Draft:Neukölln subcamp

As a result of the Great Depression, the US company National Cash Registers, known in Germany as National Registrierkassen GmbH, merged with Krupp Registrierkassen Gesellschaft, a subsidiary of Friedrich Krupp AG in in April 1934, and subsequently operated under the name National–Krupp Registrierkassen GmbH.^[3]

The barracks camp, consisting of six barracks, was originally built in 1942 on a site at 181–187 Sonnenallee to house civilian forced labourers who were employed at the nearby factory of National-Krupp Registrierkassen GmbH. ^[4] The factory, which had initially been constructed by National Cash Register in 1920 for the manufacture and maintenance of cash registers, switched to arms production during the early years of the war and, from the end of 1941, employed civilian forced labourers from France, Poland and the Soviet Union.^[5][6] Among other items, MP40 submachine guns and Zt. Z. S30 time fuses for anti-aircraft shells were produced under the manufacturer’s code CND, which was issued by the German Army Weapons Agency in March 1941.^[7] The barracks camp was situated at a separate site, just a few hundred metres from the factory premises.

The highest number of civilian forced labourers at the Neukölln production site was recorded as 790 in March 1943, around half of whom were housed in the barracks.^[8]

In August 1944, the barracks camp was taken over by the SS and converted into a subcamp of Sachsenhausen concentration camp. A group of around 500 prisoners arrived there either at the end of August or in the first week of September. The group was predominantly, though not exclusively, Jewish: it included at least one Romani woman. The prisoners came from Poland, Germany, Austria, the Soviet Union, France, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary.^[9]

This group consisted of women – mostly aged between 20 and 25 – who had survived the so-called ‘liquidation’ of the Łódź ghetto.^[10] Not only had they survived the extreme living conditions in the ghetto, but also the notorious selection on the ‘ramp’ at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The ghetto was dissolved in August 1944; most of the inhabitants were either deported directly to the Chełmno extermination camp (around 7,000) to be murdered there, or to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where a selection took place (around 67,000 former ghetto inhabintants, of whom 45,000 were murdered shortly afterwards).^[11]

The women interned at the Neukölln satellite camp were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in a large transport on 17 August 1944 and, according to eyewitness accounts, remained there for between four and fourteen days.^[12] Shortly after their arrival, they and their family members who had survived the ghetto were selected by an SS camp doctor as either ‘fit for work’ or ‘unfit for work’. Prisoners deemed fit for work were to be transferred to a concentration camp satellite camp, whilst those classified as unfit for work were murdered within a short time. Many families were traumatically separated in the process, and the prisoners selected as fit for work heard nothing of the fate of their relatives until the end of the war. A pair of glasses that belonged to Tola Walach, a survivor of the Neukölln satellite camp, bears witness to this event, as documented on the Yad Vashem website:

"As the train arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, a selection was carried out on the ramp and Tola was separated from her mother. She tried to join her mother's group, but she was forced back into her own line and told that she was young and able to work. Bluma was sent directly from the ramp to the gas chambers."

As Tola recounted after the war:

"I don't remember which one of us put my mother's reading glasses in my coat pocket, Mother or me… I didn't even know that such an important item of my mother's was hidden in my pocket; that I possessed something from my former life to remember her by. I realized shortly afterwards, after the selection… In the barracks they forced us to undress, so I looked in my pockets first and I found the glasses and didn't let them go. I took a chance and claimed that they were mine and that I had to wear them. I tied them around my body with a strip of cloth that I tore from my dress and hid them."

At Auschwitz, the group had to wait in a barrack before being sent to the satellite camp. During this time, their hair was shaved off and they had to hand over their clothes and other personal belongings.^[13] In return, the prisoners were given a selection of ill-fitting clothes to wear. It is likely that the clothes came from murdered prisoners.

