User:Marius Schmitt/Ladelund concentration camp

The Ladelund subcamp (KZ-Außenlager Ladelund), located 20 km northeast of Niebüll on the German-Danish border, was occupied with prisoners on November 1, 1944 as a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp in connection with the construction of the so-called Friesenwall. The Friesenwall was a planned, but only partially executed, fortification that was to be built on the German North Sea coast towards the end of the Second World War. The concentration camp near Ladelund was responsible for the construction of trenches and artillery positions in a militarily pointless "bolt position" south of the Danish border. On December 16, 1944, the camp was closed. Within the month and a half that it existed, 300 out of over 2,000 inmates died.

The area on which a labor camp of the Reich Labour Service (RAD) and later the concentration camp subcamp was built in 1938 is located northeast of Ladelund in the former Südtondern district (in today's Nordfriesland district, Südtondern) near the Danish border. About eight kilometers from the actual camp is the train station in Achtrup, where 2,000 prisoners from many European countries arrived in boxcars. The prisoners had to walk from Achtrup to Ladelund. Ladelund was chosen as a satellite storage location because of its location, the existing RAD storage area and the good transport routes.

Early History
In 1938, the Reich Labor Service set up a barracks camp for 250 young men northeast of Ladelund. They built a 34 kilometer long road from Süderlügum to Flensburg parallel to the Danish border; this was called “Concrete Street” or “Panzerstraße”. They also worked on drainage measures, wasteland cultivation and reforestation. The Ladelund labor camp was not fenced in and not guarded.

Ladelund concentration camp
On August 28, 1944, Adolf Hitler ordered the so-called Friesenwall to be built on the North Sea coast. 16,000 prisoners of war were used for the construction, as well as 6,000 concentration camp prisoners who were transferred from the Neuengamme concentration camp to newly built subcamps in the concentration camps Engerhafe (2,000 prisoners) in East Frisia, Meppen-Versen (3,000 prisoners) and Dalum in Emsland (1,000 prisoners). Schwesing (up to 2,500 prisoners) and Ladelund in North Frisia were transported. In October 1944, the work camp began to be converted into a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp. It was fenced in with barbed wire and given four watchtowers. On November 1st it was occupied by over 2,000 inmates from Neuengamme. These arrived at Achtrup train station in freight wagons. According to the concentration camp system - with the exception of the kapos - most of the prisoners were classified as “political” and came from all over Europe. They were arrested as resistance fighters, hostages or forced laborers. The largest group came from the Netherlands; many came from the village of Putten. More than 600 Dutch men aged 17 and over were arrested in Putten on October 1, 1944 as part of a punitive operation on behalf of the German Wehrmacht commander. The “Putten case” was considered a retaliatory action after resistance fighters carried out an attack on a Wehrmacht off-road vehicle near the village. A vehicle occupant and a resistance fighter were killed.

On December 2, 1944, those arrested were taken to the Amersfoort transit camp and from there to the Neuengamme concentration camp. Of the 588, only 48 returned; the rest died in the Neuengamme concentration camp or in other concentration camps, including in Ladelund, where the first prisoners soon died from the inhumane conditions.

Ladelund was originally set up as a Reich labor service camp for 200 to 250 men. After it was converted into a concentration camp subcamp, over 2,000 prisoners lived here in unheated barracks that were 50 meters long and eight to ten meters wide. 80-120 prisoners were crammed into a barrack room measuring just under 40 m². Only the “eldest” had his own bed; the “room attendants” shared a bed. All the other prisoners slept on the floor or on rough wooden frames close together, without straw sacks, without mattresses, just on a little straw that had been spread out. The sanitary facilities had not been expanded during the conversion into a concentration camp subcamp and still came from the old labor camp. Like the kitchen, they were sufficient for a maximum of 250 people. The hygienic conditions in the camp were catastrophic; Bugs and diseases spread. Despite the adverse weather conditions in November and December 1944, the barracks were not heated. In addition, there was the hard work that many prisoners had to do, especially in anti-tank ditches. An anti-tank ditch was four to five meters wide and three to five meters deep. Malnourished and subjected to beatings by Kapos, prisoners often worked eleven to twelve hours a day in the ice-cold water.

If the prisoners had already arrived in Ladelund undernourished and weakened, they were now exposed to nutritional rates that were already starvation rations in their official version. In Ladelund they didn't even receive this because the commander embezzled food. Soon the death rate was so high that the subcamp in Neuengamme was considered a “death camp”.

On December 16, 1944, the “Friesenwall” had become completely meaningless due to the changed military situation. The camp in Ladelund was closed and the surviving prisoners were returned to Neuengamme.

Command
The commander of the Ladelund subcamp was SS-Untersturmführer Hans Hermann Griem. He embezzled food, enjoyed sadistic torture, personally shot several prisoners and was often drunk. After the camps were dissolved, he was commander of the Emsland camp in Dalum until March 1945. Grimem was never convicted for his actions.

