968. Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-8046-8568-4 .
  • Jan von Flocken , Michael Klonovsky : Stalin's camp in Germany 1945–1950. Ullstein, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-550-07488-3 .
  • Helmuth Dommain: With one leg in the mass grave. In Soviet silent camps in Jamlitz and Buchenwald. Verlag Herms, Lübben 1994, ISBN 3-9803761-0-9 .
  • Kurt Noack: Postwar Memories. When he was fifteen in Stalin's camps. Niederlausitzer Verlag, Guben 2009, ISBN 978-3-935881-70-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andreas Weigelt (Ed.): Book of the Dead, Soviet Special Camp No. 6, Frankfurt (Oder) 1945, Jamlitz 1945–1947. 2nd edition 2009, p. 94 ff.
  2. ↑ Jan von Flocken , Michael Klonovsky : Stalin's camp in Germany 1945–1950 . Ullstein, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-550-07488-3
  3. ↑ Andreas Weigelt: There are no retraining camps. On the history of the Soviet special camp No. 6 in Jamlitz 1945–1947 . Brandenburg State Center for Civic Education, Potsdam 2001, ISBN 3-932502-29-9 , p. 43/44 ( online ; PDF file; 1.46 MB)
  4. ↑ Andreas Weigelt: The Lieberose Subcamp Documentation Center 1943–1945 / Soviet Special Camp Documentation Center No. 6 Jamlitz 1945–1947 . Memorial newsletter 118, 2004. pp. 20–26. Retrieved February 24, 2014

Coordinates: 51 ° 59 ′ 24.8 "  N , 14 ° 21 ′ 55"  E