Sunday, December 25, 2016

DACHAU KZ - SATELLITE CAMPS - PART 11 Alphabetical Order M


 



 


                      DACHAU KZ - SATELLITE CAMPS - PART 11

                                        Alphabetical Order, M

                                

                      DACHAU KZ - SATELLITE CAMPS - PART 11
                                                   Alphabetical Order

                                                                   M

  MARKT SCHWABEN

  The SS Adjutantur , a main department of the Reichsführer SS [Himmler} (RFSS) Personal Staff, who himself had his central office in Berlin, had a branch in Munich, Karlstrasse 10, headed by SS-Haupotsturmführer Alfons Schnitzler. With the realization  of the increasing air raids of the Allies on the Bavarian state capital from 1944 onwards, the decision was made,that  the Munich services, whose building had taken a severe air attack on 25 April and sustained considerable fire damage, during a raid that endangered the 'capital of the movement' (Hauptstadt der Bewegung) and move the offices  to a safe place . The choice fell to Markt Schwaben located about 20 kilometers east of Munich in the district of Ebersberg. In 1939, the Markt Schwaben, located on the railway line Munich-Simbach with a branch station in the direction of Erding, had already to accommodate several state and party facilities since the beginning of the Second World War. By the end of the spring of 1944 the population of Markt Schwabens had increased to more than 3,400 inhabitants,  by accommodating various bombed-out armament factories from Munich, as well as by lodging the evacuees (Flüchtlinge, prisoners of war and forced laborers into barracks and shelyers(Behelsheime)

 
Presumably mid-summer 1944, the Munich branch of the SS adjudant took over a 2,500 square-meter area in about 250 meters north-east of the station on today's Finsingerstrasse.
There were already barracks on the site, in which prisoners of war had previously been lodged.

The first transport with prisoners from the KZ-Dachau arrived in Markt Schwaben on 2 September 1944. This type of  sub-camp belonged to the central construction unit of the Waffen-SS. It was their job to unload building material from railway wagons at the station and take them to the site. There, in addition to the already existing two barracks, further makeshift buildings should be erected, apparently, for the installation of the offices of the branch of the  SS Adjudantur from Munich.
.The number of prisoners employed by the SS-Arbeitskommando at Markt Schwaben amounted to 19 persons. The prisoners came from almost all European countries and belonged to different age groups. As a rule, the detainees were taken  truck in the morning and returned in the evening to Dachau. Occasionally, however, they stayed for several days on the site. In these cases, they were placed in one of the two existing barracks. Here there was a bunk for each prisoner, with a straw bag for a mattress, a head pillow, and a blanket with bed sheets,proper  bed linen and pillowcases. The food rations corresponded to those of the KZ-Dachau.

 The SS guard team consisted of two men. As accommodation they used one of the other two barracks. In this building, the commander Alfons Schnitler also had a room at his disposal when he was present. According to a prisoner, a non-electric, double-stranded barbed wire fence, completely encircled the terrain, and was merely accessible through an entrance at the railway side via a gate and was meant to oversee and supervise a right-angled area. In addition, the SS men had a watchtower at their disposal, which was arranged diametrically to the two barracks with their barred windows in the southern side of the camp. During the  the night, a lantern was set up between the two barracks to light up the grounds.

There were no chicanery or ill-treatment, nor beatings, let alone any deaths of prisoners  - according to the same statements by those affected and by the overwhelming eyewitness reports by Markt Schwabener citizens. With permission of the commander Schnitzler, some prisoners were able to work for a farmer nearby in exchange for food as payment and sleeping in his barn. Two of the three detainees were stationed for a few days to be painting the wooden block built dwelling of SS-Hauptsturmführer  Anton Hartmann, the head of the Schwaben SS equipment and clothing store, near the railway-station (today Postanger)


               
 
                                                
Markt Schwaben - Twownship



Although the population of the village was able to observe the work of the prisoners on the open-air site of the sub-camp on the outskirts of the hamlet, they nevertheless were unaware  as to the background of the perceived events. The fact that this was a case of prisoners in the service of the Munich Branch of the SS Adjudantur of the Personal Staff of Himmler hardly knew anyone.


