MUNICH - RIEM (OT CAMP)
The Munich-Riem airport was a strategic target of numerous air raids during the war .Multiple landing strips and workshops were destroyed. In order to maintain air traffic, clearing and repair work had to be carried out
Bomb craters had to be filled and a new runway built. These works were under the supervision of the Organization Todt (OT) and the work force was provided by prisoners from the KZ-Dachau. In February 1943, the first 600 prisoners came from Dachau to Munich-Riem. About two kilometers from the airfield a sub-camp was converted from horse stables of the SS riding school. The stables were fenced with barbed wire and guarded by a security unit
 |
| Two He-177A-5 'Greifs' and several other aircraft in front of the hangars at Munich-Riem |
 |
| This allied reconnaissance photo of Munich-Riem in 1945 shows the results of visits by Allied bombers: craters all over the north side of the airfield and destroyed station buldings and hangars. A runway is also recognisable, it was probably built for use by the Me-262 jet fighter |
The food provided by the camp kitchen within the barbed wire fencing was described as completely inadequate by former prisoners. In the morning they were given thin coffee, at noon watery cabbage or potato soup, and in the evening coffee again with a slice of bread. Many of the prisoners were undernourished and weakened by the heavy earthwork they had to carry out. Anyone who was sick or unable to work was brought back to KZ-Dachau, and whoever broke down on the way to the workplace was driven on by the guards without any reservations. There was no hospital in this camp.
In the case of an air raid, the camp's staff was safe in shelters, but no measures had been taken for the detainees. Instead, the camp gate was opened and the prisoners were ordered to hide in the surrounding area.
Anyone who did not return to the camp immediately at the end of the air raids was searched for and if apprehended, shot. The prisoners took advantage of this opportunity to leave the camp to look for potatoes in the surrounding fields or to beg for food from farmers. If the guards found foodstuffs on the returnees, those prisoners were executed without reason through the neck for alleged looting. Civilians did came to the camp administration several times to complain about theft of food stuff, while the prisoners took advantage of the opportunity to leave the camp. If the guards found foodstuff on returnees, these prisoners were shot without reason for looting. In these cases the suspects were usually shot immediately on the assembly court. In February or March 1945, 20 Russian prisoners were thus murdered.
Despite these draconian punishments, there were escape attempts. The majority of them ended up by execution of the fugitives. In these cases the suspects were usually shot on the assembly court.
The Allied
air raids were the greatest danger and the most frequent
cause of deaths. During the bombing
on the 9th April 1945 at least 41 prisoners were killed and
a further 40 were wounded. On April
1st, 1945 three dead and 94 wounded prisoners were returned
to the KZ-Dachau. A former prisoner
reported that after the air raids wounded prisoners were
shot by the SS guard team. (He was unable to
give specific details, except in his statement, Marian P
19.9.1974 in: StA München Stanw 3I 503/5. sic.)
 |
| The last remaining part of the runway |
 |
| Franz Xaver Trenkle in American internment. Recording from 1945. |
After the establishment of the Neuengamme concentration camp , Trenkle was appointed rapport leader there in 1940 and then probably moved to Sachsenhausen concentration camp . In November 1942, he returned to the Dachau concentration camp, where he served as rapport leader and deputy arresteer until March 1944. Subsequently, Trenkle was ttransferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp until early January 1945. From January 6, 1945, Trenkle once again served as commandant and supervised concentration camp prisoners in the outer camp of Dachau concentration camp in Lauingen . From the beginning of April 1945 until the 29th of April 1945 Trenkle was commandant in the camp Flugplatz München-Riem of the organization Todt .
After the war, Trenkle was arrested on 15 November 1945 for the Dachau trial , which took place within the framework of the Dachau Processes , as a war criminal by a US military court, and on 13 December 1945 for "assistance and participation in the crimes in the concentration camp Dachau "with thirty-five other co-defendants sntenced to death by the rope . In the verdict, the execution ordered by the Gestapo as well as the ill-treatment and killing of prisoners were considered as individual criminal acts by Trenkle. The verdict was death on May 28, 1946, at the war crimes jail at Landsberg.
