Abteroda I and II


Abteroda was apparently located near the village of the same name in Thuringia, Germany, and was code-named ‘Anton’. It operated from 1944-45 and was a forced labour camp using both male and female prisoners to build underground production facilities and manufacture aircraft engine components for BMW.

The subcamp was located near an abandoned potash mine. Prisoners were rented out to BMW for 4 to 6 Reichsmark per day. They were forced to perform heavy labour and were drawn from political prisoners and former resistance members transferred from other camps, including Ravensbrück.

With the approach of Allied troops in early 1945, the camp was evacuated, with male prisoners being sent back to Buchenwald and female prisoners being force-marched to Bergen-Belsen and Eisenach. There is a memorial stone to mark the site of the Anton I and II subcamp outposts and in remembrance of the prisoners.

One of the Anton subcamps held female prisoners. 125 of them were transferred to Abteroda from Ravensbrück on February 19, 1945. The number of female prisoners in this subcamp eventually reached between 200 and 250 inmates.

Details about working and living conditions are sparse. One French former prisoner, Jacqueline Fleury, said that the prisoners had to work very hard in all weathers, irrespective of their physical health condition. Some of them were suffering from diseases such as tuberculosis, and Fleury herself was suffering from dysentery. She also said that on Christmas Eve 1944, several prisoners got together to build a creche with smuggled materials and that female prisoners often sang together and recited poetry in order to build solidarity among themselves.

There is little information about the commandant or guards of the subcamp, but records from Buchenwald shows that the infirmary at Abteroda was commanded by SS doctor Berendonck with an assistant medic named Carl. These personnel also attended the Abteroda men’s camp. This report mentions that there were 13 SS guards, 9 female guards (Aufseherinnen).


 Courtesy of Buchenwald Memorial Subcamp Portal.

 

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Porombka (Solarhutte)

Image
  Porombka was located at Międzybrodzie Bialskie in southern Poland, around 35 kilometres south of Oświęcim in the Little Beskid mountains, above a dam and lake. It was also known as Solahutte and was more of a working party (Kommando) than a camp. Therefore, there was no barracks or electrified barbed wire fences or guard towers. There isn’t much documentation containing information about the camp either, but the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) discovered photographs in the album of SS-Obersturmführer Karl Höcker, adjutant of the commander of Auschwitz, and SS-Sturmbannführer Richard Baer (known as the Höcker album), depicting SS men spending leisure time at this location. The album was donated to USHMM by an anonymous American counter-intelligence officer and contains 116 black-and-white photographs, mostly taken during the summer of 1944. The SS men depicted in these photographs were mostly officers from Auschwitz and most of them were taken at the Solahütt...
Read more

Rajsko (German name: Raisko)

Image
  Aerial view of the main subcamp site (Google Earth) Raisko subcamp was established in the village of Rajsko, again after the inhabitants had been expelled, this expulsion occurring in Spring 1941. The buildings were then partly demolished. The camp was another agricultural unit, the first prisoners being male but with female prisoners subsequently arriving in 1942. Initially, the prisoners walked to the site from Auschwitz I and Birkenau, but from June 1943 female prisoners were housed permanently on site. The work at the subcamp involved gardening and plant growing, with vegetables grown in hothouses and flower beds. Some female prisoners worked in an experimental unit where they cultivated an Asian plant called kok saghyz which had roots containing a substance called caoutchouc, used in the production of rubber. In 1943 there were 250 prisoners in the subcamp, but this number had increased to 320 by June 1944. Most of the prisoners initially were Polish, with others being Jews,...
Read more

Freudenthal

Image
  A sub-camp of Auschwitz located in Bruntal (the Czech name for the town). More than 300 Jewish women prisoners were located there in October 1944, mainly from Hungary and Bohemia, having been transported from Birkenau. Fifty more women followed in January 1945. They were put to work in the Emerich Machold textile mill, working a single daytime shift of around 10-12 hours. Some of the prisoners worked sewing German uniforms as seamstresses, while others worked on looms and spinning frames. A smaller group of women worked as cleaners, servants or cooks. The women were accommodated in two wooden barracks on the site. The camp was commanded by SS-Oberscharführer Voss. There were around 20 men in the SS guard unit commanded by SS-Hauptscharführer Paul Ulbort, and there were also three SS Aufseherinnen supervising the prisoners. When on 6 th May 1945 the SS heard that the Russians were entering the city, they changed into civilian clothing and fled. The Russians entered ...
Read more