On 23 April 1945 the sub-command Market Schwaben was dissolved and at that time seven prisoners were sent back to Dachau. The construction of the buildings planned on the site had not yet come to the point of completion. One week after the closure of the camp on 1 May 1945 US troops entered Markt Schwaben. In the summer of the same year, the two barracks were demolished near the railroad crossing to Finsing.

Author German Text: Bernhard Schäfer





MÜHLDORF

In order to maintain or even increase the production of fighter aircraft, the "hunter staff" Jäger Stab) was created in March 1944, to which members of the armaments and aviation ministry as well as other industrial complexes belonged. The main goal was the creation of bombproof premises. To this end, the organization Todt (OT), which came under the responsibility of the Ministry of Defense, should build half-underground concrete bunkers of several hundred thousand square meters of production space.

Four of the six bunkers were started, only two were completed, yet only by two thirds each. One was at Mühldorf am Inn in Oberbayern, the other at Landsberg am Lech. The buildings received code names for secrecy and security reasons, the code 'Weingut I' was used for Müldorf. Construction projects were placed with the organization Todt, the actual work was carried out by the company Polensky & Zoller, who in turn hired additional  companies under contract. The construction company of the SS-Weinguts-Betriebs-GmbH, located in the nearby Monastery Zangberg  at Müldorf, was managed by Martin Weiss, the former commander of Dachau, as the special commissioner to the SS group of the SS-WVHA. Within the  SS-Weingut-Betriebs GmbH,  was in fact a conglomerate of 42 companies - including AEG, Siemens & Halske, Siemens & Schuckert, Telefunken and Carl Zeiss -who were all  involved in the construction of the planned manufacture of parts for the Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter aircraft. Shortly before the end of the war, in March 1945, SS Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler seems to have taken command of the project that previously was  undertaken by the OT, with that the OT had lost the construction authority to the SS-Commander Kammler, but the construction activity was already more or less at this time at a standstill.



 

 

 

 

Monastery Zangberg from Ampfing


For the building of the bunker an effective and simple new procedure was employed. First an underground "extraction tunnel", fitted with a single train track and a gated roof, was built along the entire length of the planned bunker. Next the foundations for the abutments, which were up to 17 m thick, were dug. The gravel extracted from the foundations was piled up between the foundations to support the arches while they were being built, essentially serving as formwork instead of traditional wooden scaffolding. As each arch was completed, the gravel beneath it was dug out and dumped through the gates of the extraction tunnel into waiting mine carts, which would then be taken away. When the tunnel had been completely uncovered it would be disassembled and backhoes would continue the excavation to a depth of 19.2 meters. Starting from the east, one arch after another was erected in this way. Eight floors were to be erected beneath the arches, but this was only begun with the first arch. By the end of April 1945 only seven of the projected twelve arches were completed. In the last months of the war it was no longer possible to obtain the necessary materials and workers in order to stay on schedule.


ustration showing part of the construction process. The gravel fill over which the arch has been formed (C) is dumped in the center of the arch by excavators (B), where it is poured into minecarts waiting in the extraction tunnel below (A). The dotted line above the arch indicates the projected thickness, which was never attained


 

                                The construction site as it was found by US forces in May 1945 

 A large part of the forced laborers who had been made available for the construction of the bunkers were Hungarian Jews. In the near vicinity of Mühldorf, from July 1944 on-wards, the camp was subordinated to the KZ-Dachau: two larger ones, with each holding between 2,000 and 3,000 prisoners, namely Mettenheim near Nühldorf and the forest camp at Ampfing, as well as smaller camps, one at Mittergars, and the other at Thalham in the municipality of Obertaufkirchen. Not a camp, but presumably a working crew, was the Konnando 'Weingut Zangberg' lodged in the Zangberg Monastery, with 60 prisoners, presumably these were kept separately for billing purposes - not part of  the OT superstructure management, but the SS itself was the employer, and run independently. . Metterheim I was set up in barracks of a former Luftwaffe Clothing Depot, while the forest camp V, IV - the peculiar Roman numbering method resurfaced from other forest camps near Mühldorf, which were not part of the KZ-system. In the so-called Srammlager (Main Camp) the Finn- and Nissen Huts were used by the organization Todt who had this type of building  method also used in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, those in use had proved to be inadequate, and were re-built according to designs of the OT-Erdhütten,(Earth-nuts) with only the tent-like roof above ground. Concrete details about the construction of Camps Mittergars and Thalham are not available.
 

