Forced labour in the Kochem-Bruttig-Treis satellite concentration camp on the Mosel river

Searching for traces in the cemeteries of Bruttig-Fankel and Treis-Karden on the Mosel river
 

In the cemetery of the small town of Bruttig-Fankel[1] on the Mosel river, there are seven stone grave crosses bearing dates of death from March to July 1944. Very close by, there is a memorial stone, a stela sculptured in dark grey. In the upper section, which is set apart by a horizontal edge, hands can be seen that have been trapped inside, protruding from a kind of crevice. Below, an inscription has been chiselled into the stone: 

“The victims of the
Treis-Bruttig labour camp
1944–45
Call for peace
Mir[2]
Paix
Peace
Shalom
[symbol: cross and Star of David]”

The side bears the inscription:

“Human 
dignity
shall be
inviolable
German Basic Law, Art. 1”

Seven kilometres away is the cemetery of the small town of Treis-Karden, which is also situated on the banks of the winding Mosel river. Here, too, there is a memorial stone that at first sight looks like a large boulder, one side of which has been sawn smooth. The inscription reads as follows:

“In memory of
the victims of the
Treis-Bruttig
satellite camp
1944”

What happened here, and why are there memorials in two different places – one a “labour camp”, the other a “satellite camp”? These few stone traces already point to a specific aspect of the history of the locality: one camp, distributed over several locations – the gap between the towns along the seven kilometres that constituted the camp – the attempts to remember and the difficulty in finding the right words to describe what used to be here.

In Bruttig, the names are given of the people for whom were the crosses erected. But who were the other victims? The crosses bear names and dates of birth and death: Louis Christian Vervooren (9/10/95–31/3/44), Hendrikus Rempe (21/2/03–26/3/44), Josef Dunal (5/1/96–1/8/44), Ignatz Chrzuszoz (14/1/09–31/7/44), Jan Królak (24/4/04–30/7/44), Adolf Czech (1/1/10–26/7/44) and Josef Aniolczyk[3] (2/5/94–30/7/44).

Here, too, in hindsight, is more evidence of the history of the camp. The list of names of the dead begins with Western European-sounding names before later giving more Western and Eastern Slavic ones. After the war, at the request of the Allied authorities, the local mayor provided a list of the graves. Adolf Czech, Josef Aniolczyk, Ignatz Chrzuszoz and Josef Dunal are listed as coming from Poland, while Louis Christian Vervooren and Hendrikus Rempe are identified as Dutch.[4] Jan Królak also came from Poland, and it was also recorded that he was born in Wola Polska[5]; the cause of his death is given as “pneumonia”. Various natural causes of death are also listed for most of the other people buried here. These causes of death were usually registered by the perpetrators in all the concentration and death camps, regardless of how the people had really died.[6] These records, which often downplayed the more unsettling truth, were later adopted in other lists of causes of death, partly due to a lack of further information about what had actually happened.

Today’s burial site was created in 1946 by the French occupying forces, although the identity of the dead who had been buried by the SS could only be guessed at based on the documents obtained.[7] The bodies of other prisoners are listed as lying in the cemetery in Bruttig, but no further named graves can be assigned to them.