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)
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
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.
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.
Inside OT-built Earth Huts - at Kaufering sub camp
Inside OT-built Earth Huts - at Kaufering sub camp
View: https://wn.com/kaufering_concentration_camp
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
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
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
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
Ausschnitt aus der Totenliste die im Mühldorf-Prozess als Beweismaterial verwendet wurde
Extract of the Müldorf Death List, used as evidennce during the triakls.
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:
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-
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, 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.
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