After leaving Auschwitz-Birkenau, the group had to endure a journey of between two and three days in five coal wagons (each carrying around 100 prisoners) before arriving in Berlin. The women were given a bucket to use as a toilet, and there was not enough room for them to sit down.^[14] According to the survivor Masza Pszczół, the prisoners were given 300g of bread, 5g of margarine and 50g of sausage for the journey.

Upon their arrival in Neukölln, the prisoners were housed in three of the barracks, each of which was surrounded by barbed wire. The remaining barracks were used as kitchen, washhouse and administrative barracks. In order to prepare the barracks camp for takeover by the SS, in mid-1944 the fence around the camp was fitted with a screen so that the camp was not visible from street level.^[15] However, the barracks camp was less than 50 metres away from the nearest four-storey residential building on Sonnenallee, from whose balconies the barracks camp was constantly visible.

The prisoners worked twelve-hour shifts, both day and night, at the National-Krupp cash register factory at 1–11 Thiemannstraße. They worked in the stamping shop, the galvanising shop, the assembly department, in quality control and, in some cases, in the platinum workshop.^[16] There were repeated serious accidentsin the production of weapons and ammunition: at least one girl is reported to have lost a finger.^[17] They had to work six days a week and clean the barracks on the seventh day. Abuse and assaults by guards and wardens was common.^[18] However, many survivors report that their experiences with the prison staff were mixed: ranging from violent harassment to a willingness to help the prisoners.^[19]

The prisoner's labour was the only thing keeping them alive. Anyone who became too ill or too weak was ‘selected’ and deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp, some 70 km north of Berlin, where gas chambers were operated in the final months of the war by Rudolf Höß, the former commandant of Auschwitz.^[20] Illness, hunger and exhaustion were part of everyday life. Every day they would line up on the neighbouring sports field for the roll call, which was sometimes long and humiliating.

In the final months of the war, Berlin was bombed almost daily; the concentration camp prisoners were forced to take shelter in open-air foxholes until early February 1945. Following the major air raid by the USAAF on 3 February 1945, the prisoners were allowed to seek shelter in the factory cellars. During a bombing raid shortly before the end of the war, several barracks were so badly damaged that the prisoners had to spend the remainder of their time in Berlin living in the cellars of a cinema and the factory complex.

Nevertheless, in interviews with eyewitnesses, many women described their time in Neukölln as relatively “restful” or even “paradisiacal” compared to other stages of the Holocaust.^[21] Unlike their previous experiences in the Łódź ghetto, the prisoners were allowed to eat in the factory canteen; in some cases, the camp commander actively advocated for their health (for example, an external dentist was arranged for one prisoner); they were allowed to grow their hair long again; and the work took place in heated factory halls.^[22][23] In the evenings, the prisoners sang Polish songs and recited poems, and on one occasion, the camp commandant arranged for material so the prisoners could decorate their living quarters.^[24]

The closure of the satellite camp took place in a rather unusual manner. According to a statement by the camp commandant, the camp was evacuated on 18 April 1945, just two days before the Red Army’s first artillery bombardment reached Neukölln.^[25] The women were taken by S-Bahn to Oranienburg, where they were forced to spend a night in the Sachsenhausen main camp. The following day, they were transported on to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where they remained for about a week. There, they were ultimately exceptionally fortunate to be saved as a result of high-level negotiations. After the last ‘Führer’s birthday’ on 20 April 1945, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler met secretly with Norbert Masur – a German Jew who had been living in Sweden during the war years and who represented the World Jewish Congress at this meeting – to negotiate the release of Jewish prisoners.^[26][27]

Himmler’s aim was to gain diplomatic leverage with the Western Allies by presenting himself as a supposedly ‘decent’ alternative to Adolf Hitler and by advocating a united front comprising the Wehrmacht, the Waffen-SS and the Western Allies against what he regarded as the ‘real enemy’, communism. Masur was successful. He secured the release of over 1,000 Jewish women from Ravensbrück concentration camp. The evacuation was carried out by the Swedish and Danish Red Cross as part of the ‘White Buses’ rescue operation. Around 95 per cent of the women from the Neukölln satellite camp were of Polish origin – a crucial point, as Himmler officially agreed only to the release of Polish Jewish women in order to conceal his true intentions.^[28] Had Hitler learnt of the release of Jewish prisoners, this would have been regarded as treason; their formal classification as ‘Polish women’ thus served as a cover. It is estimated that up to 95 per cent of the women interned in Neukölln were allowed to travel with the group, whilst the remainder were forced to join other Ravensbrück prisoners on death marches.^[29]

