Memorial to the victims of the Heiligenbeil camp

Память жертв лагеря Хайлигенбайль

Near the former East Prussian district capital of Heiligenbeil (Russian: Mamonowo) a wooden cross marks since 2009 the site of a camp where approximately 1,200 Jewish prisoners were held captive from September 1944 until the end of January 1945.

History

In view of the advancing front the commandant of the Stutthof concentration camp SS-Sturmbannführer Paul Werner Hoppe issued a »Sonderbefehl« (special order) on September 21, 1944, to establish five satellite labour camps on Luftwaffe airfields in East Prussia. The camp's 20 barracks in Steindorf near Heiligenbeil (Russian: Mamonowo) were occupied by 1,100 female and 100 male prisoners, still arriving on September 21 and October 9. The women were from Hungary and from Poland (the latter from the Łódź ghetto and from the Plaszow camp near Cracow), the men came from Vilnius and its surroundings. All of them were Jews. The camp was next to the railway line from Braunsberg (Polnish: Braniewo) to Königsberg (today: Kaliningrad). Adjacent were two more camps for French prisoners of war and Russian forced labourers. The prisoners of the Heiligenbeil satellite camp were deployed by the Organisation Todt to built a road to the airfield. Constant hunger and lacking winter equipment determined everyday life. One week after the start of the Russian large-scale offensive directed at the Eastern border of the German Reich, SS units evacuated 1,157 people on January 20/21, 1945, chasing them towards Königsberg in the icy cold and driving snow, only wearing ragged clothes and clogs. The Heiligenbeil prisoners arrived there on January 23 and were housed in a factory building. A few days later members of the SS assisted by Organisation Todt chased 5,000 to 7,500 prisoners – among them the inmates of all five Stutthof satellite camps in East Prussia – from Königsberg to the Baltic coast. Only 18 prisoners known by name survived this death march and the ensuing massacre of Palmnicken (Russian: Yantarny) in the night of January 31 to February 1, 1945.

Heiligenbeil, 1930s, town hall, public domain

Mamonowo, 2012, Memorial cross at the former camp site, Dietrich Mattern

Victims

From late autumn 1944 onwards the SS kept 1,200 Jewish forced labourers imprisoned in the Heiligenbeil (Russian: Mamonowo) camp, mainly women from Hungary and Poland. Until January 1945 ten fatalities were recorded. During the so-called evacuation on January 20/21 about 20 sick prisoners were shot. The SS and the Organisation Todt chased the remaining 1,157 via Königsberg (today: Kalinigrad) to the Baltic coast near Palmnicken (Russian: Yantarny) at the end of January 1945. Only 18 known prisoners of 5,000 to 7,500 altogether survived the death march and the ensuing massacre. The survivors from the Heiligenbeil camp were Pnina (Pola) Grinbaum (later Kronisch, *1927) from Bełżyce, Pola Mondschejn (later Zwardon, 1909–?) from Lubaczów, and Maria Salz (later Blitz, 1918–2016) from Cracow.

In the Russian Federation, the 9 May – the anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War against »Hitlerite Fascism« – is the most important public holiday to have been retained from the country’s Soviet past. On 23 August 1939 the Soviet Union, led by Josef Stalin (1878–1953), initially signed a »non-aggression pact« with the Third Reich. This pact defined the »spheres of interest« of both regimes in East Central Europe and contained the provision to divide Poland between them. On June 22, 1941 the German Wehrmacht and its allies commenced their invasion of Soviet territory. Recent research estimates that by the end of the war in 1945 there had been up to 28 million civilian and military deaths in occupied Soviet territory. The Soviet culture of memory continues to have an impact on today’s Russia. Its symbols, such as the monumental style memorials in Saint Petersburg or Volgograd, are still popular and used to stage large-scale memorial services such as on 9 May. However, these sites of memory are less places of mourning and remembrance of the victims than places to honour wartime heroes. For a long time the victims were not remembered at all, and later they were classed as »victims of fascism«. The influence of this approach to the past can be seen, for example, in the conflict surrounding a sculpture put up in 1995 in front of the Great Patriotic War Museum in the capital Moscow. Entitled »Tragedy of Peoples«, the monument is dedicated to the approximately twenty million civilian victims in the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1944 and was intended to bring about a turnaround in the Russian culture of memory. However, the monument had to be moved behind the building following intense criticism, also from the general public, that the message was too pessimistic. At the same time, however, there were also non-governmental human rights organisations such as »Memorial«, which deal with repressed aspects of history, for example the prisoners of war from the Red Army and forced labourers held captive in Germany during the Second World War. Upon their return to the Soviet Union, these individuals were classed as traitors, universally accused of collaborating with the Germans and again imprisoned in camps. In terms of official state remembrance, there are regular remembrance initiatives on the part of committed local departments for culture, which have succeeding in establishing specific memorials as well as a culture of remembrance that includes the victims. It is often thanks to the commitment of individuals or Jewish communities that small sites of memory have been able to emerge in a number of locations, often funded with the smallest of budgets. After 1941, some 100,000 Soviet Jews died on the territory of today’s Russian Federation, mainly as a result of mass shootings carried out by SS Einsatzgruppen and their auxiliaries. They were remembered as »peaceful citizens« in the Soviet period. It is only since the early 1990s that additional plaques have been put up at official monuments and that Jewish victims have been named or commemorated by translating the inscriptions into Hebrew. There was also rudimentary Russian research into the Holocaust. In 2012, the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre was opened in Moscow, acknowledged also by international experts. At the same time, however, the political regime ruling the country has become more and more nationalistic. State propaganda is dominated by an openly revisionist historical narrative which has only turned more aggressive with the war of aggression against Ukraine. Important civil society organisations, including »Memorial«, have been repressed severely.

Remembrance

The story of the Heiligenbeil (Russian: Mamonowo) camp is little-known. In 2010 the Stiftung Denkmal published the memories of Maria Blitz (1918–2016), née Salz, from Cracow. She is one of only 18 prisoners who are known by name who survived the camp and the ensuing death march. Heiligenbeil was almost totally destroyed in the fierce battles between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army in spring 1945. The German population fled or was deported, the town which was now close to the new border to Poland became part of the Soviet Union, along with the Northern part of East Prussia. Today it is part of the Kaliningrad Oblast. Only a few ruins bear witness to the presence of the former labour camp at the airfield in 1944/45. A local resident erected a memorial sign on the foundations of a building right next to the former satellite labour camps on his own initiative. It is a wooden cross – even though all the prisoners had been Jewish. With the involvement of former German inhabitants of the district of Heiligenbeil – Russian since 1945 – a memorial site is to be set up in the future.

Mamonowo, 2007, Ruins at the former camp site, Dietrich Mattern

Open

The memorial is accessible at all times. However, at present visitors need a special permit by the Russian authorities since the former camp site is located in the border area.

Contact

Sch. Kaliningradskoje
238450 Mamonovo

Cracow, 1942, Maria Blitz (née Salz), later one of the survivors of the death march, in the Cracow ghetto, Stiftung Denkmal

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