Langenstein-Zwieberge

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Coordinates: 51°50′40″N 11°01′24″E / 51.84444°N 11.02333°E / 51.84444; 11.02333

A survivor transported by American medics

The Langenstein-Zwieberge was a concentration camp, an under-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. More than 7000 prisoners from 23 countries were imprisoned there between April 1944 and April 1945.

History

The first group of deportees from Buchenwald arrived on 21 April 1944. They were 18, French, and formed the executives of the Kommando future. They were initially placed in an inn of the periphery of Langenstein, then, the convoys following one another, while waiting for the completion of the construction of the camp, in a barn, which still exists, located at the exit of the village. Six convoys arrived, from 26 September 1944 to 18 February 1945.

The construction of the camp was completed in August 1944 with the electrified enclosure; 7 blocks plus the appendices (Revier, kitchen, etc.) the inn and the barn replaced. When manpower reached 5,100 prisoners, in February 1945, there were 18 blocks.

Manpower decreased then (4,400 people at the beginning of April 1945), the number of deaths exceeded the number of the newcomers by far.

In the week from 19 to 25 March 1945, on 1308 dead deducted for Buchenwald and its Kommandos, Langenstein-Zwieberge had the unhappy privilege to arrive at the head, with 234 dead, in front of Ohrdruf (207) and Leau (69).

Work

As of the first days of their arrival, the deportees started to dig galleries in the still virgin site of the hills of Thekenberge. In ten months of terrible sufferings, the prisoners completed nearly 10 km of galleries, of a surface of 60.000 m ². Some were enough vast to accommodate trains of coaches. Some had cost a death per meter of projection. Life expectancy for prisoners was six weeks.

Prisoners worked in two 12 hour shifts under atrocious conditions, in dust, insufficient air, and under the blows of the kapos and especially of Meister German. Many returned to the camp exhausted, with barely enough energy to eat their soup.

The principal goal of the excavations was to hide production facilities for the Junkers factories that would build new types of jets and weapons. With this in mind, the Junkers firm arranged a small camp of three huts inside the large camp in edge of the place of call to place there deportees specialists, 869 people, arrivals of Kommandos of Halberstadt, Aschersleben, Langensalza, and Niederorschel.

The small camp, with neither reed nor straw mattress, the prisoners, like the others, were forced to dig tunnels.

Deaths

Dead prisoners were initially sent to the Quedlinburg cby horse-drawn car, then by truck. The ashes of 912 victims, including 131 French, rest in the cemetery of this city.

In March, the crematory couldn't continue its work for lack of fuel, and the bodies accumulated in a hut. They were buried, either in four large pits outside the camp that contain more than 700, or close to Revier, inside the camp, in a pit where several hundreds of other bodies lie.

The corpses were transported, by two, in wooden cases carried by four prisoners after work. They emptied the cases into the pits and the downward file was going to seek a new loading until almost complete exhaustion of the mass grave. The last bodies, in full decomposition, untransportable, remained in the hut. The S.S. responsible for the loading closed again the hut with key because there had been flights of thighs of corpses…

In the evening of 9 April 1945, in front of the advance of the American troops, who reached the Elbe, 3.000 survivors of the camp, in six columns of 500, framed posten and S.S. were thrown on the road. The majority went during 15 days and, after 300 km, were found close to Wittenberg, on Elbe.

One was completely destroyed and his trace was not found, another went until 28 April and arrived close to Berlin with only 18 survivors. There was not, in all, that 500 to 1500 survivors according to the estimates of one or others. We do not have any base, as for all the steps of death, allowing to give exact figures.

Liberation of the camp

When on 13 April 1945, the Americans released the camp given up since 9 April, they found the reviers filled of dying who died at the rate of 20 per day.

Here what a journalist of " wrote; Stars and stripes" in the n° of 20 April: … " The odor of death was everywhere the same one in this calm room. In Revier were dying them…. The remainder of the patients of Revier was reached of dysentery. They lay there, in their excrements, too weak to move. A man stronger than the others was held with the door. He carried only one short shirt. He did not have any more muscles with the thighs, the calves, the basin. Its legs were nothing any more but bones and its knees two large protuberances. Its body was a covered skeleton of gray skin, tended. It is impossible to remain a long time in the room of dysentery. The odor follows you until in the tepid air of spring… "

On 18 April all these patients were taken along, by military ambulances in a barracks of Halberstadt transformed into hospital. It died there still 144 deportees whose majority of the bodies rest in a common grave of the cemetery of the city.

The assessment is heavy: in the best of the assumptions, the half, and in worst the 3/4 of the deportees of Zwieberge did not return.

The Langenstein-Zwieberge Memorial

On 11 September 1949 a memorial and a commemorative plaque were inaugurated at the place of the common graves. Since 1976 there exists a museum on the ground of the Memorial of Langenstein-Zwieberge.

