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

The clearing of the Kochem-Bruttig-Treis satellite concentration camp
 

A short time after this mass execution, in July 1944, responsibility for running the camp was passed from Walter Scheffe to SS Untersturmführer Heinrich Wicker, who remained in post until the camp was cleared and the prisoners were deported in mid-September 1944.[22] His arbitrary and violent disciplinary measures made him feared not only by the prisoners, but by the guards, too. Around 14 September 1944, the order was given to clear the camp and to withdraw from Bruttig and Treis. Lorries took the prisoners to the Cochem goods station, where they were herded into train carriages and waited a day and a night there before the train left on 15 September.[23] They were brought to the Mittelbau-Dora camp, a large satellite of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Of the prisoners deported in this large-scale operation in mid-September, 617 were Polish, 336 were Soviet citizens, and 22 were classified as “political French”. A small number of employees of WIDU GmbH continued with very limited basic production until January 1945. 

The difficult path to remembrance
 

In 2018 and 2019, a working group called together by the federal state centre for political education in Rhineland-Palatinate (Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Rheinland-Pfalz) produced a concept paper aiming to better present the history of the camp on the sites in which it was located and in places historically connected to it, as well as to foster the dissemination of information and remembrance in public spaces.[24] The first active steps to examine the history of the camp had already been taken in the past. The first real public discussion on the topic was triggered by the book written by Ernst Heimes, “Ich habe immer nur den Zaun gesehen”[25] (“I only ever saw the fence”), which was first published in 1992. In Cochem, Treis and Bruttig, there was opposition to this treatment of the camp’s history, which in part already arose prior to the book’s publication in relation to the issuance of documents by the local authorities. However, there was also some support for the book and support for the research and discussion of the subject in public.

While preparations were ongoing to call together a working group to produce a remembrance concept paper, an extensive account of the tunnel and the camp, focusing on the history of the construction, was published: “Deckname: ‘Zeisig’ . Dokumentation zum Treis-Bruttiger Tunnel” (“Codename: ‘Zeisig’. Documentary report on the Treis-Bruttig Tunnel”).[26] The concept was intended to be implemented by members of the local population. Ideas for doing so are included, which were “discussed, developed and intended for realisation” on site.[27]

Important sites that should be included are the two cemeteries, the large camp barracks in Bruttig, the train station in Cochem, and the view from different sides onto the tunnel site. An information panel in Treis, where almost all traces of the camp were erased relatively late after the war by the construction of an industrial estate, would also be useful. The railway embankment in Bruttig, across which the prisoners marched on the way from the camp to the tunnel, could also be a place of remembrance, which would have a different impact than the information panel that stands there now, which ignores the history of the camp entirely. The concept paper also includes ideas as to how the residential area in Bruttig, on the site where the camp was situated, could be included.[28] After all, the large barracks is by no means the only building that remains: a series of barracks buildings were converted into homes.

At the time of writing, at the end of 2021, no steps had yet been taken to put the concept into action. Traces of remembrance of the many hundreds of concentration camp prisoners from Poland, the Soviet Union, France and many other countries are still almost nowhere to be found in public spaces.

Julia Röttjer, January 2022