The sub-camp was not dissolved. On 24/25 April 1945, only the Jewish prisoners were brought back by trucks to the Stammlager Dachau directly from Munich-Riem and later freed on 29.4.41945 by the Americans. The majority of the prisoners, about 1,000 prisoners, were evacuated directly from Riem on the 25th of April 1945 towards the south. The prisoners marched via Trudering towards Bad Tölz, the other 500 moved across Grossheslohe, Grünwald and Deiningen to Dettenhausen. Both marches survivors described' abuse as well as shootings of prisoners who were too weak to go on. Some prisoners took the opportunity to escape and hid themselves until the arrival of the Americans in barns or forests. A small part of the prisoners were held back in the riding school. According to the prisoner database at the K-Gedenkstätte (Memorial Site) Dachau, 133 detainees were liberated by American troops in Riem.
Author German Text: Sabine Schalm
A side issue - as American Hangings at Landsberg do not show the effect of the 'Long Drop' hanging
The body of a Japanese war criminal as seen through the trapdoor of the gallows immediately after he was executed by hanging at the Changi Gaol in Singapore. His hands have been tied behind his back and he wears all white, including a hood over his head. Note the semicircles marked on the visible half of the trapdoor, which match up to form full circles indicating where those about to be hanged should stand. (1946) Via the Australian War Memorial
MUNICH - SCHWABING 'SISTER PIA'
Pre-Amble:
Not to confuse the reader, I have translated the German expression 'Schwester' which means Sister as Nurse which is what they are, in one capacity or other, yet they are always addressed as 'Schwester' in German.
(Because she missed her stop and did not have any money to pay the additional ticket to the tram conductor, she met Adolf Hitler in 1920. Its companion, Anton Drexler, founder of the DAP, paid the fare for Eleonore Baur. Through this experience, Sister Pia, as the nurse was called, became a glowing supporter of the "movement": she pasted posters, distributed leaflets, participated in meetings, hall battles and street fighting. She also participated in the "march to the Feldherrnhalle" in 1923. She had marched "in the fourth row," she said later, and even provided Hitler's injury. Like all "old comrades" who had participated in the Hitlerputsch, Eleonore Baur also received the "Blutorden" - the only woman. "Sister Pia" she took care of the prisoners of Dachau concentration camp from 1934 onwards: for some she was the "saving angel", for the others the "devil".
HKS)
It is clear that she made a steep right career and that despite her classification as the main culprit, she kept her property after the war and had a pension. Eleonore Baur belonged to the contestants, perpetrators and profiteers, to whom the book "Right Careers", published by Marita Krauss. From the Weimar period to the post-war years ".)
The sub-camp Munich-Schwabing was the first commando of KZ-prisoners, which was permanently set up to work outside the KZ-Dachau control. Its structure, management and organization did not lie with the SS-WVHA and the camp commando Dachau, as with most of the later sub-camps, but exclusively with the person of Eleonore Baur alias 'Nurse Pia'.
 |
| She was the only women that took part in the Beer Hall Putsch November 1923 |
This fanatical nationalist in the earliest period since Nazi domination. owed her close acquaintance with Reichsfiührer Heinrich Himmler since 1933 due to an appointment with the SS as a guardian in the Dachau Concentration Camp. She was allowed to move there without restrictions. Ever since In 1934 the prisoner Erich Essner occasionally did gardening for Nurse Pia in her private apartment at Voitstrasse 6 in Munich. As a result, additional prisoners would have to take care of her housework. In 1935 Hitler was to have given her a house in Oberhaching in Munich. Here, Nurse Pia set up in 1937 a team of KZ-prisoners to have elaborate alterations carried out. They had to build a garage, a bathhouse and a bunker. The raw materials for these construction measures were taken exclusively from the supplies of KZ-Dachau. For a minimum of the material she paid apparently, for most, however, not. She had wide-ranging privileges. For instance, the prisoners had to produce furniture and carvings for her in the KZ-workshops, or to make children's toys. The labor force of the prisoners was granted to Nurse Pia free of charge. She made weekly visits to the prisoners' kitchen, from there she regularly disappeared with meat and margarine which she took away in her service car, and she had made no payment at all. Within the camp, Nurse Pia was known that she was 'organizing' everything she could get hold of. ['organizing' during wartime was more or less an acronym and meant stealing,sic]
This is the famous Schwester Pia (Sister Pia), who was very close to Hitler in the early 1920’s. Her real name was Eleonore Baur. She met Hitler in 1920 and admitted to Emil Maurice in 1929 that she had been “violently in love with Hitler.” Since she was four years older than Hitler, no real relationship developed, since Hitler always preferred young and naïve women.
