Altenburg



The subcamp located in Altenburg was established on 1st August 1944 and  served the private company Hugo-Schneider AG (HASAG), which was the third largest employer of forced labour in Germany after Farben and Goring Werke. Its company director, Paul Budin, was a high-status member of the Nazi party. There were two subcamps – one for male prisoners, the other for females.

The subcamps serving HASAG throughout Germany were all established in the summer of 1944 and all of them were administered by Buchenwald. HASAG deliberately requested female prisoners rather than men, because they paid less to the SS for women and also women tended to die in greater numbers. In 1945, Paul Budin blew up the company head office in Leipzig in April 1945 and is presumed to have died in the explosion, along with his wife, which has led to this incident being considered a suicide.

The first transport of prisoners from Ravensbruck consisted of 850 female prisoners, consisting of 727 Poles, 108 Soviets, 8 French and smaller numbers of Italians, Czechs, Norwegians, Hungarians & Croatians. On 17th August, another transport arrived, consisting of 752 female prisoners, followed by a third transport on 21st August of 327 women. Other transports included one of 600 Polish women, rounded up following the Warsaw Uprising. The 7th September camp report puts the total number of prisoners at 2,440 women, including 1652 Poles, 500 Jews and 288 Gypsies. By the end of March 1945, just before the evacuation on April 11th or 12th, this number had fallen to 2,300 prisoners.

Both Altenburg subcamps were commanded by SS-Oberscharführer Johann Frötsch, who, along with Oberaufsherin Elisabeth Rupper, treated prisoners brutally. There were 34 male SS guards and 32 SS women. Eight deaths were recorded for Altenburg, all from tuberculosis. However, inmates were returned to Ravensbruck when they became too weak or ill to work, and so the total deaths may have been much higher.

The prisoners worked 12 hour shifts within the HASAG factory manufacturing shells and Panzerfäuste anti-tank weapons.


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