Standing bunker

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Standing bunkers were built in the concentration camps of the National Socialist German Reich and were a form of punishment for concentration camp prisoners.

Oranienburg

In 1933 SA camp commandant Werner Schäfer had two cells built in the basement of the Oranienburg concentration camp . Due to the size of the cells, one person was only able to stand there. An inmate named Neumann was locked up there for 192 hours and was allegedly insane as a result. In some cases, prisoners were locked in narrow closets where they could only stand.

Auschwitz

In the main camp of Auschwitz there were standing bunkers that were also dark cells. In cell 22 of block 11 (camp prison, also known as the death block), four standing cells, each barely one square meter in size, were built in early 1942 after Hans Aumeier became the camp leader. Four inmates were cooped up in each standing cell. To carry out the sentence, the inmates had to crawl into the cells through a small loophole on the cell floor, which was then locked. As air was only possible through a very small opening, the prisoners were threatened with suffocation. The prisoners were held in the cells for several nights, depending on the “offense”. Standing cells were also available in Auschwitz-Birkenau and the subcamps of Auschwitz Fürstengrube , Eintrachthütte and Neu-Dachs .

After Arthur Liebehenschel became the new commandant of the main camp in November 1943, according to the Auschwitz survivor Hermann Langbein u. a. a bunker nesty, stopped the selections for shooting in Block 11 and had the black wall and the standing cells torn down. Executions of prisoners were then carried out in the crematorium of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp .

Dachau

The number of prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp had risen sharply in the last years of the war; the camp was overcrowded. In the fall of 1944, the camp administration built standing bunkers. The brick chambers resembled chimneys. They had the dimensions 75 × 80 cm. There was a ventilation opening at the top, a narrow door with an iron bar locked the standing bunker. The intensified "punitive measure" saved space and increased the punishment torture. As a result, prisoners were deprived of forced labor in the camp for a shorter period of time . Standing bunkers were also built in the Allach subcamp, where the cells were narrower than in the main camp in Dachau.

For example, inmate K. A. Gross and Polish inmate Max Hoffmann spent days in the standing bunker. The latter described it as follows:

“It was a terrible state when I thought that I was over, when everything was so indifferent and far away to me. I couldn't lie down, I couldn't crouch, the best thing was to stand and stand for six days and six nights. [...] With your elbows you touch the walls on both sides, with your back you touch the wall behind you, with your knees the wall in front of you. […] This is not a punishment or pre-trial detention, it is torture , direct medieval torture. I had bloodshot eyes, was numb from bad air, I was just waiting for the end. "

According to Johannes Neuhäusler , an inmate in the standing bunker received only one piece of bread for three days. On the fourth day, prisoners were taken out, there was a normal ration of camp food, and they were allowed to sleep on a bunk. The next day, the three-day detention in the standing bunker began again.

This interruption after the third day was not always observed. The Czech prisoner Radovan Drazan spent eight days without a break in the standing bunker. In some cases, prisoners were not let out of the standing bunker for a short time, so that the body was burned from excrement and urine.

literature

  • Wacław Długoborski , Franciszek Piper (eds.): Auschwitz 1940–1945. Studies on the history of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. Verlag Staatliches Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, Oswiecim 1999, ISBN 83-85047-76-X . Five volumes:
    • I. Construction and structure of the camp.
    • II. The prisoners - living conditions, work and death.
    • III. Destruction.
    • IV. Resistance.
    • V. Epilog.
  • Stanislav Zámečník : That was Dachau. Published by the Comité International de Dachau, Luxemburg 2002, pp. 348–350.

Notes and individual references

  1. ^ Irena Strzelecka: Punishments and Torture . In: Wacław Długoborski, Franciszek Piper (ed.): Auschwitz 1940–1945. Studies on the history of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. Verlag Staatliches Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, Oswiecim 1999, ISBN 83-85047-76-X . Volume II: The prisoners - living conditions, work and death , p. 467.
  2. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz , Vienna, Munich 1995, p. 59 ff.
  3. ↑ The areas were measured in the structural remains after the end of the camp.
  4. ^ Karel Kasak: Cesi v koncentracnim tabore Dachau. In: Almanch Dachau. Kytice udalosti a vzpominek. Praha 1946. Quoted in Zámečník, Das war Dachau , p. 349.
  5. ↑ Neuhäusler refers here to the two clergymen Theissig from Aachen and Johann Lenz.