At the beginning, the prisoners were taken to Nurse Pia at
irregular intervals on one or more days a week and returned
in the evening to Dachau. From 1940 a
permanent sub-camp, consisting of about twelve to 14 male
prisoners, was established. At first,
the prisoners were taken by trucks daily from the
Concentration Camp to work, but later they were accommodated
at Nurse Pia's and sometimes at the weekends taken back to
Dachau. The sub-camp was exclusively
used by Nurse Pia, she directed the labor orders and set
working hours. She was even participating in the selection of prisoners that should work for
her. Under her command, hard work had
to be done, not infrequently also on Sundays. The attendant SS members of the KZ-Dachau took over
the guard duty.
[Although Nurse Pia belonged to a Religious Order (and called each other 'Schwester' (Sister) which means in German 'Nurse'. It is surprising that she did not observe Sundays as the day of God and Prayer and made prisoners work, in other words she was a proper B-sic]
It is not known that Pia attacked prisoners, but in almost all statements of former prisoners, Nurse Pia has harassed them. If she was in a bad mood, or a prisoner did not work fast enough in her eyes, she had him, for example, descend into the sewage pit full of excrements and scrub the walls clean with a brush. At the same time, Nurse Pia was feared by the prisoners because of her great influence on the camp management.
If a prisoner had fallen into disgrace with her, she did not hesitate to complain about one inmate for example and sent a criminal report (Strafmeldung) to the camp commandant's office, where the offender was given Bunker Arrest. She did threaten another prisoner that he would not leave the Dachau Concentration Camp alive, of that she would make certain. It was probably his transfer to Sachsenhausen that his life was spared. Another detainee also reported abuse after Baur sent a criminal report about him to the Camp Administration.
In all, the reputation of the "commando Sister Pia'' was ambivalent. On the ner hand, the home-cooked food was well above average, the prisoners ate with Nurse Pia, and her servants together at a table. (This is typical in religious household-sic). In addition, they were allowed to smoke and had the opportunity to smuggle letters from this camp.Although Baur's unpredictability and capriciousness were very much feared.
The ambiguity of her person is clearly reflected during witness interrogations of former prisoners. There are many positive experiences about Eleonore Baur. The clergyman Huber, for whom she was particularly active, called her the "Angel of Dachau" on his deathbed, who, he claimed, had done much good in the concentration camp. Other prisoners had found out that Nurse Pia had supported their release from prison and had financially supported the despaired members of their families. In 1943, she was even temporarily banned by Reichsführer SS Himmler to enter the Dachau KZ because she had supposedly smuggled letters out from prisoners still inside the KZ. At the same time, however, prisoners of her working commando, her housekeepers, and neighbors said she was the image of a capricious, hysterical, and fanatic woman, who knew how to use her pwn principles without compromise. Some witnesses even suggest that Nurse Pia had love services performed on her by prisoners. [It is not mentioned what this entailed-sic]
These discrepancies can be explained by taking into account which groups of prisoners Nurse Pia showed as benevolently. As a convinced and fanatical nationalist she hated Jews and Poles, so her working commando consisted mainly of political prisoners from Germany and Austria. For Christmas, she regularly donated political prisoners with the 'Pia Päckchen (Parcels)', which were filled with various food stuff. At the same time several prisoners were whipped on the bock at the Weihnachtsfeier ( X-mas festivities) in 1938. Nurse Pia was involved in the ill-treatment and announced that she would continue to work for political prisoners, but to make sure that Jews and foreigners 'sollen verrecken' (are to be put off)
When the working commando 'Sister Pia' was dissolved,t can not be clearly stated. The International Search Service shows the last mention of the year 1942. This date, however, seems too early. Several prisoners report that they had to work at Sister Pia's place until 1944.
