Bad Salzungen (Heinrich Kalb)

 The Heinrich Kalb site is upper left.

In the spring of 1944, the potash mines along the Werra River began to be used for underground aircraft components production by BMW, which wanted to move part of its aircraft engine factory into these mines, particularly the mine owned by the Wintershall Group near Bad Salzungen. To help facilitate this, the SS established two new subcamps in early 1945, codenamed “Ludwig Renntier” and “Heinrich Kalb.” Prisoners from the Heinrich Kalb subcamp were forced to work at the Heiligenroda III mine complex in Springen, located approximately 12 kilometres northwest of Bad Salzungen. The prisoner accommodation was actually 300 metres underground, in a large disused gallery of the mine. This meant that sanitary and hygienic conditions there were awful. Despite this, although the arrangement was originally intended to be temporary, it became permanent, with prisoners only allowed to visit the surface for brief intervals.

500 prisoners from Buchenwald were forced to march from the railway station in Dorndorf to the Heiligenroda mine complex, a distance of seven kilometres. Most of them were from the USSR and Poland, with others from Yugoslavia, Germany and Austria, France, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and some other countries. Most of them were classed as political prisoners, identified by the red triangle sewn on to their clothing. One of these political prisoners, Karl Thomä from Saxony, was appointed by the SS as the ‘camp elder’.

The prisoners worked for Organisation Todt (OT), which was responsible for constructing the underground production facility. They were put to work in two six-hour shifts clearing away debris from blasting. This involved the use of heavy mine wagons. The prisoners also had to carry out levelling and concreting.

The SS guards were initially led by an SS-Unterscharführer named Schlaf. Little is known of him but witness accounts indicate he treated the prisoners brutally. He was replaced in mid-March 1945 by an SS-Hauptscharführer named Kupfer, and not much is known about him either. At the end of March 1945, the numbers of guards reached 49, with SS-Hauptsturmführer Paul Sporrenberg, who had previously commanded the SS-Sonderlager Hinzert, overseeing the two subcamps.

By late March 1945, the numbers of prisoners at Heinrich Kalb had fallen to 482. The date of its evacuation is not known, but some prisoners had been forced to march towards Weimar, with 389 men reaching Buchenwald on 6th April. A large number of prisoners who could no longer walk were shot by the SS guards.

A number of shafts of the Heiligenroda potash mine, I, II and III, were closed in the 1990s, but there are several memorials to the prisoners in the surrounding area.

For further information, see the Buchenwald Subcamp Portal. 

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