See also
- The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. 1
Breitenau concentration camp was one of the first concentration camps established by the Nazis. It was founded in June 1933 as an addition to the Breitenau Labor and Welfare House, less than six months after the Nazis by a democratic election in Germany became the majority party in the German parliament. [1] [2] It closed in March 1934 and reopened in 1940 where it remained in operation until the end of World War II. [3] In 1984, a memorial was constructed on the site of the former camp. [1] [3]
In 1133, Benedictines founded a monastery at Breitenau. Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse converted the monastery to an estate in 1527. By 1579, it became a horse stable and warehouse for agricultural products. Between the early 17th and late 19th centuries, it mostly served as a country residence. [4]
It was converted into a prison labor camp for beggars, vagabonds, and so-called "lewd women" in 1874. Three years later, an institution for the rural poor was established alongside the prison camp. Treatment at the prison was considered cruel with lengthy sentences and hard labor for minor criminal offenses, including poverty. [2] [3]
The Nazis converted the camp into a concentration camp for political prisoners in June 1933. It closed approximately nine months later in March 1934. During this time, the camp held political prisoners from Hesse and Thuringia, Germany. [1] [2]
In 1940, the camp reopened and served as a forced labor camp until 1945. This period marked a shift in which both Germans and foreigners were detained together. It is estimated that approximately 6,500 foreigners and 2,000–2,500 Germans were enslaved here. [1] [3]
In 1984, a memorial was established in memory of those who were detained, enslaved, and murdered at the Breitenau concentration camp. It was built in a tithe barn that has been dated to the 15th century when it belonged to the original monastery. [4] Compensation became available to survivors of the Breitenau concentration camp in 2000 with the memorial helping them apply for compensation. [5]
Buchenwald was a Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or suspected communists were among the first internees.
Neuengamme was a network of Nazi concentration camps in Northern Germany that consisted of the main camp, Neuengamme, and more than 85 satellite camps. Established in 1938 near the village of Neuengamme in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, the Neuengamme camp became the largest concentration camp in Northwest Germany. Over 100,000 prisoners came through Neuengamme and its subcamps, 24 of which were for women. The verified death toll is 42,900: 14,000 in the main camp, 12,800 in the subcamps, and 16,100 in the death marches and bombings during the final weeks of World War II. Following Germany's defeat in 1945, the British Army used the site as an internment camp for SS and other Nazi officials. In 1948, the British transferred the land to the Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg, which summarily demolished the camp's wooden barracks and built in its stead a prison cell block, converting the former concentration camp site into two state prisons operated by the Hamburg authorities from 1950 to 2004. Following protests by various groups of survivors and allies, the site now serves as a memorial. It is situated 15 km southeast of the centre of Hamburg.
Dachau was the first concentration camp built by Nazi Germany, opening on 22 March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents which consisted of: communists, social democrats, and other dissidents. It is located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory northeast of the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 mi) northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria, in southern Germany. After its opening by Heinrich Himmler, its purpose was enlarged to include forced labor, and, eventually, the imprisonment of Jews, Romani, German and Austrian criminals, and, finally, foreign nationals from countries that Germany occupied or invaded. The Dachau camp system grew to include nearly 100 sub-camps, which were mostly work camps or Arbeitskommandos, and were located throughout southern Germany and Austria. The main camp was liberated by U.S. forces on 29 April 1945.
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe.
Holocaust victims were people targeted by the government of Nazi Germany based on their ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, or sexual orientation. The institutionalized practice by the Nazis of singling out and persecuting people resulted in the Holocaust, which began with legalized social discrimination against specific groups, involuntary hospitalization, euthanasia, and forced sterilization of persons considered physically or mentally unfit for society. The vast majority of the Nazi regime's victims were Jews, Sinti-Roma peoples, and Slavs but victims also encompassed people identified as social outsiders in the Nazi worldview, such as homosexuals, and political enemies. Nazi persecution escalated during World War II and included: non-judicial incarceration, confiscation of property, forced labor, sexual slavery, death through overwork, human experimentation, undernourishment, and execution through a variety of methods. For specified groups like the Jews, genocide was the Nazis' primary goal.
