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Former Zittwerke, entrance, 2011.

The Zittwerke AG was a front company of the Junkers AG, which from 1944 to 1945 in Zittau and its district Großporitsch existed.

history

After the Allies began air raids on German industrial centers and metropolitan areas in January 1943 , many of the companies involved in arms production began looking for suitable locations for production relocations. On the one hand, these were underground relocation objects and on the other hand front companies founded outside the metropolitan areas.

On April 29, 1943, possible locations in Zittau, including the site of the former Großporitsch prisoner-of-war camp, were inspected for the first time, especially for the production of the aircraft types Ju 86 , Ju 87 , Ju 88 and Ju 188 , which are essential to the war effort . On the site of the camp, which was demolished in 1920, construction of the new barracks had previously begun, but this was discontinued after the outbreak of war and was again used as an internment camp for prisoners of war .

In August 1943 the Junkerswerke decided to outsource to the spinning mill and weaving mill in Ebersbach / Sa. , Gebr. Moras AG in Zittau and the construction of production halls on the barracks in Großporitsch. For this purpose, a radio manufacturer Dr. Seibt Nachf., News media production, Berlin-Schöneberg and Gebr. Moras AG canceled the contract and referred the Berlin radar producer to Echo-Mühle Olbersdorf .

Before the construction of the halls in Großporitsch, the web rooms of the Gebr. Moras AG, located above the Zittau train station, were used, whereby the space requirement quickly increased from 2000 to 5700 m² and the textile company was obliged in September 1943 to turn off 16 production workers. Because of the ongoing building inspection procedure for Großporitsch in October 1943, Junkers now claimed the entire production area of ​​Moras AG of 15,000 m² and after a contradiction from the management, the newly appointed Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production Albert Speer personally recommended the closure of the plant in November 1943. In the same month, the relocation of the production machines from Dessau to Zittau began and the “Paulaner Bräu” restaurant was confiscated as a dormitory for the workers involved in the construction.

At the same time, the Junkerswerke claimed an area of ​​16,000 m² in the Spinnerei und Weberei AG Ebersbach for the relocation of their Magdeburg plant, with the accommodation of 1000 employees there causing serious problems. In 1944 the Eberwerke Aktiengesellschaft was founded there.

In December 1943, the director of Junkerswerke Walter Cambeis reduced his space requirements at Moras AG to the originally planned 5,700 m², as this location no longer seemed suitable after the change from the development of technically high-performance to the mass production of the fastest special aircraft. This meant that the already started factory shutdown procedure for Moras AG became obsolete.

The establishment of the "Zittwerke Aktiengesellschaft" based in Zittau, Bahnhofstrasse 10, took place on March 20, 1944. The management consisted of Jürgen Ulderup as operator , the director Hanewald and the authorized signatory Pfeil, all of whom had previously worked at Junkers.

The Zittwerke owned smaller production facilities in the Haebler brothers' textile companies in Zittau, the Rudolf Breuer mechanical weaving mill in Reichenau , the Kreutziger & Henke company in Leutersdorf and 17 other companies in Zittau, Reichenau, Herrnhut and Großschönau . In addition, there was the newly built Schmittsche spinning mill in the small town of Semil, which belongs to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . The production workers required were withdrawn from the textile factories.

On September 20, 1944, the Reich Minister of Aviation , Göring, ordered the entire relocation of the Junkers factories from Magdeburg and Dessau to the premises of Gebr. Moras AG in Zittau.

There is no verifiable information about the number of employees at Zittwerke. It is estimated that over 2500 people in Zittau, of whom around 1500 worked in the textile factories. Under the guidance of German and foreign specialists, mostly auxiliary workers were trained. In the barracks building, which was considered a restricted military area , work in the areas of machining, galvanization and assembly was mainly carried out by specialists from the aviation industry and seconded armaments workers. Because of the secrecy and feared sabotage or espionage, Eastern workers were only used for auxiliary work and concentration camp prisoners for special work. For October 1944, 242 Polish workers can be found who were housed in the east camp in the barracks area. Soviet workers were also employed later.

In January 1945, construction of two makeshift houses began in Eichgraben, for which French prefabricated colonial houses captured during the French campaign in 1941 were erected.

Zittwerke ceased production in mid-February 1945. With the abandonment of the Großporitscher barracks on March 24, 1945, the evacuation of the machines was completed.

Großporitsch production facility and warehouse

The design office set up for the construction of the “Zittwerke-Kaserne” production facility and managed by civil engineer Buchholz was relocated from Dessau to the Rudolf Arens company in Zittau on November 20, 1943. A total of 2,830,000 RM was estimated for the secret project IVa SO J / m 116 of the general aviation master , which was later assigned to the Jägerstab . The state building ban of November 11, 1943 resulted in further delays due to the issuing of the building permits that were now also required.

One of the three south partially renovated former team houses, in 2011 used for residential purposes.

