Society for textile and leather recycling

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The Gesellschaft für Textil- und Lederverwertung mbH , or Texled for short , was a German prisoner company of the Waffen-SS at the time of National Socialism . It maintained workshops in the Ravensbrück concentration camp , in which female concentration camp prisoners had to do forced labor by making textiles . In 1944 the name was changed to Deutsche Textil und Bekleidungswerke GmbH .

Foundation and organization

Texled was founded on June 21, 1940 with a social contract by the SS Brigadefuehrers August Frank and Georg Lörner in Berlin-Lichterfelde . The company's headquarters were initially in Dachau , and from October 1943 in Berlin . Texled was part of the Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetriebe GmbH , the amalgamation of SS companies under the direction of Oswald Pohl . After a change in the articles of association, Texled was renamed Deutsche Textil und Bekleidungswerke GmbH on July 4, 1944 .

From the beginning until the end of the Second World War, managing directors were Fritz Lechler for commercial matters and Felix Krug for technical matters . Helmut Fricke, who was part of the management until the end of September 1943, was responsible for legal matters.

Texled was obliged to briefly take over the experimental operations (tailoring and shoemaking) of the general SS in Dachau and to transfer them to the clothing factory of the Waffen SS , which happened on October 1, 1940. From this point on until the end of the war, Texled only had the production site in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, which was located in the so-called industrial courtyard. Texled eventually became a supplier for the clothing factories of the Waffen SS in Dachau, which were also the only buyers of Texled products. The Texled was one of the few SS companies that operated profitably.

Texled in the Ravensbrück concentration camp

Textile production began in the Ravensbrück concentration camp as early as December 1939. The local operations, an embroidery and a tailor's shop, were taken over by Texled in June 1940. The cane mesh weaving of the German equipment works , also located in the Ravensbrück concentration camp , also became the property of Texled. In the industrial courtyard mainly "military and civilian equipment and utensils, mainly made of textiles and leather" were produced.

The factory director of the Industriehof in the Ravensbrück concentration camp was the camp commandant of the Ravensbrück concentration camp there, Fritz Suhren . From June 1940 to April 1945, Friedrich Opitz was the plant manager in the Industriehof and Hans Kollmeier was the plant manager until the beginning of 1945, followed by Erich Schindler. The tailoring was headed by Joseph Graf, whose representative was Gustav Binder .

In 1944, the industrial yard in the Ravensbrück concentration camp comprised an administration, several tailor shops, a weaving mill, spinning mill, cane mat weaving and shoemaking workshop, auxiliary businesses and a skinning shop . The industrial courtyard was expanded more and more until 1945. Female concentration camp prisoners were instructed in working with the sewing machines and other equipment and were therefore not easily interchangeable. In shifts of up to twelve hours, the female prisoners first had to make concentration camp prisoner clothing during the day and also at night in the tailoring shop . Over time, however, the proportion of prisoner clothing production shifted to the detriment of the production of uniform parts for the Waffen SS, until in 1943 the production of concentration camp prisoner clothing was completely stopped. The number of prisoners employed in the Industriehof rose from 141 in July 1940 to a high of around 5000 in September 1942 and then fell again. The female concentration camp prisoners received insufficient food rations and were subjected to abuse and harassment, especially if they did not achieve the almost impossible production target.

literature

  • Walter Naasner (Ed.): SS-Wirtschaft und SS-Verwaltung - “The SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt and the economic enterprises under its supervision” and other documents (= publications of the Federal Archives . Volume 45a). Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1998, ISBN 3-7700-1603-3 .
  • Jan Erik Schulte : Forced Labor and Extermination: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933–1945. Schöningh, Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-506-78245-2 .
  • Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002 (Dissertation TU Berlin), urn : nbn: de: kobv: 83-opus-4303 , doi : 10.14279 / depositonce-528 .
  • Bärbel Schmidt: History and symbolism of the striped concentration camp inmate clothing . Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg 2000 (dissertation), urn : nbn: de: gbv: 715-oops-4400 .
  • Enno Georg: The economic enterprises of the SS (= series of the quarterly books for contemporary history . Volume 7). Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1963, doi : 10.1524 / 9783486703764.42 , pp. 66-69 ( Google Books ).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Precise: Lichterfelde-West, Unter den Eichen 127. According to: Bärbel Schmidt: History and symbolism of the striped concentration camp prisoner clothing . P. 102, fn. 216.
  2. ^ A b Walter Naasner (Ed.): SS economy and SS administration . Düsseldorf 1998, p. 177 f.
  3. ↑ a b c Bärbel Schmidt: History and symbolism of the striped concentration camp prisoner clothing . Oldenburg 2000, p. 102 ff. (Dissertation).
  4. ↑ a b Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, p. 64f
  5. ^ A b Jan Erik Schulte: Forced Labor and Destruction: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933–1945. Paderborn 2001, p. 131 ff.
  6. ↑ Helga Schwarz, Gerda Szepansky, Brandenburg State Center for Political Education in the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (ed.): … And yet flowers bloomed: Ravensbrück women's concentration camp; Documents, reports, poems and drawings from everyday life in the camp 1939–1945 . Brandenburg State Center for Political Education, Potsdam 2000, ISBN 3-932502-25-6 .