Eleonore Baur was classified as a main culprit )Hauptschuldige) at a trial in 1949. Her assets and the villa in Oberhaching were initially confiscated, she was sentenced to ten years into a labor camp, but only served for one year. Investigations of the Prosecutor's Office Munich II of 1949 were discontinued 1950 because of lack of evidence.
Eleonore Baur died 1981
Graveyard , Burial site of Sister Baur - the headstone has been removed
.
Author German Text: Sabine Schalm[Although Nurse Pia belonged to a Religious Order (and called each other 'Schwester' (Sister) which means in German 'Nurse'. It is surprising that she did not observe Sundays as the day of God and Prayer and made prisoners work, in other words she was a proper B-sic]
It is not known that Pia attacked prisoners, but in almost all statements of former prisoners, Nurse Pia has harassed them. If she was in a bad mood, or a prisoner did not work fast enough in her eyes, she had him, for example, descend into the sewage pit full of excrements and scrub the walls clean with a brush. At the same time, Nurse Pia was feared by the prisoners because of her great influence on the camp management.
If a prisoner had fallen into disgrace with her, she did not hesitate to complain about one inmate for example and sent a criminal report (Strafmeldung) to the camp commandant's office, where the offender was given Bunker Arrest. She did threaten another prisoner that he would not leave the Dachau Concentration Camp alive, of that she would make certain. It was probably his transfer to Sachsenhausen that his life was spared. Another detainee also reported abuse after Baur sent a criminal report about him to the Camp Administration.
 |
| Medals she did wear with pride, however, it looks that she did not join the NSDAP bfore 1933, otherwise the badge would have ben in Gold |
In all, the reputation of the "commando Sister Pia'' was ambivalent. On the ner hand, the home-cooked food was well above average, the prisoners ate with Nurse Pia, and her servants together at a table. (This is typical in religious household-sic). In addition, they were allowed to smoke and had the opportunity to smuggle letters from this camp.Although Baur's unpredictability and capriciousness were very much feared.
The ambiguity of her person is clearly reflected during witness interrogations of former prisoners. There are many positive experiences about Eleonore Baur. The clergyman Huber, for whom she was particularly active, called her the "Angel of Dachau" on his deathbed, who, he claimed, had done much good in the concentration camp. Other prisoners had found out that Nurse Pia had supported their release from prison and had financially supported the despaired members of their families. In 1943, she was even temporarily banned by Reichsführer SS Himmler to enter the Dachau KZ because she had supposedly smuggled letters out from prisoners still inside the KZ. At the same time, however, prisoners of her working commando, her housekeepers, and neighbors said she was the image of a capricious, hysterical, and fanatic woman, who knew how to use her pwn principles without compromise. Some witnesses even suggest that Nurse Pia had love services performed on her by prisoners. [It is not mentioned what this entailed-sic]
These discrepancies can be explained by taking into account which groups of prisoners Nurse Pia showed as benevolently. As a convinced and fanatical nationalist she hated Jews and Poles, so her working commando consisted mainly of political prisoners from Germany and Austria. For Christmas, she regularly donated political prisoners with the 'Pia Päckchen (Parcels)', which were filled with various food stuff. At the same time several prisoners were whipped on the bock at the Weihnachtsfeier ( X-mas festivities) in 1938. Nurse Pia was involved in the ill-treatment and announced that she would continue to work for political prisoners, but to make sure that Jews and foreigners 'sollen verrecken' (are to be put off)
When the working commando 'Sister Pia' was dissolved,t can not be clearly stated. The International Search Service shows the last mention of the year 1942. This date, however, seems too early. Several prisoners report that they had to work at Sister Pia's place until 1944.
