Moringen concentration camp

Coordinates: 51°42′03″N 9°52′18″E / 51.70083°N 9.87167°E / 51.70083; 9.87167
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Three

concentration camps operated in succession in Moringen, Lower Saxony, from April 1933 to April 1945.[1] KZ Moringen, established in the centre of the town on site of former 19th century workhouses (German: Landeswerkhäuser), originally housed mostly male political inmates. In November 1933 - March 1938 Moringen housed a women's concentration camp; in June 1940 - April 1945 a juvenile prison. A total of 4,300 people were prisoners of Moringen; an estimated ten percent of them died in the camp.[2]

Moringen workhouse, 1730s – 1933

History of forced confinement in Moringen goes back to an

Nazi ascension to power, the place provided shelter to around 150 inmates; all Prussian workhouses, hit by the Great Depression, housed around one thousand.[6]

Educator Hugo Krack (born 1888) became head of Moringen workhouse in 1930, managed it until 1954, and was the chief of KZ Moringen in the 1930s.[6]

Male camp for political opposition, April–November 1933

Arrests of political opposition in the beginning of 1933 and the resulting demand for prison space prompted Hanover administrators to relieve themselves of the costly, under-used Moringen facility.[7] They struck a deal with police and the latter took control of most of Moringen workhouse; former workhouse inmates were confined to a few rooms, sealed off from the main, now "political" facility.[7] This "welfare" section of Moringen facility operated in its original function almost until the end of World War II,[8] providing temporary asylum to people unfit for work.[8]

This "early"

force feeding the prisoners.[9] The camp was governed by a mix of workhouse and prison rules; corporal punishment was prohibited but guards were authorized to shoot escapees on sight.[7]

All prisoners were residents of Lower Saxony (then Province of Hanover).[10] The first ones appeared in Moringen in April 1933, although many were amnestied on May 1, 1933, and prisoner turnover remained high through the summer.[7] According to the agreement between workhouse administration and the police, the capacity was set at three hundred, and was quickly filled up, reaching 394 in October.[7] The camp housed primarily men and a few women in a special "protective custody section for women";[4] The first female prisoners arrived in Moringen in June, and by August their number reached 26.[9]

Female camp, October 1933 – March 1938

In October 1933, after another round of negotiation between provincial administration and the Ministry of Interior,[9] Moringen was designated as the sole official concentration camp for the women.[11] Male prisoners were gradually moved to other prisons and camps throughout summer and autumn.[9] Some were released, others transported to different camps;[10] the last men from Moringen left for Oranienburg concentration camp in November 1933.[9]

Prussian

Jewish prisoners were prohibited from communicating with others, but enforcement proved impossible.[15]

Initially, the camp was filled by members of political opposition (

Communists and Jehovah's Witnesses,[11] but by 1936 the system also "detained" members of other "undesirable" social groups.[11] Moringen absorbed labor union activities, women who returned from emigration (since March 1935),[17] prostitutes and those charged with "defamation of the State".[10] Some were delivered in "utter mental collapse" caused by prior interrogations.[17]

The number of women in Moringen was small until the beginning of 1937:[18] 128 in October 1933, 141 in November, 75 in early 1934.[18] Turnover remained high.[18] In January 1937, the population began rising in line with increased repressions against Jehovah's Witnesses and "habitual criminals"[17] and reached 446 in November 1937;[17] 227 of them were Jehovah's Witnesses.[19] Of 676 researched female prisoners of Moringen,

  • 310,[20] or 46% were Jehovah's Witnesses[15] from rural Eastern Germany;[21] they were, on average, around 45 years old;[21]
  • 22% were Communists;[15][20]
  • 14% were arrested for "derogatory remarks";[15][20]
  • 6%, including survivor Gabriele Herz who wrote memoirs of life in Moringen, were former émigrés;[15][20]
  • 4% were arrested for violation of Nuremberg Laws.[15][20]

Prisoner groups were not defined clearly, for example, women arrested for performing

Hitler's alleged homosexuality.[16] One lesbian to be interned was bar owner Elsa Conrad.[22]

Every three months Krack reported prisoners' conduct to the Gestapo, collecting information through conversations, interrogations, the guards and his own informants among the prisoners.[23] He defended some prisoners and denied sympathy to others, specifically Jehovah's Witnesses, considering them "orderly"[24] but "unteachable"[24] or "incurable";[25] however, in February 1937 he recommended release of a Jehovah's Witness, admitting his long-time failure to reform her.[26] Krack also approved, and, perhaps, prompted compulsory sterilization of prisoners.[18]

Lichtenburg concentration camp near Torgau (a former male camp established in 1933)[27] began as soon as it was converted to a women's camp[27] in December 1937;[27] later, many Lichtenburg prisoners ended up and perished[27] in Ravensbrück[10][27] (built in 1939).[11] Of 127 thousand Ravensbrück prisoners, only 30 thousand survived.[27] Krack apparently[18] defended prostitutes and "asocials" from transfer to Lichtenburg, believing that they (unlike political and religious prisoners) belong in the workhouse rather than in the concentration camps.[18] After the first shipments to Lichtenburg the share of Jehovah's Witnesses rose to 89%[21] in December 1937 (249 of 280 prisoners).[21]

