Columbia concentration camp (also known as Columbia-Haus) was a Nazi concentration camp situated in the Tempelhof area of Berlin. It was one of the first such institutions established by the regime.
Columbia concentration camp (also known as Columbia-Haus) was a Nazi concentration camp situated in the Tempelhof area of Berlin. It was one of the first such institutions established by the regime.
Originally called Strafgefängnis Tempelhofer Feld the building, which contained 134 cells, 10 interrogation rooms and a guardroom, had been built as a military police station but fell empty in 1929. [1] However as soon as the Nazi Party came to power the building, which by then was known as Columbia-Haus, was made into a prison, with 400 inmates held by September 1933. [1]
The prison, initially staffed by both Schutzstaffel and Sturmabteilung members, [2] was largely unregulated until 1934 when it was placed under the command of Walter Gerlach [1] and his adjutant Arthur Liebehenschel. Run as a prison by the Gestapo, it was notorious in the city for the torture meted out to its detainees, most of whom were Communists, Social Democrats, or Jews, [3] including the rightist Max Naumann who spent time as an inmate. [4]
From 27 December 1934 the prison was administrated by the Concentration Camps Inspectorate. On 8 January 1935 Reinhard Heydrich announced that Konzentrationslager Columbia was to be adopted as the official name, in preference to Columbia-Haus. [1]
Many leading perpetrators of the Holocaust saw service in Columbia early in their careers. Notable amongst these was Karl Otto Koch, who was appointed commandant in 1935. [5] At lower levels camp guards included Richard Baer, Max Kögel [6] and Theodor Dannecker. [7]
The camp was closed in 1936 to make way for the expansion of Berlin Tempelhof Airport. [8] After its August closure the remaining prisoners were moved to the new facility established at Sachsenhausen. [9]
A motion was passed by Tempelhof district city council to lay a plaque on the site of the camp. [10] The memorial was installed in 1994.
Richard Baer was a German SS officer who, among other assignments, was the commandant of Auschwitz I concentration camp from May 1944 to January 1945, and right after, from February to April 1945, commandant of Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Following the war, Baer lived under an assumed name to avoid prosecution but was recognized and arrested in December 1960. He died in detention before he could stand trial.
Herzogenbusch was a Nazi concentration camp located in Vught near the city of 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. The camp was opened in 1943 and held 31,000 prisoners. 749 prisoners died in the camp, and the others were transferred to other camps shortly before Herzogenbusch was liberated by the Allied Forces in 1944. After the war, the camp was used as a prison for Germans and for Dutch collaborators. Today there is a visitors' center which includes exhibitions and a memorial remembering the camp and its victims.
Egon Gustav Adolf Zill was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) Sturmbannführer and concentration camp commandant.
Eduard Weiter was a German bureaucrat who became a Schutzstaffel Obersturmbannführer and concentration camp commandant during World War II.
Hilmar Wäckerle was a commander in the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was the first commandant of Dachau concentration camp.
Heinrich Deubel was a German soldier, civil servant, World War I veteran and officer in the Schutzstaffel serving as commandant of Dachau concentration camp.
Karl Chmielewski was a German SS officer and concentration camp commandant. Such was his cruelty, he was dubbed Teufel von Gusen or the Devil of Gusen.
Arthur Rödl was a German Standartenführer (Colonel) in the Waffen-SS and a Nazi concentration camp commandant.
Adam Grünewald was a German Schutzstaffel officer and Nazi concentration camp commandant.
Otto Förschner was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and a Nazi concentration camp commander. After serving with the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front, Förschner worked as a senior official at the Buchenwald concentration camp (1942-1943) and later served as the commandant of Mittelbau-Dora (1943-1945) and Kaufering (1945). Following the German defeat, he was convicted of war crimes by US occupation authorities at the Dachau trials and was hanged in May 1946.
Hans Benno Hüttig was a German SS functionary and Nazi concentration camp commandant.
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Hans Helwig was a German Nazi Party politician, World War I veteran, Schutzstaffel general and Nazi concentration camp commandant. An early member of the Nazi movement he fulfilled a number of roles within Nazism down the years. He was born and died in Hemsbach.
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The Columbushaus was a nine-storey modernist office and shopping building in Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, designed by Erich Mendelsohn and completed in 1932. It was an icon of progressive architecture which passed relatively unscathed through World War II but was gutted by fire in the June 1953 uprising in East Germany. The ruin was subsequently razed in 1957 because it stood in the border strip; the site where the structure once stood was occupied by activists shortly before the fall of the Berlin wall.
Wilhelm Göcke was an SS-Standartenführer, SS-Obersturmbannführer der Reserve der Waffen-SS and a commandant of Warsaw concentration camp and the Kovno Ghetto.
Günther Tamaschke was a German SS-Standartenführer and commandant of the Lichtenburg and Ravensbrück concentration camps.
52°29′1″N13°23′57″E / 52.48361°N 13.39917°E
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