Wehrmacht prison in Anklam

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Former Wehrmacht prison in Anklam
Former military school where the administration of the Wehrmacht prison in Anklam was located

The Wehrmacht prison in Anklam was one of eight military prisons of the Wehrmacht in National Socialist Germany . The listed building is located west of Friedländer Straße in the south of Anklamer . Since 2005 it has been the seat of the "Center for Peace Work - Otto Lilienthal - Hanseatic City of Anklam" and serves as a place of learning and memorial for Nazi military justice from 1933 to 1945.

history

The prison, which was designed for around 600 prisoners, was built from 1939 to 1940 on the courtyard of the Anklam War School . There were group and individual cells. Death row with 19 cells was located in the basement of the south wing , in which several of those sentenced to death were chained until their verdict was confirmed. The administration was located in the neighboring war school, which also housed the court officers.

The prisoners were convicted by court martial from the military districts I , II and XX , the naval station of the Baltic Sea and from the Luftgau I and XI. Responsibility also extended to Army Group North and the field army in Scandinavia and Northeast Europe. Reasons for convictions included desertion , degradation of military strength , unauthorized removal , cowardice in front of the enemy or refusal to obey orders, but also criminal offenses.

The first prisoners arrived in late 1940. Several thousand convicts had passed through the prison by 1945. Some of them were used as work details in armaments factories such as the Arado aircraft works in Anklam and others in the area. Wehrmacht prisoners' departments in Clauen near Hanover , Fallingbostel , Bernau near Berlin and Peenemünde belonged to the Wehrmacht prison in Anklam . At times the prison was overcrowded with up to 1,500 inmates. As a result, the conditions of detention deteriorated. From 1942 field prisoner departments were set up in Anklam . In 1944, several hundred prisoners were transferred to the Dirlewanger special formation , which was used to suppress the Warsaw uprising .

On November 5, 1941, the first documented execution of three soldiers took place on a regular shooting range near Anklam. Later enforcements were carried out on the prison grounds. Around 120 requests for clemency from those sentenced to death were granted. So far, 139 executions have been recorded in Anklam, 100 of them between January and April 1945. The last execution took place on April 26, 1945.

The Wehrmacht prison was evacuated on April 28, 1945. The guards and the last remaining prisoners marched in three batches towards Küstrin , Friedland and via Jarmen towards Bützow . The last batch was arrested by the Red Army on May 1st .

During the GDR era, the northern wing of the building was demolished and the rest was used to store grain. A working group of the Kulturbund of the GDR began in 1961/1962 with research on the history of the Wehrmacht prison. The surviving death cell wing was designed as a memorial in the mid-1970s.

The building remained unused between 1990 and 2005. In 2005 the foundation “Center for Peace Work - Otto Lilienthal - Hanseatic City of Anklam”, newly established by Stephan Tanneberger, took over the prison. After a partial restoration, the building will be used as a center for national and international peace work. A permanent exhibition provides information about the historical background.

literature

Movie

  • Disobedience as a virtue - The Wehrmacht prison in Anklam and the military justice system in the Third Reich. Director: Jörg Hermann, Germany 2009, approx. 80 min.

Web links

Commons : Anklam Wehrmacht Prison  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Veronika Müller: The death row is a reminder of the horror. In: Nordkurier . May 7, 2015, pp. 20–21.


Coordinates: 53 ° 50 '53.94 "  N , 13 ° 41' 13.85"  E