Special warehouse No. 9 five-oaks

The special camp No. 9 Fünfeichen was one of the ten special camps of the NKVD / MWD in the Soviet occupation zone and was located in the city of Neubrandenburg on the southern edge of the Stadtfeldmark. During the war, the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag II A was here with several thousand prisoners of war. Today there is a memorial for the victims of both camps on the site.

prehistory

During the Second World War , the POW camp " Stalag II A " of the German Wehrmacht was located on site , which at its highest occupancy rate accommodated around 15,000 prisoners at the same time. In total, around 70,000 prisoners of war went through it. At least 6,000 Soviet prisoners of war and 500 prisoners of war of the western allies were killed in Stalag II A.

From May to autumn 1945 there was a camp for displaced persons on the site ; the names of about 750 Czechs and Slovaks are proven.

Detainees of the special camp

As early as June 1945, the services of the Interior Ministry of the Soviet Union ( NKVD ) occupied the camp with German prisoners. These included former members of the NSDAP , HJ , BDM and other National Socialist organizations as well as administrative employees, mayors, police officers, lawyers, newspaper editors, but also factory and estate owners as well as many arbitrarily arrested persons who, due to denunciations or purely by chance, pose a security risk to the occupying power or were assessed as opponents of the newly installed German communist rulers.

Many of those arrested came from Mecklenburg and Pomerania, but also from Berlin and Brandenburg. In mid-August 1945, a transport with over 1,700 prisoners from the Sachsenhausen special camp reached the Fünfeichen camp. In January 1946 around 1,500 prisoners came from the NKVD camp in Graudenz after it was closed in Fünfeichen . Another 1,500 prisoners came from the Ketschendorf special camp in March 1947 .

The average occupancy was:

1945: 04,400 prisoners
1946: 10,400 prisoners
1947: 09,400 prisoners
1948: 08,400 prisoners (until July 13).

The total number of detainees was about 15,400 people.

In addition to the male prisoners, there were over 400 women in the Fünfeichen special camp.

Conditions of detention and victims

The conditions of detention were characterized by completely inadequate nutrition, as well as poor hygiene, clothing and heating. At least 4900 people died as a result of diseases, deficiency symptoms and epidemics. The victims were only buried initially in individual graves in the north cemetery, and later in anonymous mass graves in the south cemetery. As far as is known, their names were published in a book of the dead in 1996; they have been on 59 bronze plaques since 1999 in the area of the memorial at the southern mass grave.

deportation

In February 1947 around 700 prisoners were deported to forced labor in labor camps operated by the Gulag system in the Soviet Union.

resolution

In the period from July to September 1948, around 5,200 prisoners were released. 2800 were not released, of which 2600 were transported to the special camp No. 2 Buchenwald and a remaining detachment of 200 prisoners was sent to the special camp No. 7 Sachsenhausen . Many of these prisoners were brought to Waldheim on February 9 and 13, 1950 , where they were sentenced to long prison terms and, in some cases, to death in the Waldheim Trials (express proceedings ). The trials took place without a legal basis and the judgments were already fixed in advance according to the Stalinist procedure. The rest of the prisoners were released in 1950.

The Fünfeichen special camp was finally closed in January 1949.

Work-up

The existence of Soviet special camps was denied during the GDR era; Former prisoners were not allowed to report on the threat of punishment. From 1958 to 1960 the city of Neubrandenburg created a memorial for the prisoners of war who died between 1939 and 1945, but this was never opened to the public because of the planned military use. The area of the special camp Fünfeichen was closed and fell into disrepair.

In March 1990, the mass graves were found again following indications from the population.

On April 28, 1991, former prisoners and affected relatives founded the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Fünfeichen”. Together with the city of Neubrandenburg, she initiated a redesign of the memorial complex, which was inaugurated on April 25, 1993. In addition to a supported cross, the symbol of the working group, and eleven oak steles, created by the artist Uwe Grimm, a bronze plate by the sculptor Walter Preik in the entrance area and eleven granite crosses with the dates 1939–1948 belong to the memorial complex, which is dedicated to the deceased of the two prison camps in Remember five oaks. Since 1999 the names of the deceased can be read on bronze plaques at the southern mass grave.

The Fünfeichen working group regularly issues individual publications on the history of the special camp.

Literary reception

The processes in the special camp Fünfeichen were repeatedly designed in literary terms. A prominent example is the third volume of the novel Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson , published in 1973. Uwe Johnson's father Erich Johnson was deported to the Ukraine in 1946, probably after a stay in the special camp Fünfeichen, and died there. Peter Rütters calls Johnson's portrayal “remarkable ... for various reasons”, but attests that by focusing on the violent prisoner society he “blocked the revival of a discourse on the politics of memory”. An important autobiographical account of the events in the special camp Fünfeichen was presented by Friedrich Griese in his book The wind does not blow wherever he wants to in 1960. Bettina Greiner characterizes this book as a report "which does not attempt to establish clarity in one way or another between the bad perpetrator and the good victim." Griese's book from 1960 was supplemented in 2012 by the publication Friedrich Griese und seine Zeit im Camp Fünfeichen , which also contains letters written to his wife and children from prison. A total of 32 receipts and letters have survived from Griese's more than seven months' imprisonment in 1945/46, 21 of them from the Soviet GPU cellar in Parchim, four from the Alt-Strelitz prison and seven from the Fünfeichen camp. Another special report is available with Pastor Bartelt's diary notes written in the special camp Fünfeichen, which were editorially supplemented by poems and drawings smuggled out of the camp by several prisoners.