In March 1938 Moringen concentration camp was closed; up to 1,350 women had been its prisoners in 1933–1938.[14][17] The number, for lack of comprehensive records, has been reconstructed based on turnover and average population; only 856 names were identified.[14] Discrepancies in numbers also arise from separate and confusing recordkeeping for the inmates of concentration camp (SS) and the workhouse (Krack).[28]

Juvenile camp, June 1940 – April 1945

In March 1940

Cap Arcona, emigrated to the United States and became Secretary-General of World Medical Association; he died at the age of 43 of heart failure linked to his captivity and torture.[32]

Camp commander,

Weissensee (Berlin)
(September 1943) and Volpriehausen (July 1944).

Moringen became the first juvenile camp where prisoners were assigned to barracks based on their biological characteristics according to

Reichsarbeitsdienst. Those who did not "progress" sufficiently to the authorities' satisfaction were relegated to the barracks for "nuisances" and "the incapable". Most were sterilized and sent to "ordinary" concentration camps on their eighteenth birthday.[33]

Himmler's system ultimately failed to produce the desired deterrent effect, and "asocial-criminal rather than political-opposition" (in Himmler's words)[34] youth "cliques" or gangs continued to spread.[33] By the time the Allies liberated the camp on April 9, 1945, an estimated 1,400 boys had passed through the camp. The exact number of deaths remains unknown, but 56 are known to have died inside the camp.

Later events

Memorial house in Moringen city

In 1945 Moringen site was reused as a

displaced persons camp for the Polish people, and in 1948 again became a provincial workhouse.[2]
Today there is a holocaust memorial house (KZ-Gedenkstätte) in Moringen. Established in 1993, it shows a permanent exhibition.

See also

References

  1. ^ Definition of KZ Moringen as three distinct camps, rather than one, is supported by Harder & Hesse (2001, p. 36).
  2. ^ a b Harder & Hesse 2001, p. 37.
  3. ^ a b c d e Herz, Caplan & Hartig 2006, p. 18.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Harder & Hesse 2001, p. 36.
  5. ^ a b c Herz, Caplan & Hartig 2006, p. 19.
  6. ^ a b Herz, Caplan & Hartig 2006, p. 21.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g Herz, Caplan & Hartig 2006, p. 22.
  8. ^ a b Herz, Caplan & Hartig 2006, p. 41.
  9. ^ a b c d e f Herz, Caplan & Hartig 2006, p. 23.
  10. ^ a b c d "Explanatory Notes on the Concentration Camp Moringen and details on the work carried out at the Memorial" (in German). Retrieved 2009-07-24.
  11. ^ a b c d e Herz, Caplan & Hartig 2006, p. 3.
  12. ^ a b c d e f Herz, Caplan & Hartig 2006, p. 24
  13. ^ a b c d e f Herz, Caplan & Hartig 2006, p. 33
  14. ^ a b c Harder & Hesse 2001, p. 39.
  15. ^ a b c d e f g Herz, Caplan & Hartig 2006, p. 27.
  16. ^ a b c Harder & Hesse 2001, p. 40.
  17. ^ a b c d e f Herz, Caplan & Hartig 2006, p. 26.
  18. ^ a b c d e f Herz, Caplan & Hartig 2006, p. 25.
  19. ^ Harder & Hesse 2001, p. 42.
  20. ^ a b c d e Harder & Hesse (2001 p. 41) provide detailed analysis by group for three different time frames.
  21. ^ a b c d Harder & Hesse 2001, p. 43.
  22. ISBN 978-3-8394-5332-2
    .
  23. ^ Harder & Hesse 2001, pp. 49-50.
  24. ^ a b Harder & Hesse 2001, p. 50.
  25. ^ Herz, Caplan & Hartig 2006, p. 23-5.
  26. ^ Harder & Hesse 2001, p. 52.
  27. ^ a b c d e f g Herz, Caplan & Hartig 2006, p. 39.
  28. ^ Harder & Hesse 2001, p. 41
  29. ^ a b c d Burleigh, Wippermann p. 224
  30. ^ a b Kater, p. 160
  31. ^ Kater, p. 192
  32. ^ Kater, p. 211
  33. ^ a b c d Burleigh, Wippermann p. 226
  34. ^ Burleigh, Wippermann p. 226, cite Himmler's circular dated October 25, 1944. Further on the same page, the authors argue that at least some gangs had political significance, i.e. the murder of the chief of the Gestapo in Cologne.

Sources

51°42′03″N 9°52′18″E / 51.70083°N 9.87167°E / 51.70083; 9.87167

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