Hercules Colliery Forced Labor Camp

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The forced labor camp Zeche Hercules was set up at the time of the seizure of power in 1933 in the east quarter of Essen on the site of the disused Zeche Hercules as a labor camp to accommodate around 150 forced laborers .

The camp located at Beuststrasse 63 was one of more than 260 forced labor camps during the Nazi era in what is now the city of Essen.

history

The bill Hercules was a coal - mine , which was from 1859 to 1925 in operation. A few years after the shutdown, the SA opened a so-called Sturmlokal , also known as the Herculeswache , in old colliery rooms .

After Adolf Hitler's seizure of power in 1933, the SS housed social-democratic and communist-minded prisoners in the former Hercules colliery . Under torture, SS men from Essen tried to extract confessions from these dissenting prisoners about their political resistance to National Socialism. These extreme torture methods, which even local residents complained about because they couldn't sleep at night due to the screams, gave the former Hercules colliery at that time the name whipping cellar or blood cellar . In contrast to the usual practice in camps newly built by the SS to concentrate prisoners, Hercules did not isolate them from public space.

At the beginning of 1934, the economic department of the driving school of the NSDAP Gau Essen was set up in the buildings of the closed Hercules colliery , where Nazi opponents had to do unpaid auxiliary work .

After the war in 1948, one of those responsible, SS-Untersturmführer Paul Bilecki, was sentenced to five months imprisonment in a trial.

Current condition

The colliery buildings were closed during the Nazi era. Today's Hercules industrial estate developed in the post-war period. Herkulesstraße is reminiscent of the old mine, but also of the horrors during the Nazi era.

literature

  • Michael Zimmermann : The Place of Terror: History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps, Volume 2. Early Dachau Camp, Emsland Camp . Ed .: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel. CH Beck, 2005, ISBN 3-406-52962-3 , pp. 94, 95 .
  • Michael Zimmermann: Concentration camps in the Rhineland and Westphalia 1933–1945 . Ed .: Jan Erik Schulte. Schöningh, 2004, ISBN 3-506-71743-X , pp. 180, 181 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Historischer Verein Essen: booklet for the 2002 competition; List from page 48 , accessed April 6, 2018
  2. ↑ Neue Ruhr Zeitung of October 20, 1948: The screaming didn't let her sleep - witnesses report about the blood cellar on Hercules

Coordinates: 51 ° 27 ′ 30 ″  N , 7 ° 1 ′ 25 ″  E