Forgotten Horrors: The Nazi sub-camp system

  Bad Berka was an area in which prisoners were put to work undertaking heavy track maintenance and construction work for Thüringische Eisenbahn-AG. The prisoners were brutally treated and malnourished, suffering exhaustion and brutal treatment. There was no specific subcamp here, apart from Tonndorf (see separate entry) and prisoners from other subcamps and working parties often marched through the Bad Berka area during evacuation in the face of the advancing Allies.

  The Senne, a large expanse of landscape to the east of Augustdorf, has been used for military training since the 19 th century. German preparations for war expanded this area significantly, including a new barracks complex constructed in 1937. This was given the name Nordlager (North Camp) in 1939. From September 1944, units of the Waffen SS were based there and prisoners from Buchenwald arrived in November 1944 to carry out construction work. This required a new subcamp which the SS gave the name “SS-Panzer-Ausbildungs- und Ersatzregiment" (SS Panzer Training and Replacement Regiment), or ‘Sennelager’. The exact location of the prisoner’s accommodation is unknown, as is the nature of the tasks they were required to carry out. Medical care was probably provided by Waffen SS medical staff. Some prisoners were transferred back to Buchenwald due to illness, including conditions such as bacterial skin infections, wound infections or purulent inflammation. One prisoner died of pneum...

  The Junkers plant used both male and female prisoners from the start of the war. However, in January 1945, the SS sent an additional group of 500 Jewish female prisoners to Aschersleben. They came from Belgium, Germany, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Slovakia and had previously been incarcerated at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and arrived at Aschersleben from there. Around 200 of these women occupied a separate camp located in an annex to Hall V of the plant, with the accommodation for the others probably dispersed in various locations across the site. Their accommodation included beds, running water and heating. During daytime air raids they were instructed to go to an air raid bunker beneath the plant, and for night raids to remain in their quarters. The women were put to work cutting, fitting, machining, and component assembly. This involved tasks such as bolting parts together and using drilling machines. They were supervised by female SS guards and worked 12-hour shifts, d...

Aschersleben, showing the site of the Junkers plant (right of centre) and the site of the men's subcamp (top left). Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerk AG opened another plant in May 1935, in the town of Aschersleben, located on what is now Walter-Kersten-Straße, to the NW of the city centre. In immediate proximity, to the south of the site of the plant, is a freight depot, which is now reduced by half of its former area. Junkers had used foreign forced labour at its various plants from the start of the war, employing them on the manufacture of aircraft components, particularly fuselages for the Junkers JU88. Aschersleben men's camp site, as seen from the main road (Google Earth) At Aschersleben, a subcamp was built just NW of the freight depot for this purpose. It was given the code name ‘Maus’ and was one of around a dozen such subcamps serving the plant. Alongside manufacture of the Junkers JU88, prisoners also worked on the Heinkel HE 162, for which the factory had been con...