Camp forced laborers inside barracks soon after
                  the liberation of Kaufering IV, part of a network of
                  Dachau subcamps. Landsberg-Kaufering, Germany, 1945.
Inside OT-built Earth Huts - at Kaufering sub camp

 

Camp forced laborers inside barracks soon after
                  the liberation of Kaufering IV, part of a network of
                  Dachau subcamps. Landsberg-Kaufering, Germany, 1945.                                                                                       
Camp forced laborers inside barracks soon after
                  the liberation of Kaufering IV, part of a network of
                  Dachau subcamps. Landsberg-Kaufering, Germany, 1945.
Inside OT-built Earth Huts - at Kaufering sub camp

 

View: https://wn.com/kaufering_concentration_camp

 
                                                                                     
Camp forced laborers inside barracks soon after
                  the liberation of Kaufering IV, part of a network of
                  Dachau subcamps. Landsberg-Kaufering, Germany, 1945.


The most important person in charge from the SS at the Mühldorf camp was SS-Sturmbannführer Walter Adolf Langleist, former commander of the guard team at Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp and from September to November 1944 commander of the Kauflinger complex. Every single one of the four Mühldorfer camps had a camp leader, partly they wee older SS members, but partly enlisted men from the Wehrmacht which had been transferred  to the SS. The number of SS guards in itself were not large in comparison to the number of prisoners on this project . On the main construction site  were usually not more than 20 SS-men, who blocked off the area, while Kapos, German foremen and OT-members oversaw the work of the prisoners. In camp M I, about 120 SS people were stationed, about 105 were active in the forest camp.

[
Langleist was on May 28, 1946, hanged in Landsberg prison for war crimes. 'he threw a prisoner into a pit, where he died and had also beaten another prisoner with a piece of wood until he was dead'.sic]

From July 24, 1944, 8,300 prisoners, including about 7,500 males and about 500 females, were imprisoned in the camps around Mühldorf. While the camp M I was built at Mettenheim by July, 1944, it was was first mentioned in reports during August 1944. Mittergars, whose existence is recorded from October 1944 to the end of April 1945, had around 300 prisoners, who all worked for the OT construction management. As to  Thalham, according to the  ITS documents (falsely called Thalheim), documentary wise, it is mentioned at the end of January 1945 till April 1945. Other records indicate the activity of  prisoners construction work for the OT Mühldirf.  From the statement of an SS Rottenführer shows that at least 42 prisoners, but perhaps as many as  100 to 200 people were locked up there. Female prisoners were only found in the camps M I and Waldlager V, VI. The misunderstandings between male and female prisoners reflects, on the one hand, the labor needs of the organization Todt - construction work - remains scarce and, on the other hand, the generally poorer survival conditions for women during the Auschwitz selection to be sent to a construction site of these proportions. In the summer of 1944 the first transport with 1,000 Hungarian Jewish prisoners from Auschwitz arrived and  taken into  the half-finished camp M I. The camp Mettenheim (M I) was first mentioned on 28 July 1944. Soon the number of people was increased to 2,000 men. Sinceprisoners were registered in the four Mühldorfer camps, as well as 60 men in the  Zangberg monastery. The number of male prisoners of the sub-camps M Enter Picturehttps://de.wiki September 25, 1944, a women's camp with 500 female prisoners existed there. An average of 2,000 men and 250 women were imprisoned at the  Waldlager. On April 3, 1945, 4,233 male and 295 female KZ- ühldorf, three weeks later, shows how strongly the movement within the prisoners' society was until the end of the war. Now it amounted to 4.929.
 prisoners were registered in the four Mühldorfer camps, as well as 60 men in the  Zangberg monastery. The number of male prisoners of the sub-camps M I