Known internees

The following died in the special camp Fünfeichen:

Surname	activities	Details of the reason for detention, suspicion or alleged allegation
Willi Bloedorn	NSDAP functionary and Reichstag deputy
Richard Dietrich	Airplane designer and entrepreneur
Carl Engel	Gaudozentenführer Pommern, Rector of the University of Greifswald
Rudolf Fehrmann	Lawyer, climbing guide author; NSDAP member, military magistrate
Willy Klitzing	Government Director at the Reich Governor of Mecklenburg-Lübeck; honorary member of the People's Court
Richard Moeller	Opponent of National Socialism; 1945 Ministerial Director
Siegfried Remertz	Deputy Mayor of Greifswald
Richard Schmidt	Mayor of Greifswald
Hans Wilhelm Viereck	German plant collector in Mexico
Max Wiessner	Newspaper publisher

Have survived the storage period:

Surname	activities	Details of the reason for detention, suspicion or alleged allegation
Friedrich Griese	Writer honored by the Nazi regime, NSDAP member
Alfred Jank	Member of the Hitler Youth or Volkssturm	Werewolf allegation
Horst Köbbert	later an entertainer and singer
Hans Lachmund	Lawyer, politician and resistance fighter against National Socialism	Freemasons
Heinrich Alexander Stoll	Writer, LDPD member	critical remarks about the Soviet occupying power
Georg Tessin	Archivist, “house and court historian” of Gauleiter Friedrich Hildebrandt

Literature and Sources

Tobias Baumann: The special warehouse No. 9 Fünfeichen . In: Sergej Mironenko u. a. (Hrsg.): Soviet special camps in Germany 1945 to 1950. Volume 1: Alexander von Plato (Hrsg.): Studies and reports. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-05-002531-X , pp. 426–444.
Dieter Krüger , Gerhard Finn: Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 1945 to 1948 and the Fünfeichen camp. Holzapfel, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-921226-40-6 .
Ingrid Friedlein (Red.): The victims of five oaks (2 volumes; Volume 1: Reports of experiences of those affected and their relatives, Volume 2: List of names of the deceased ). Published by the spokesman's council of the Fünfeichen working group. Stock and Stein, Schwerin 1996, ISBN 3-910179-99-1 .

Web links

Literature about Neubrandenburg-Fünfeichen in the state bibliography MV
AG Fünfeichen at the Union of Victims' Associations of Communist Tyranny , accessed on January 28, 2019
Special camp Fünfeichen at Orte der Repression , an internet portal of the House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany, accessed on February 1, 2013

Panorama of the memorial

Signpost on the access road
Supported cross in the entrance area
Memorial bell
Plaque
memorial

Individual evidence

↑ The phrase “five oaks near Neubrandenburg”, which is widely used in the literature, is definitely wrong and misleading. The Stadtgut Fünfeichen always belonged to Neubrandenburg and was never an extraterritorial area.

↑ ^a ^b Flyer of the Fünfeichen Memorial ( Memento of the original from April 29, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.1 MB), accessed on January 28, 2013 @1@ 2

↑ Ingrid Friedlein (Red.): The victims of five oaks. Vol. 2: List of names of the deceased. Published by the spokesman's council of the Fünfeichen working group. Stock and Stein, Schwerin 1996, ISBN 3-910179-99-1 .

↑ AG Fünfeichen ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed February 1, 2013 @1@ 2

↑ Uwe Johnson: Anniversaries. From the life of Gesine Cresspahl . Volume 3, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1973, ISBN 3-518-03335-2 , pp. 1287-1298.

↑ Bernd Neumann: Uwe Johnson. Europ. Verl.-Anst., Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-434-50051-0 , p. 53.

^ Peter Rütters: Soviet Special Camps in the Discourse on Political Remembrance. “Fünfeichen” as the subject of narration in Uwe Johnson's “Anniversaries” , Germany Archive 39 (2006), 2, ISSN 0012-1428 , pp. 255–265.

↑ Friedrich Griese: The wind does not blow where it wants. Eugen Diederichs publishing house, Düsseldorf / Cologne 1960.

↑ Bettina Greiner: Repressed Terror. History and Perception of Soviet Special Camps in Germany. Hamburger Edition , Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-86854-217-2 , pp. 440–441.

^ Fünfeichen working group: Friedrich Griese and his time in the Fünfeichen camp. Neubrandenburg 2012.

↑ in the Griese estate in the Fritz Reuter Literature Archive Berlin.

^ AG Fünfeichen: Strictly forbidden - Pastor Bartelt's diary. Neubrandenburg 2008.

^ FAZ of October 21, 2008, Matthias Wyssuwa: Voice from the silent camp , accessed on February 2, 2013

53.525222222222 13.292444444444Coordinates: 53 ° 31 '30.8 " N , 13 ° 17' 32.8" E

[1] The phrase “five oaks near Neubrandenburg”, which is widely used in the literature, is definitely wrong and misleading. The Stadtgut Fünfeichen always belonged to Neubrandenburg and was never an extraterritorial area.