Death train from Buchenwald

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Corpses on the train at Dachau concentration camp, photographed by Éric Schwab ( AFP ) between April 29 and May 1, 1945

The Buchenwald death train, later known as this, was an end- stage crime of the National Socialists. From April 7 to April 28, 1945, this rail transport took place with concentration camp prisoners from Buchenwald concentration camp to Dachau concentration camp .

The train became known primarily because it was documented photographically by soldiers of the 7th US Army and the pictures were also made available to the public. The US Army troops advancing on Munich discovered the freight wagons with the dying and dead on the day after their arrival on April 28 in the Dachau concentration camp. The soldiers found innumerable bodies on April 29 before they even entered the camp site.

To the subject

This final phase crime became known as the Buchenwald Death Train and also as the “Buchenwald evacuation train” . The main goal of the SS during this phase of the war was that prisoners from the concentration camps should not fall into the hands of the advancing Allied troops. However, the term "evacuation" is controversial in connection with the transport of concentration camp prisoners in the final phase of the Nazi regime. In Nammering there were mass shootings of prisoners from this transport.

Route and procedure

Composition of the transport, departure

On April 7, 1945, a so-called evacuation transport with 4,480 prisoners of various nationalities left the Buchenwald concentration camp. Some of the prisoners had previously arrived on foot from the Ohrdruf subcamp 90 km away in exhausted condition in the Buchenwald concentration camp. Even during the forced march to the station of Weimar many were exhausted and collapsed by the SS was partly shot -Wachen. The train consisted of about 39 to 45 open and covered freight cars. Each car was manned by 90 to 100 prisoners and a few SS guards. The original destination of the transport was the Flossenbürg concentration camp . A layer of carbon black on the floor indicated that coal had previously been transported in the wagon.

The route and duration of the journey

Transport manager Hans Merbach in April 1947

The starting point was the Buchenwald concentration camp . The rail transport led via Weimar , Weißenfels , Leipzig , Dresden , Mittelgrund , Komotau , Pilsen , Zwiesel , Deggendorf , Nammering , Passau , Schönburg , Mühldorf am Inn and Munich to the Dachau concentration camp .

Transport leader was Hans Merbach (SS-Obersturmführer), formerly Second Protective Custody Camp Leader in Buchenwald. The journey time was supposedly estimated at 24 hours, the food portions for the prisoners were also supposedly for a day, as SS-Obersturmführer Merbach later stated: per prisoner “a handful of boiled potatoes, 500 g bread, 50 g sausage and 25 g margarine ". The train then took almost 21 days to get to the Dachau camp. Many of the prisoners either starved to death or were shot dead during the journey. The dead were buried near the tracks or carried into the last wagons.

The stay in Nammering

Merbach testified that on the twelfth day of travel he was able to procure 3,000 Wehrmacht breads and 3,000 servings of cheese from the Wehrmacht catering office in Pilsen . At the train station in Pilsen, some civilians threw food into the wagons.

On April 20, the train stopped in Nammering near Passau . Johann Bergmann , the clergyman from Aicha vorm Wald , went to the stop in the morning.

Here the prisoners received food on April 22nd. Bergmann had initiated a food collection. SS-Obersturmführer Merbach did not mention this stay in his testimony. During the stay in Nammering, almost 800 prisoners who died on the transport were cremated in the Renholdingen quarry. Several hundred of them had been shot in a quarry. Pastor Bergmann asked why the prisoners had been shot; the transport manager replied that they had gone mad from hunger and that SS guards had attacked and could have turned against the civilian population. Bergmann reported that the train had left Nammering with around 3,100 prisoners.

Arrival in Dachau

In the night from April 27 to April 28, the transport arrived at the Dachau concentration camp and was parked on the siding. He had turned into a train full of dead and dying.

According to an unpublished manuscript by Pierre CT Verheye, around 800 inmates were believed to have been taken to the camp on April 28. Based on Bergmann's statement that the train left Nammering with 3,100 people, Verheye's information would suggest 2,300 people left on the train.

According to Zámečník, on the other hand, "a number that can no longer be determined" were brought to the bath on April 28 and then to an isolation block in the Dachau camp. On the morning of April 29th, 17 unconscious people were carried to the camp by inmates of the Dachau “Moorexpress Labor Command”. An approximate number of the survivors of the transport on arrival at the Dachau camp is only available from the only source, Verheye. The number 800 must first be seen as a guide. The conclusion about the final figure of 2,300 deceased cannot be considered completely historically secure. What is certain is that the number of people who died on the train was extremely high and that there were further deaths in the days that followed. In the camp itself, deaths had not been officially registered for eight days. Even on the two days of April 29th and 30th, after the liberation by the Americans, deaths were not officially documented. It only started again on May 1st. Later information on how many people survived that transport is not available here.