Datei:Transportliste KZ Mühldorf.JPG

Document of 25 October 1944 on a prisoner transport of 555 so-called " Mussulmans "  (unable to work)from the camp M 1 to Auschwitz

  

The work of the prisoners consisted primarily of building works. They had to unload the cement, which has been delivered by trucks or in railway wagons, to store them in ware houses near the construction site and later to carry the 50 kilogram sacks to the concrete mixers, where the cement was tipped into the machines. Other work involved was the railway track construction on site inside the tunneling and supportive work such as the production of prefabricated concrete slabs, for Ways & Freytag a civil contractor in the village of  Ampfing. Kicks, beatings, and ear slapping (Ohrfeigen) by members of the organization Todt and civil companies were on the daily agenda

Living conditions in the Mühldorfer sub-camps can be described as catastrophic without exaggeration. The interior facilities of the huts was limited to floor boards with straw coverings and a stove. In the winter, firewood or heating material was missing, rain and snow were penetrating the roofs of the earth-huts  The food supply by the organization Todt was completely inadequate. In addition, the camp commandant Langleist ordered that the sick prisoners were to withdraw from  the OT pledge to feed them, and instead merely provide them food according to the KZ-G
The work of the prisoners consisted primarily of building works. They had to unload the cement, which has been delivered by trucks or in railway wagons, to store them in ware houses near the construction site and later to carry the 50 kilogram sacks to the concrete mixers, where the cement was tipped into the machines. Other work involved was the railway track construction on site inside the tunneling and supportive work such as the production of prefabricated concrete slabs, for Ways & Freytag a civil contractor in the village of  Ampfing. Kicks, beatings, and ear slapping (Ohrfeigen) by members of the organization Todt and civil companies were on the daily agenda

Living conditions in the Mühldorfer sub-camps can be described as catastrophic without exaggeration. The interior facilities of the huts was limited to floor boards with straw coverings and a stove. In the winter, firewood or heating material was missing, rain and snow were penetrating the roofs of the earth-huts  The food supply by the organization Todt was completely inadequate. In addition, the camp commandant Langleist ordered that the sick prisoners were to withdraw from  the OT pledge to feed them, and instead merely provide them food according to the KZ-G
The work of the prisoners consisted primarily of building works. They had to unload the cement, which has been delivered by trucks or in railway wagons, to store them in ware houses near the construction site and later to carry the 50 kilogram sacks to the concrete mixers, where the cement was tipped into the machines. Other work involved was the railway track construction on site inside the tunneling and supportive work such as the production of prefabricated concrete slabs, for Ways & Freytag a civil contractor in the village of  Ampfing. Kicks, beatings, and ear slapping (Ohrfeigen) by members of the organization Todt and civil companies were on the daily agenda

Living conditions in the Mühldorfer sub-camps can be described as catastrophic without exaggeration. The interior facilities of the huts was limited to floor boards with straw coverings and a stove. In the winter, firewood or heating material was missing, rain and snow were penetrating the roofs of the earth-huts  The food supply by the organization Todt was completely inadequate. In addition, the camp commandant Langleist ordered that the sick prisoners were to withdraw from  the OT pledge to feed them, and instead merely provide them food according to the KZ-GGuidance rates for the ailing.
        
Datei:Totenliste-KZ-Muehldorf.jpg                                                                         
                       Ausschnitt aus der Totenliste die im Mühldorf-Prozess als Beweismaterial verwendet wurde 
Extract of the Müldorf Death List,  used as evidennce during the triakls.


On the construction sites there were no washing facilities or toilets for the KZ-prisoners. Only when a typhus epidemic arose, the OT construction supervisor ordered the construction of latrines on the buildinb site 'Weingut I'. There wwas no running water in at least two of the four Mühldorfer KZ-sub-camps. The water which was brought into the camps in barrels could only be used for cooking. Due to the lack of washing facilities many prisoners were affected by vermin, (mainly lice) while spotted fever and typhus spread rapidly as a consequence. A quarantine of the forest camp was rescinded by an SS doctor from Dachau, so that the work on the bunker construction could be continued. A German survivor described an auxiliary site in Ampfing, where the company Wayes & Freytag manufactured concrete slabs: "As a medic on this site, I have ro state,  that a number of youthful prisoners, who were 14 to 18-year-olds Hungarian Jews while at work on the construction site have died. As far as the entire population of Ampfing can confirm, we returned to the camp every day in the winter months, with several dead and often with completely exhausted prisoners who were unable to go alone'. The company had made the conditions even more difficult by extending the working day by an hour.