The camp and administration leader was SS Oberscharführer Friedrich Otto Dröge. An SS Unterscharführer Georges was responsible for the logistics of the camp as a “report and block leader”. He was therefore directly responsible for the living conditions, care and accommodation.

Security guards
The guards of a camp often consisted of SS Totenkopf units, which were reinforced by older marines who were no longer fit for field service. Ladelund was one of around 80 external commandos of the Neuengamme concentration camp and one of over 340 camps throughout the German Empire. The SS Death's Head units that provided guards in the camps were no longer sufficient to guard all of these camps. In Ladelund this meant that only the commander and a few Unterscharführer belonged to the SS, while the guards consisted of soldiers from the Navy. They probably made two companies (around 200 men) available for this purpose, which consisted of older soldiers. Hitler had personally ordered their use in 1944. They were given basic training for their use in the camps, including drawings from a picture book for concentration camp guards. These soldiers were quartered in the village of Ladelund.

Kapos
Criminal concentration camp prisoners, the Kapos, were employed as block elders and foremen and tortured the prisoners. As a rule, they were convicted violent criminals who had been brought into concentration camp service from penitentiaries and prisons because they were believed to have a high level of violence. Many of the prisoners employed as Kapos were already employed as Kapos in the Husum-Schwesing camp, including Wilhelm Schneider. He was born in Dortmund in 1911, had many previous convictions and had been in “preventative detention” since 1939. In September 1944 he became Kapo in Husum-Schwesing and from November 1944 supervisory “work assignment Kapo” in Ladelund. Wilhelm Demmer, born in Moers in 1904, committed several crimes after 1922. He had been in the Neuengamme concentration camp since March 1944 and then also became a Kapo in Husum-Schwesing. From November he was also Kapo in Ladelund.

Their tasks were to guard the prisoners, intimidate them, force them to work and punish them.

Foremen were assigned to the kapos who acted purely as supervisors and did not work themselves. The relatively great privileges corrupted many of those appointed kapos. In some cases, the SS selected prisoners from the outset who were willing to earn their privileges through particular brutality and who had already “proven themselves” in the Husum-Schwesing camp.

Grave
The victims of the Ladelund concentration camp were buried in nine graves on the edge of the village cemetery. But unlike common practice, the concentration camp deaths were recreated as best as possible by the then parish pastor Johannes Meyer (who himself was a long-time member of the NSDAP and a German Christian and refused to take part in the prosecution of the perpetrators of Ladelund). Christian tradition buried on church land. Their names were recorded in the church records of the St. Petri Ladelund parish and on the graves. Pastor Meyer reported in detail about “The Concentration Camp” in the church chronicle and justified the congregation’s attitude. The recordings also served to exonerate him. Because of his early commitment to National Socialism, he had to fear removal from office by the British occupying forces. In 1948 he completed his denazification process. After the end of the war, Pastor Meyer sought contact with grieving relatives. The grave complex was dignified and became the starting point and focus of remembrance and international encounters from 1950 onwards.

After 1945
In 1945/46, the camp area near Ladelund served as a hospital for the follow-up treatment of amputated soldiers. From 1946 to 1959, up to 200 refugees and displaced persons were accommodated here. The barracks were then gradually sold by the responsible district administration and the property was handed back to the tenant. In 1970, the last remaining barracks were demolished after the state, district and municipality compensated the owner with 5,500 DM.

From 1945 onwards, the British military justice system began investigating the Ladelund concentration camp case. Commander Griem, other SS members and the Kapos were put on trial starting in 1947 and sentenced to high sentences. Friedrich Otto Dröge and SS-Unterscharführer Georges could no longer be found after the war. Commander Griem managed to escape shortly before the trial began. It was not until 1963 that the Flensburg public prosecutor's office resumed the investigation against Griem, but did not make any real progress in its investigation until Griem's ​​whereabouts could be determined in 1965. He had settled in Hamburg-Bergedorf, whereupon the case was handed over to the Hamburg public prosecutor's office in 1966. She began systematic investigations and sought a trial against Griem. On January 16, 1969, the Hamburg regional court opened the preliminary judicial investigation against Griem. Shortly before the actual trial began, Griem died on June 25, 1971.

Memorial
The Ladelund concentration camp memorial and meeting place is the oldest concentration camp memorial in Schleswig-Holstein and one of the oldest in Germany. She began coming to terms with the story in 1950 on the initiative of the local community pastor, who had kept the register of the prisoners buried in the church cemetery in 1944, officially and with the participation of those affected and relatives of the victims. In the 1980s, Flensburg high school teacher Jörn-Peter Leppien designed an exhibition that was on view until 2017. There has been a full-time management since 1995. The memorial is sponsored by the local Evangelical Lutheran parish and has since been supported by the state of Schleswig-Holstein, the Nordkirche and the Nordfriesland church district.

In 1989, a document house was built within sight of the graves and houses a permanent historical exhibition on the history of the concentration camp subcamp with its pre- and post-history as well as a small media room that can also be used as a seminar room. The expansion of the building was inaugurated in the summer of 2006 so that the memorial and meeting place can accommodate the growing number of visitors.