After the Kleinporitsch barracks area had been handed over to Zittwerke for use by the Wehrmacht , construction began quickly in January 1944, although the final plans for the site were not yet available. First of all, the largely completed large team houses were completed and six more were expanded as shell ruins to form 3-4 storey residential buildings for 3,600 or 5,000 employees. In the summer of 1944, the construction of a large boiler house as well as underground supply systems, shafts and tunnels began . The Reichsgruppe Industrie-Werkluftschutz, district group Zittau, was responsible for the building permits. The local building police authority was ignored and finally postponed its demands for the submission and examination of the documents in November 1944 until the end of the war. In the course of the year, several assembly and storage halls, a gas station, a galvanic plant, bunkers and air defense towers were built. In November 1944, the block with eight engine test stands for the Jumo 004B began its audible operation from afar.

In March 1944, the Junkers factories applied for the construction of a connecting line from the Zittau – Reichenberg railway line for the Zittau-Kleinschönau (barracks) engine construction branch . At the same time, in April 1944, the construction of a temporary siding and a loading track on the narrow-gauge railway Zittau – Hermsdorf began . After this had been included in the railway timetable and operated since the beginning of May 1944, the Mayor of Zittau was announced a few days later by the Junkers factories that the required construction documents would be submitted, which, however, remained. In December 1944, the construction of the siding from the standard gauge line to Reichenberg began between Großporitsch and the Zittwerke, which was put into operation in January 1945.

After the start of production in 1944, the Zittwerke-Kaserne production facility was used to manufacture Junkers Jumo 004B engines , which were transported via Zittau with concealed rail freight trains in the direction of Reichenberg and Warnsdorf to the aircraft assembly sites in Bavaria , e.g. B. the forest factory near Obertraubling , were removed.

The production in the facilities outside the barracks took place under the supervision of an air force unit , whose headquarters were in the Beckmann department store on Zittauer Markt and which was also responsible for the transport of the individual parts produced there to Großporitsch.

From October 28, 1944, an external command of the Groß-Rosen concentration camp was housed in the separately secured and demarcated by barbed wire "farm building" within the barracks , the strength of which cannot be clearly proven. A total of 864 concentration camp prisoners is given for the eight Junkers factories in 1944.

With the approach of the Eastern Front, production was stopped in mid-February 1945, and the machines were transported to Chemnitz-Hilbersdorf station in 15 covered freight trains from February 27th . Another such train drove from Hirschfelde to Dessau on March 2, 1945 . After the factories had been partially cleared, the armaments workers were taken to Pustleben in several special trains between March 6 and 10 . A freight train brought machines to Riesa again on March 18 .

On March 24, 1945, the barracks facility was finally given up. On this day a special train left the area via Warnsdorf and Bad Schandau with an unknown destination, and the Wehrmacht transported probably the last 500 workers to Halberstadt in a passenger train .

From March 25, only the eastern labor camp and the subcamp of the concentration camp were left in the barracks area, as well as members of the 17th SS Totenkopf Guard Battalion, who guarded the latter. Due to the evacuation of the main camp in Groß Rosen, repatriation was not possible, and the camp served as a reception camp for the evacuated satellite camps of the Groß-Rosen concentration camp in the Weser aircraft works in Bunzlau and from Reichenau in Bohemia .

A special train of the Wehrmacht came from Leitmeritz on April 30, 1945 via Warnsdorf to the Zittwerke site in Großporitsch and then left again. The purpose of this trip remained unknown.

Between May 6th and 7th, the Reichsbahn dissolved its East Workers' Camp Teufelsmühle in the Zittau Mountains and moved the residents to the Zittwerke's “East Camp”. After the Soviet air raid on Zittau on the morning of May 7, 1945, the concentration camp was only sparsely guarded. The prisoners also use the escape of parts of the guards to escape. Several of them who had fled to Zittau were killed in further bomb attacks on May 7th and 8th. The eastern workers also fled from the approaching Red Army . In June, some of the former camp inmates died in the city of epidemics and exhaustion.

The former concentration camp inmate Mortka Schwarz, a Jew who was born in Majdanek and lived in Oświęcim until 1939 , stayed in Zittau and ran the Schwarz department store from 1946 until his death in 1970.

In May 1945 the Zittau war and civil prisoner camp was set up on the Zittwerke site . The production facilities in the area were left to decay and are still preserved as ruins.

literature

  • Don Rolando: The Zittwerke - Dr. Jürgen Ulderup's secret and unknown control point of HOLOCAUST

Publication 2019 ISBN: 978-3000642852

  • Herbert Bauer: All about the history of a siding. Local reflection of world history. The track through the south-eastern Upper Lusatian hill country . Association of the Zittauer Schmalspurbahnen eV, Oybin 2003, ( Association of the Zittauer Schmalspurbahnen eV Publication 2003, 1, ZDB -ID 2373346-9 ).

Web links

Commons : Zittwerke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 50 ° 53 ′ 31.7 ″  N , 14 ° 50 ′ 20 ″  E