The Neukölln satellite camp is thought to have had one of the highest survival rates among those satellite camps in which exclusively or almost exclusively Jewish women were imprisoned.^[30] The post-war stories of these women are also remarkable. Most stayed in Sweden for more than a year before moving on. The vast majority emigrated to Israel or the USA, whilst others went to Canada, Australia or other countries.^[31]

The close-knit community of prisoners, many of whom had already formed close bonds with one another long before their arrival in Neukölln, continued after the war. In the 1950s, many of them joined forces with other former Jewish concentration camp prisoners to file a class action lawsuit against the Krupp company.^[32][33][34] Their lawyer, Ben Ferencz, was partially successful. Alfried Krupp agreed to hand over a very small fraction of his fortune ‘voluntarily’, with the result that many of the women received compensation payments of up to 5,000 DM in the 1960s.

In the late 1960s, the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes launched an investigation into the former Neukölln satellite concentration camp, which was concluded in 1971.^[35] The relevant files contained statements from former prisoners and the camp commander. These sources were rediscovered by local historians in the mid-1980s – as part of the growing ‘history from below’ movement, particularly in Berlin – and helped ensure that the Neukölln satellite concentration camp was included in the historical record.^[36][37] An art installation by Norbert Rademacher installed in 1994 marked the end point of this process. The long-‘forgotten’ site had thus been rediscovered in the 1980s, and around 1990 an active community of remembrance emerged, which, however, largely disappeared following the installation of the memorial. In April 1995, 13 survivors visited the site.^[38] At least 68 of the women have given detailed interviews about their experiences of the Holocaust, which are now available online via the websites of the USC Shoah Foundation, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem.

The survivors and their families have been and are committed to ensuring that the site is not forgotten. The son of one survivor, law professor Stanley A. Goldman, whose mother was interned at the Neukölln subcamp, has published a book about the Holocaust experiences of his mother, Malka Goldman entitled "Left to the Mercy of a Rude Stream".^[39] Some survivors ensured that the subject was included in English-language historical writing in the early 2000s, for example through Judith Buber Agassi’s The Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbrück. Who Were They?,^[40] deren Autorin mit den Überlebenden gut vernetzt war.

Most of the site on which the barracks camp stood was converted into an allotment garden community two years after the war, and it remains there to this day. Some of the barrack closest to Sonnenallee was converted into an office for the Berlin-South Allotment Garden Association, but later demolished in 1957.^[41] A small section on the northern edge of the site is now home to the Weserwichtel daycare centre. The sports ground, which served this purpose even before the barracks camp was built, is now the training ground for the BSV Hürtürkel e.V. sports club. The site is public property, administered by the Neukölln city government.

After the war, cash registers were manufactured and serviced by National Registrierkassen G.m.b.H., though only until the early 1970s.^[42] Around two-thirds of the factory site is currently leased by MSA Germany, which manufactures protective equipment. The remaining parts have been leased by various organisations, such as the Neukölln Tax Office, the Bouldergarten (a bouldering hall) and Wolt. There are no references on the site of the old factory of its former role as a weapons production facility during the Second World War or the use of forced labourers.

There are a total of four memorials in and around the former barracks camp: a light installation by Norbert Rademacher, which projects a small inscription onto the ground and is overshadowed by a large advertising poster adjacent to the text that got the approval of Neukölln city government; an inaccessible memorial stone on the sports field; a commemorative panel at the entrance to the allotment gardens; and a small commemorative board on the grounds of the allotment gardens.