On the search for clues – NS crimes against forced labourers and prisoners of war in a village in Sauerland

The Hönnetal “work education camp” in Sanssouci near Balve
 

The NS ruling powers set up a whole system of prison camps to uphold worker morale and to frighten and discipline recalcitrant workers. Contrary to widely held beliefs that the prisoners were “criminals”, grounds for imprisonment in prison camps included “hanging around” and “breach of employment contract” as infringements against discipline at work were call in officialese. From 1940, foreigners were imprisoned in so-called “work education camps” at the order and under the supervision of the Gestapo. The detention period was initially capped at 56 days, then later at three months. In summer 1940, the “Reich work camp” in Hunswinkel near Lüdenscheid, which belonged to the firm Hoch und Tief and had existed since 1938, was converted to a “work education camp” for foreigners. The prisoners did the heavy labour during the construction of the Verse dam. In autumn 1944, work was stopped and most of the prisoners were transferred to the “Hönnetal work education camp” in Sanssouci, a district of Balve.[15]

On 29 December 1944, Eric Roth, the head of the Gestapo in Dortmund, informed the District President in Arnsberg, “Extremely urgent quarrying is being carried out by the Todt organisation at the new work site on behalf of the Reich Commissioner Geilenberg”[16] . The NS economic planners made the “Schwalbe I” building project top priority and it was subject to the strictest confidentiality. Following the allied bombings of fuel plants in May 1944, Armaments Minister Speer ordered the most important gasoline factories to be moved below ground. The edict issued by the Führer on 30 May 1944 stated that the “immediate measures” were to be carried out with “the most generous use of workers and material and with ruthless energy”. SS and Gestapo deployed more than 350,000 forced labourers and prisoners of war at this large construction site in Hönnetal between Balve and Menden. Ten thousand forced labourers dug a two-and-a-half kilometre-long tunnel in the rocks so that a factory for hydrogenating aviation fuel could then be set up on behalf of the Union Rheinische Braunkohle Kraftstoff AG, Köln-Wesseling.

The forced labourers were abused on a daily basis and many died from the aftermath of torture or from starvation. On 27 November 1944, Dr Josef Mahr, the Arnsberg medical officer, reported on the terrible conditions in the “Hönnetal work education camp”: The accommodation for four hundred “Eastern workers” was “extremely primitive”, with all rooms having too many occupants. 115 of the prisoners were ill, most of them suffering from nutritional oedemas “some of them will die in the next few days”. To that point, the cause of death had been recorded on the death certificates as “all heart muscle paralysis”. The doctor warned that the prison camp constituted a severe risk of epidemic to the civilian population”: “The camp inmates should not, under any circumstances, be brought to the workplace each day with the other German citizens.” Instead, they must “be fed so that they do not starve and in addition are then also able to be productive at work.” It is unclear how many prisoners died; a few of them managed to escape.  At the end of March 1945, the camp was closed down and the prisoners were forced to trek in the direction of East Westphalia. What then became of them has not been passed on. In neighbouring Beckum, it seems that nobody noticed the exodus of hundreds of prisoner, or so the local historian Peter Witte says. He quotes the policeman Heinrich Q.: “There aren’t many left from those who came from Sanssouci.”[17] To this day, nothing in Balve-Sanssouci recalls the “Hönnetal work education camp”.