Aschersleben (female subcamp)

 

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, day and night.

As with the men’s camp, there was a large, improvised infirmary. Rosemarie Haarburger, a prisoner from Hamburg who was a physician, was appointed by the SS to serve as prisoner-doctor. She had previously been incarcerated at Auschwitz where she had been sent after her hiding place in the Netherlands was discovered. Toska Weltsch from Tarnów, Poland, served as her assistant – ‘prisoner nurse’. SS medic Max Schönherr supervised them.

Five women are recorded as having died at Aschersleben, from heart failure, pneumonia and typhoid fever.

For further information, see the Buchenwald Subcamp Portal. 

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