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.

 

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

In March 1944, a concentration camp was hastily erected in Kochem (today: Cochem) on the Mosel river, and in the two nearby localities of Bruttig (today: Bruttig-Fankel) and Treis (today: Treis-Karden). The camp was intended to provide labourers for an industrial facility. It was a part of what was known as the A-Vorhaben (“A-project”), which involved the relocation of armament production facilities to better protect them against bombing raids. Ten facilities in total had already been relocated to already existing tunnels and caves. The production site in Kochem was given the number “A7” and codename “Zeisig” (“siskin”). The production hall was to be built in a tunnel which was approximately 2.5 kilometres long, and which had been constructed for the Reichsbahn railways between Bruttig and Treis during the inter-war years. Since it had never actually been used for its originally intended purpose, the local inhabitants of the towns and villages nearby had used it to grow mushrooms; as a result, a large amount of dirt remained in the tunnel. As “A7”, it became one of the sites used by the Robert Bosch company to produce spark plugs underground. A special front company, WIDO GmbH, was even founded for this purpose.[8] In addition, a company called “Fix” from the Ahr valley region was responsible for the construction of the camp, and also undertook work on the tunnel – although the heavy work was always assigned to forced labourers.[9]

The first transport train carrying about 300 men arrived in Kochem on 10 March 1944. Apart from the guards and the first camp commander, Rudolf Beer, the people on the train were almost all prisoners of French origin. Since nothing had been prepared in advance, the prisoners were first herded into the ballroom of the local restaurant, “Schneiders”. The work began immediately after arrival: the tunnel was to be cleaned, converted and expanded. At the same time, work began on the construction of the camp compound in Bruttig and, a few days later, with a second camp in Treis, on the other side of the tunnel. Rather unusually, the camp was structured in three parts, since the camp staff responsible for various administrative tasks were ultimately based in several buildings in Kochem.[10] Of the first 300 prisoners to arrive, 232 were classified as “Nacht- und Nebelhäftlinge” (“night and fog prisoners”), suspected resistance fighters who were arrested and made to “disappear” without any information being provided to their families. Since they had been sent to Kochem by mistake – they were not permitted to be deployed in satellite camps – they were hastily transferred back to Natzweiler after just a few weeks.[11]

However, the number of prisoners increased rapidly; suddenly, there were over 1,500. This certainly compares with the size of a larger camp. By comparison, at the satellite concentration camp at the Adlerwerke factory in Frankfurt, which produced chassis for armament purposes, there were a total of 1,616 prisoners throughout the duration of the camp’s existence.

Meanwhile, at least 2,409 prisoners have been identified who were interned in the Kochem satellite camp. They came from Poland, the Soviet Union, France, Alsace-Lorraine, Italy, Croatia, Norway, Yugoslavia, Greece, Romania, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the German Reich; their number also included stateless persons. The three largest groups of prisoners came from: Poland (1,078), the Soviet Union (578), France (324).[12]

 

Conditions in the Kochem-Bruttig-Treis satellite camp were appalling. Even so, to date, only 73 casualties have been identified by name, and overall, it has been difficult to find out what happened to the individual prisoners. Some of the dead were buried on site in mass graves, while others were taken to the crematorium in Mainz before being interred in the forest cemetery in Mainz-Mombach.[13]

The work in the tunnel, like the route into it, was extremely physically exhausting as well as hazardous. Additionally, the prisoners were also forced to undergo these hardships in a state of severe malnourishment. The daily food rations consisted of one portion of a kind of black juice, one portion of beet soup, 300–500 g of bread and a spoonful of jam or curd cheese. There was constant hunger and persistent malnutrition. The level of hygiene was dire. Medical care was practically non-existent.[14] In the spring of 1944, this combination of factors caused, among other things, an outbreak of typhus. The first “night and fog” prisoners who had been sent back to the camp in Natzweiler were in such poor health even after just a short stay on the banks of the Mosel that another prisoner from Natzweiler who witnessed their return was appalled. He later described the scene, which was unlike any he had experienced, in a report.[15]

The citing of natural causes of death by the SS, as was the case with the men buried in Bruttig, and the concealment of the real reasons, such as mistreatment, was standard procedure in the concentration camps and their satellites. The living conditions in the camp meant that here, too, deaths occurred in very large part due to exhaustion, hunger, mistreatment and the lack of medical provision. In the Kochem-Bruttig-Treis satellite camp, prisoners were also executed.

On 20 June 1944, for example, the following 13 prisoners were executed in Bruttig and Treis for “attempted escape” and “theft”:[16]

Alexej Gorilow, prisoner no. 10179, b. 1903, Russian (Treis)
Nikolaj Nocaijew, prisoner no. 10224, b. 1920, [nationality unknown] (Treis)
Wilian Costasza, prisoner no. 10313, b. 1904, Pole (Bruttig)[17]
Slawonir[18] Kwiadkowski, prisoner no. 10438, b. 1918, Pole (Bruttig)
Theodor Wasilula, prisoner no. 10630, b. 1908, [nationality unknown] (Treis)
Wachlaw Tarzycki[19], prisoner no. 10658, b. 1920, [nationality unknown] (Treis)
Stefan Bandel, prisoner no. 10682, b. 1910, Russian (Bruttig)
Antoni Genezako, prisoner no. 10724, b. 1914, Russian (Bruttig)
Wadim Krutalewicz, prisoner no. 10770, b. 1924, Russian (Bruttig)
Stephan Mitjaschenko, prisoner no. 10810, b. 1918, [nationality unknown][20] (Bruttig)
Iwan Tschurikow, prisoner no. 10909, b. 1918, Russian (Treis)
Nikolaj Weselew, prisoner no. 10916, b. 1910, Russian (Bruttig)
Gregor Iwanow, prisoner no. 10947, b. 1921, Russian (Treis)

In April 1944, 21 prisoners had indeed tried to escape from the provisional living quarters in Bruttig. All of them were recaptured, as were other prisoners who had attempted to escape earlier. Among them were Wiliam Costasza, aged 40, and Sławomir Kwiatkowski, aged 26, who were reported as having escaped on 18 April (they had probably fled three days previously). They were already recaptured on 19 April. The historian Ksenia Stähle-Müller, who has studied the history of the camp, has been able to reconstruct what happened. Some of the escapees were returned to Natzweiler, and 13 were taken to the state police station in Koblenz. Here, the burglaries in which the escapees stole food and clothing were investigated, “most likely involving a massive use of force” on the prisoners. According to Stähle-Müller, “in light of the time differences between the escape and the arrest of the 13 prisoners, the mass execution that followed can above all be interpreted as a deterrent measure”.[21]

 

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