The medical care, for the Mühldorfer camps was in the hands of the Organization Todt. First in the autumn of 1944 was Dr. Erika Flocken, an OT-physician. In Mühldorf, she carried out selections with prisoners. On 25 September 1944, 277 male Jewish prisoners and three Jewesses  went to Auschwitz on 'Invalid transport' (meaning sick and unable to work), on 25 October, a month later, 554 male prisoners and one woman also went to Auschwitz. There they were murdered.

The OT had thus become a helper to the SS, and contributed to the murder of the people who had been to Germany because of their race and used as low cost disposal labour on this  gigantic construction projects of the OT. Like the Kaufinger camp, the Mühldorfer subsidiary  represent a new type of camp, in which the SS - apart from providing  of guard personnel - had fallen aside from any other  responsibility. The organization Todt undertook the projects and determined work-timing (Arbeitstempo), construction of different types of camps, nutrition and medical care, as well as selections of those no longer able-bodied prisoners for disposal.

Towards the end of the war, the head of RSHA Kaltenbrunner, under the code name 'Aktion Wolkenbrand', had a plan for the murder of the Jewish prisoners in Kaufering and Mühldorf. As this proved to be impracticable, the prisoners were evacuated from the Mühldorfer camp. One of the evacuation transports by train led to Poing in the Ebersberg district near Munich. On April 28th, 1945, the train stopped at Poing station to wait for an additional locomotive. The prisoners thought the war was over and left the wagons, this was not stopped by SS guards. When the prisoners had moved about 300 meters away from the train, the guard detachments began to open fire over their heads. In the case of this erroneous early dismissal of the prisoners or by an American fighter plane which attacked and strafed the train until there were no movements of running people, with some 200 prisoners were said to have been injured and killed. In Seehaupt, Tutzing and Feldafing on Lake Starnberg the last Mühldorfer prisoners, what was left of them,  were finally liberated at the end of April 1945 and early May.

                                                         
View:
                                                                          
                                                                        
   WWII ALLIED AIR ATTACKS VERSUS RAILROAD ... - YouTube                                    
                              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m6gpV4as_A


Camp forced laborers inside barracks soon after
                  the liberation of Kaufering IV, part of a network of
                  Dachau subcamps. Landsberg-Kaufering, Germany, 1945.

There are 2,016 deaths recorded in three Death Registers, (Totenbücher) which refers only to camps M I and the forest camp. A mass grave, opened by American soldiers, contained the remains of 2,249 men, another grave at Mittergars contained 42 corpses. 835 people were murdered in Auschwitz or died on the way there. An American investigative commission calculated that about 47 per cent of the prisoners of the Mühldorfer camps (3,934 people) died while it was confirmed that 3,556  survived, another  810 missing prisoners (10 per cent) their fate could no longer be ascertained

The contacts with the population were extremely limited. Anyone who was able to speak German and who knew Germans as part of the assistance during the harvest-season (Ernte-Einsatz) or clearing  work after bomb attacks , was able to find help, but often also indifference and rejection. It is documented that the camp leader of forest camps V, VI, Hauptmann Ostermann, had a woman arrested by the gendarme from  Ampfing, because she had distributed fruit to a column of Jewish prisoners despite the ban.