Situation in the concentration camp

An open car of the train in Dachau

According to a report by Marguerite Higgins , the prisoners refused to obey the SS orders and to bring the deceased to the camp. This was in the realm of possibility, because for days the camp SS troops had been on the point of disbanding or withdrawing. The crematorium has been out of order since February . The typhus epidemic was rampant in the camp, and deaths have not been officially documented since April 20. On April 23, the work details did not leave the main camp for the first time to work. In the days that followed, a number of leading SS officers had left. Camp commandant Eduard Weiter left the camp on April 26th. The camp itself was completely overcrowded; instead of 208, up to 1,600 prisoners shared a block of flats in the last years of the war. The areas near the death chamber, the infirmary, the crematorium and the invalids' block were heaped with dead people.

Arrival of the US troops

Retaliation

On April 29, the US Army marched in to liberate the Dachau concentration camp. The US troops met - before they could free the prisoner area - suddenly on the death train with its countless starved or shot prisoners. After this shocking impression, the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp led to retaliation. The war crime in which SS men were executed later became known as the Dachau massacre .

Allied confrontation of the population

Similar to the Buchenwald concentration camp, the US troops confronted the population of the surrounding areas with the acts of the Nazi regime at the Dachau concentration camp.

  • German civilians walk past the dead from the evacuation transports near Nammering - April 1945

  • German woman in Nammering at the sight of exhumed victims of the evacuation train

  • The Hitler Youth Before the Death Train (April 30, 1945)

Commemoration

Memorial to the death train in Nammering

A memorial to the death train was erected in Nammering, Passau district . Several hundred prisoners of the death train who perished in Nammering have been buried in the memorial cemetery of the Flossenbürg concentration camp since 1958 .

The main building of the Dachau concentration camp later became the Dachau concentration camp memorial site .

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h From: Stanislav Zámečník (Ed. Comité International de Dachau): That was Dachau. Luxembourg 2002.
  2. ↑ 4480 prisoners according to Stanislav Zámečník / ed. Comité International de Dachau. "Up to 4,800 prisoners" according to Jürgen Zarusky: That is not the American way of fighting. In: Dachauer Hefte 13 - Judgment and Justice. 1997.
  3. ↑ "39 wagons" according to Verheye, "approx. 40 "according to Bergmann
  4. ↑ Link to the copy of Merbach's affidavit from the court record of February 24, 1947. Retrieved on January 21, 2009.
  5. ^ IfZ archive, Nuremberg documents, NO 2192, statement by Hans Merbach
  6. ↑ Lt. Jürgen Zarusky: That is not the American way of fighting. In: Dachauer Hefte 13 - Judgment and Justice. P. 33.
  7. ↑ The death train from Buchenwald. Eyewitness report from Johann Bergmann, former pastor of Aicha vorm Wald. In: Passauer Neue Presse. April 19, 1955, printed in: Buchenwald. Reminder and obligation. Documents and reports. 4th edition. Berlin 1983, pp. 503-505.
  8. ↑ CT Verheye: The Train Ride into Hell. Unpublished manuscript. The author thanks Mr. Verheye, Tucson, Arizona, for important advice on the train transport from Buchenwald. - Source taken from: Jürgen Zarusky: That is not the American Way of Fighting. In: Dachauer Hefte 13 - Judgment and Justice. P. 33.
  9. ^ Hermann Weiß: Dachau and the international public. Reactions to the liberation of the camp. In: Dachauer Hefte. No. 1, 1985, pp. 12-38, here, p. 27. Source taken from: Jürgen Zarusky: That is not the American Way of Fighting. In: Dachauer Hefte 13 - Judgment and Justice. P. 33.
  10. ^ Jürgen Zarusky: That is not the American Way of Fighting. In: Dachauer Hefte 13 - Judgment and Justice. P. 33.
  11. ^ IfZ archive, Nuremberg documents, NO 1253, declaration Visintainer.
  12. ↑ Barbara Diestel, Wolfgang Benz: The Dachau Concentration Camp 1933-1945. History and meaning . Ed .: Bavarian State Center for Political Education. Munich 1994 ( map of the main camp in Dachau ( memento of December 4, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) [accessed on January 21, 2009]).