Allendorf (aka Münchmühle)

 
 

Allendorf subcamp, also named Münchmühle camp after the nearby mill on the Münchbach, was located on the former Reichstrasse from Kirchhain to Neustadt, 2 kilometres (1.2 miles) southwest of Allendorf.

It was constructed in early 1940 and consisted of 26 barracks, accommodating civilian forced labour, prisoners of war and units of the Reich Labour Service (RAD). The camp served as a subcamp of Buchenwald from August 1944 until the end of March 1945, due to 1,000 female prisoners transferred there from Auschwitz, after which it was evacuated.

The management of the Allendorf (now Stadtallendorf) armaments factory requested prisoners to bolster declining numbers of civilian forced labour, POWs and criminals, in order to continue meeting arms orders. A discussion was held on 6th June 1944 between the commander of Buchenwald and the managing director of the Allendorfer Verwertchemie, Ringleb, during which it was decided that female prisoners should be assigned to earthmoving, laundry and tailor shop duties and on the assembly lines manufacturing shells and bombs. The working hours were set at two shifts of 12 hours each. Female supervisors would be recruited from the plant and an electric perimeter fence installed.

 

However, Ringleb decided he wanted male prisoners for manufacturing and unloading, with the fee paid to the SS at 3 or 5 Reichsmark per day per prisoner. The SS stipulated a daily rate of 4 RM per day per prisoner for unskilled labour.

According to one document, the Allendorf factory was unable to supply the number of female supervisors requested by the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA), causing some friction with the SS. Furthermore, the Buchenwald commander, Pister, criticised the demand by the factory management for a contract, stating that, thus far, arrangements had been made with other firms without needing a contract. This lack of contracts meant that the arms industry was able to claim that prisoners had been ‘forced on them’ by the SS.

The factory’s 1944 annual report mentions that it was very satisfied with the standard of work by the prisoners:

“The experiences gained through the use of Jewesses since August last year are entirely satisfactory. The filling of the fifteen centimetre shells, weighing almost fifty kilograms, was accomplished with best results by Jewish female prisoners.”

 

Working conditions on the production lines were extremely hazardous. One female prisoner wrote:

“My face turned yellow from the poison, from inhaling it and we were extremely undernourished and weak.”

A postwar report states that the work consisted of filling bombs and 40-kilogram shells with explosives and that each prisoner had to process 1,000 of them per day. Some women, usually the youngest, were assigned to duties in the camp. Others worked on farms, where the food and working conditions were better. Those women who worked in the factory were impacted for the rest of their lives with health problems due to the handling of explosives.

 

The prisoners were guarded by 46 SS men and 47 female guards. There were two female doctors and eight orderlies. Most of the female prisoners described the unit commander, Hauptscharführer Adolf Wuttke, as behaving fairly humanely, but his deputy, Ernst Schulte, as being brutal.

The camp was evacuated on 27th March 1945 due to the advance of the Allies. The evacuation march headed east towards Ziegenhain and then changed direction, moving northeast towards Fritzlar. During the march, groups of prisoners and guards escaped. There do not seem to have been any murders of prisoners during this march and investigations were finally dismissed in November 1971.

Wutke was the only member of the subcamp staff convicted, sentenced to 4.5 years imprisonment for beating prisoners at Buchenwald.


 

 

 

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