References and sources

Testimonies

Adler, H. G. Panorama. Roman in 10 Bildern. Olten 1968. (München: Piper 1988.)
Adler, H. G. Der Wahrheit verpflichtet. Gerlingen 1998.
Adler, H. G. Eine Reise. Wien: Zsolnay 1999.
Berti, Alberto. Die Reise zum Planeten der Nazis. Trieste – Buchenwald – Langenstein. Mailand 1989.
Bertrand, Louis. Nummer 85250. Konzentrationslager Buchenwald – Aussenkommando Langenstein-Zwieberge. Témoignage. Valdoie: Prête-moi ta plume 2005.
Berzins-Birze, Miervaldis. Im Todeslager von Salaspilsk. Riga 1964.
Burelli, Dino: Mamma sto bene... non mi sono fatto niente... Udine: A.P.O. 2006.
Campredon, Gabriel. Louis Dalle un homme libre. Saint Chély-d’Apcher: Association “Louis Dalle un homme libre“ 5. Auflage 2002.
Comité "Fidélité". Jean Lepicier. Jociste angevin. Déporté et mort à Buchenwald (Kdo Langenstein). 1992.
Coupechoux, Roger. La nuit de Walpurgis. Avoir vingt ans à Langenstein. Paris: L’Harmattan 2004.
Gaben, Lucien. L’honneur d’être témoin. Albi: Imprimerie coopérative du sud ouest 1990.
Hager, Konrad. Protokoll des Unbegreiflichen. Aus dem Tagebuch eines Landpfarrers. Halberstadt o.J.
Ivanij, Ivan. Schattenspringen. Wien: Picus 1993.
Ivanij, Ivan. Die andere Seite der Ewigkeit. Zwanzig Geschichten vom Tod. Wien: Picus 1994.
Klieger, Bernard. Le chemin que nous avons fait. Bruxelles: Editions BEKA 1946.
Klieger, Bernard. Der Weg, den wir gingen. Bruxelles: Codac Juifs 1960.
De Lecat, Basqual. Le miracle. Mulhouse: Imprimerie Bader 1963.
Le Goupil, Paul. La route des crématoires. Labergement: L’Amitié par le livre 1962/1983.
Le Goupil, Paul. Un Normand dans… Itinéraire d’une guerre 1939-1945. Paris: Editions Tirésias Michel Reynaud 1991.
Le Goupil, Paul. Erinnerungen eines Normannen 1939-1945. Paris: Editions Tirésias Michel Reynaud 1995.
Leroyer, Roger. Clamavi ad te… j’ai crié vers toi j’ai tellement crié vers toi… Cestas: Eigenverlag des Authors 1996.
Leroyer, Roger. Clamavi ad te. Jena: Bussert & Stadeler 2003.
Lustiger, Gila. Die Bestandsaufnahme. Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch 1996.
Molette, Charles. Gérard Cendrier. Scout en franciscain mort à Buchenwald en 1945. "L'un des cinquante". Magny-les-Hameaux: Socéval 2006.
de Montangon, Jean. Un Saint-Cyrien des années 40. Éditions France-Empire 1987.
Obréjan, Maurice. L’étrange destinée d’un homme trois fois français. Paris: La Pensée Universelle 1994.
Pannier, Roger. Jusqu’au martyre. Éditions des Etannets 1995.
Maître Pierre Antoine Perrod. L’honneur d’être dupe. Éditions Horvath 1982.
Petit, Georges. Retour à Langenstein. Une expérience de la déportation. Paris: Belin 2001.
Petit, Georges. Rückkehr nach Langenstein. Erfahrungen eines Deportierten. Hürth bei Köln: Edition Memoria 2004.
de Saint Marc, Hélie. Mémoires - Les champs de braises. Paris: Perrin 1995 (2002).
de Saint Marc, Hélie. Asche und Glut: Erinnerungen. Friedberg: Edition AtlantiS 1998.
de Saint Marc, Hélie. Les sentinelles du soir. Paris: Les Arènes 1999.
de Saint Marc, Hélie. Die Wächter des Abends. Friedberg: Edition AtlantiS 2000.
de Saint Marc, Hélie und August von Kageneck. Notre histoire 1922-1945. Paris: Les Arènes 2002.
de Saint Marc, Hélie. Toute une vie. Paris: Les Arènes 2004.
Sarkowicz, Hans (Hg.) „Als der Krieg zu Ende war…“. Erinnerungen an den 8. Mai 1945. Frankfurt a. M. und Leipzig: Insel 1995.
Sauvot, Jean. Tu raconteras à ton fils. Éditions Vent de Crau 1985.
de Wijze, Louis. Ontsnapping uit de dodenmarsch. Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw 1995.
de Wijze, Louis. Only my life: a survivor’s story. New York: St. Martin’s Press 1997.
de Wijze, Louis. Rien que ma vie. Récit d'un rescapé. Paris: L'Harmattan 2001.
Wojnowski, Edmund. Człowiek przetrzymał. Gdańsk: Zrzeszenie Kaszubsk´-Pomorskie 1985.
Wojnowski, Edmund. Egzamin Dojrzałości. Toruń: Wydawnictwo "Żywe Kamienie" 2000.

Specialized literature

Baccaria, Laurent. Commandant de Saint-Marc. Paris: Édition académique Perrin 1989.
Jakob, Volker und Annet van der Voort. Anne Frank war nicht allein. Lebensgeschichten deutscher Juden in den Niederlanden. Berlin und Bonn: J.H.W. Dietz Nachf. 1988.
Fauser, Ellen (Hrsg.). Die Kraft im Unglück. Erinnerungen an Langenstein-Zwieberge - Außenlager des KZ Buchenwald. Halberstadt o. J.
Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Sachsen-Anhalt (Hg). Verortet. Erinnern und Gedenken in Sachsen-Anhalt. Magdeburg 2004.
Le Goupil, Paul und Roger Leroyer. Mémorial des Français déportés au camp de Langenstein-Zwieberge. Kommando de Buchenwald. Luneray : Imp. Bertout o. J.
Lustiger, Arno. Zum Kampf auf Leben und Tod. Vom Widerstand der Juden 1933-1945. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch 1994.

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