Breitenau may refer to:
Tadeusz Sobolewicz was a Polish actor, author, and public speaker. He survived six Nazi concentration camps, a Gestapo prison and a nine-day death march.
Walter Huppenkothen was a German lawyer, Sicherheitsdienst (SD) leader, and Schutzstaffel (SS) prosecutor in the Hauptamt SS-Gericht.
Three concentration camps operated in succession in Moringen, Lower Saxony, from April 1933 to April 1945. KZ Moringen, established in the centre of the town on site of former 19th century workhouses, 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.
Kemna concentration camp was one of the early Nazi concentration camps, created by the Third Reich to incarcerate their political opponents after the Nazi Party first seized power in 1933. The camp was established in a former factory on the Wupper river in the Kemna neighborhood of the Barmen quarter of Wuppertal. It was run by the SA group in Düsseldorf.
Karl Ibach was a German member of the resistance against the Third Reich and later, a writer and politician.
Sonnenburg concentration camp was opened on 3 April 1933 in Sonnenburg near Küstrin in a former Neumark prison, on the initiative of the Free State of Prussia Ministry of the Interior and Justice.
Vulkanwerft concentration camp in the Bredow district of Szczecin, also known as the KZ Stettin-Bredow, was one of the early so-called "wild" German Nazi concentration camps set up by the SA, in October 1933. The camp existed only until 11 March 1934, before prisoner transfer, and in spite of its short history, had as many as three commandants including SS-Truppführer Otto Meier, SS-Truppführer Karl Salis, and SS-Truppführer Fritz Pleines. The camp was notorious for the brutality of its guards. The prisoners were kept in the basement of the shipyard buildings.
Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 is a seven-part encyclopedia series that explores the history of the concentration camps, ghettos, forced-labor camps, and other sites of detention, persecution, or state-sponsored murder run by Nazi Germany and other Axis powers in Europe and Africa. The series is produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and published by Indiana University Press. Research began in 2000; the first volume was published in 2009; and the final volume is slated for publication in 2025. Along with entries on individual sites, the encyclopedias also contain scholarly overviews for historical context.
The Osthofen concentration camp was an early Nazi concentration camp in Osthofen, close to Worms, Germany. It was established in March 1933 in a former paper factory. The camp was administered by the People's State of Hesse's Political Police, with guards first drawn from SA and SS, later only SS men. The first prisoners were mostly Communists or Social Democrats, but later Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists and non-political Jews were also sent to the camp.
The Regensburg satellite camp, also known as the Colosseum subcamp in the vernacular at the time, was established in 1945 as the last subcamp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp in the Regensburg inn the Kolosseum. The Regensburg subcamp was in operation from March 19, 1945 until April 23, 1945. The Colosseum building is located at Stadtamhof 5, approximately 200 meters north of the Danube across the Stone Bridge from the Altstadt.
Harald Poelchau was a German prison chaplain, religious socialist and member of the resistance against the Nazis. Poelchau grew up in Silesia. During the early 1920's, he studied Protestant theology at the University of Tübingen and the University of Marburg, followed by social work at the College of Political Science of Berlin. Poelchau gained a doctorate under Paul Tillich at Frankfurt University. In 1933, he became a prison chaplain in the Berlin prisons. With the coming of the Nazi regime in 1933, he became am anti-fascist. During the war, Poelchau and his wife Dorothee Poelchau helped victims of the Nazi's, hiding them and helping them escape. At the same time, as a prison chaplain he gave comfort to the many people in prison and those sentenced to death. After the war, he became involved in the reform of prisons in East Germany. In 1971, Yad Vashem named Poelchau and his wife Righteous Among the Nations.
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