Eleonore Baur was classified as a main culprit )Hauptschuldige) at a trial in 1949. Her assets and the villa in Oberhaching were initially confiscated, she was sentenced to ten years into a labor camp, but only served for one year. Investigations of the Prosecutor's Office Munich II of 1949 were discontinued 1950 because of lack of evidence.
Eleonore Baur died 1981
Graveyard , Burial site of Sister Baur - the headstone has been removed
.
APPENDIX
Actual Court Proceedings
gBaur was arrested on May 5, 1945, and released shortly thereafter. The US Army's Counter Intelligence Corps took it up again on July 12th. In August 1949, an investigation was initiated against members of the SS for murder . Baur admitted that three times to have participated in Rascher's subcooling experiments, which were often fatal. The court heard about a hundred witnesses. The accusation was largely based on Walter Neff's (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Neff) statement that he himself had encountered it twice in experiments. The doctors Holzlöhner and Finke had previously suggested to administer a light anesthesia. She (Braur) had protested, intervened and supported Rascher. Rascher's experiments were then carried out without anesthesia. Finke said that she had nothing to do here, and she had left the room. The First Criminal Court of the Munich District Court came to the conclusion that "the evidence of an aid to a crime of murder, bodily injury with death or dangerous bodily injury is to be considered as insufficient".
Independently, a second charge was filed against them under the "Act for the Liberation of National Socialism and Militarism" within the framework of denazification . The main chamber heard 44 witnesses . The statements revealed a contradictory picture. She had not committed any active crimes, but she took advantage of the labor force of the prisoners in her villa She was a glowing national socialist and anti-Semite, and had used her relations to the highest party levels to frighten neighbors and acquaintances. A neighbor, Maria Hohenester, was denounced in a seven-week investigation. Statements described her character as being unpredictable, moody, hysterical. A witness described how she participated in the schilling malaria experiments. Another witness, Alois Siegl, described her as a "seldom noble and kind woman," as she put the Kapo Deiner, who had replaced Siegl before. Moreover, in 1943 or 1944, Himmler had made the point that SS camp leader Kampe would be relieved, since he was too raw. This happened, but Himmler had forbidden her access to the camp. The SS man, Rudolf Wirth, who was assigned to her as a chauffeur by the end of February, confirms that she was no longer allowed to enter the camp from about 1943 onwards. He stated that Baur had tried to smuggle out letters of female prisoners. Another witness stated that Baur had been with them by most of the SS leaders, and that she had a picture of her in the wine cellar, "Sister Pia, our best SS man." Her housekeeper, Carolina Neulein, reported that SS leaders were frequently visiting the villa, partly also the SS chapel, and also that Baur liked to say: "There is only one Frederick the Great, there is only one Adolf Hitler, there is only one sister Pia. "The most positive testimony came from German and Austrian clergymen. They stated that by ther position of power she had helped a few prisoners, mostly parishioners from Germany. She had brought them bread and tried to release some of them. Polish clergy were excluded.
On the 26th of August, 1949, she was sent to ten years of denazification in a Arbeitslager (Labor Camp) , which was the shighest punishment in the denazification law [although this law existed only for four years-sic], as well as the loss of her civil rights and the confiscation of its possessions up to a residual amount of DM 1,000. She appealed . The Appeals Court reduced the sentence to eight years on 20 February 1951, which had no consequences. Already in June 1950, eight months after the verdict, she had been released from prison for health reasons. She returned to the possession of her villa. Later, she filed a motion for prisoners of war compensation. Whether this has been granted is not apparent from the file.
Over thirty years later she died in 1981 at the age of 95 years. In Munich's Mercury , a death declaration of the comradeship Freikorps Oberland / Bund Oberland appeared with the slogan " Your honor was called loyalty - your life was Germany". The ad signed by Deputy Fridolin of Spaun On her grave cross in Deisenhofen is written: "Sister Pia, a life for Germany".
Sources/Acknowledgements:
Wikipedia -
Der Ort des Terrors, Pages 442 -
Vol 2 C.H.Beck, München 2005
Translated
from German by:
Stolpmann,Herbert Karl
Walter von Waldeck
Continued
under Part 20
Stolpmann,Herbert Karl
Walter von Waldeck
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.