                                            

                                                            
KZ Cemetery at Mühldorf


In June 1945, the mass graves were opened in the vicinity of Mühldorf, exhumed and buried, the local authorities had to provide coffins and grounds for burial. The local population was forced by the American occupation forces to participate in a total of three mass ceremonies. In 1946, another mass grave was discovered  in the Kaiburger Forest. When the American military government (OMGB) wanted to seize holy ground at  Veitskirchen cemetary for the funeral at St. Neumarkt, a vociferous  protest by the ordinariat of Munich and Freising, was raised, as the dead did not adhere  the Catholic faith furthermore  the confiscation could be expected to result in financial losses. [The plot in God's acreage is not your own and is paid for by remaining relatives on a lease for fifty years and has to be maintained to certain standards or leveled to take another deceased,sic]


Vuew: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkX2WzyD8Q8 


                                                                       




THE MÜHLDORFER PROCESS
The American Mühldorf trial had special rules, if not peculiar  in that it brought members of SS, OT and the construction company Polensky & Zöllmer to the 'Bench of the Accused' (Anklagebank). Only  part of the death sentences against SS members were finally carried out.  Other death sentences against the OT doctor Dr Erike Flocken were commuted  to imprisonment. The architect and head of OT Einsatzgruppe VI, Professor Hermann Giesler, was originally sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment, but released during the 1950s. He had defended himself by pointing out to Hitler that such a monstrous construction  undertaking  could not be carried out with Jewish merchants and lawyers. In another US military court case, the rapport leader of the camp M I, SS Oberscharführer Georg Schallermair, was sentenced to death and hanged in  Landsberg am Lech in 1951. In 958 the last members of the SS who were involved with Mühldorf and OT-employees were set free.

German investigations by the Prosecutor's Office, Traunstein, Munich I, and Munich II as well as Frankfurt against camp leaders, functionaries, OT employees and thos of the construction companies, as well as the police, did not lead to any process.
While hardly any  traces can be found of the camps, the remnants of the concrete arch of the Rüdtungs project in Mühldorf are listed as historical monuments. The building history of the bunkers and the forest camp was made highlighted  by students of the Fachschule Munich in a new dimension and developed proposals for the preservation of the place and the design of a memorial. Local initiatives and the Bayrische Gedenkstätten Foundation are striving to create a memorial site.

Author German Text: Edith Raim





Sources/Acknowledgements:                                                   
Wikipedia
Der Ort des Terrors, Pages 389-
Vol 2 C.H.Beck, München 2005
Translated from German by:
Herbert Stolpmann von Waldeck






                                                                                                     APPENDIX,  Source: Wikipedia

After the war the US Army's Dachau Military Tribunal prosecuted perpetrators of war crimes in connection with the Weingut I project and the associated concentration and labor camps in the Mühldorf Trial (de), which was one of the Dachau Trials.
Among the accused were members of Polensky & Zöllner's administration, including Karl Bachmann, Director of the Munich branch of P & Z; Karl Gickeleiter, who oversaw construction at the main site; and Otto Sperling, construction foreman. The sentencing was performed on 13 May 1947. The charges against Karl Bachmann were dropped, as his involvement in the maltreatment of the prisoners could not be proven. Gickeleiter was sentenced to a 20-year prison term, which would be reduced to 10 years in 1951 before he was released early on 19 July 1952. The death sentence against Sperling was shortly thereafter shortened to life imprisonment and later reduced even further before he was finally released on 20 July 1957.

1980s to today

The ruins of the bunker complex can still be seen in the woods near Mettenheim, although much material from the site has been scavenged in the intervening years by local companies for other building projects. The grounds entered the public eye again in the 1980s, when rumors began to circulate that chemical agents of the Wehrmacht had been stored in the tunnels of the complex after the war. This was not confirmed by the authorities until 1987; the chemicals, including CLARK 2, were subsequently removed.
In 1992, the Bundesvermögensverwaltung (Federal Property Administration, an agency that has since been superseded by the Bundesanstalt für Immobilienaufgaben) proposed to demolish the bunker. Although the communities of Mettenheim and Ampfing endorsed the demolition, many others opposed the proposal, and it was rejected by the government of Upper Bavaria.
In the meantime the bunker grounds had been added to the Bavarian list of monuments as a memorial to the victims of Nazi atrocities. Today the Mühldorf District Catholic Education Center (Katholische Kreisbildungswerk Mühldorf) administers occasional tours of the bunker grounds and the former concentration camp.

                                                                        

  The last remaining arch of the Weingut I is one of seven that were completed out of a planned twelve. Here it is seen from the east, looking out over the overgrown remains of several other arches


 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





 

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.