Trutzhain Memorial and Museum

Gedenkstätte und Museum Trutzhain

Between 1939 and 1945, located in what is today the township of Trutzhain was a prisoner of war camp, the Stalag IX A Ziegenhain. The Wehrmacht incarcerated POWs from all European countries at war with Germany in this camp. Especially Soviet prisoners of war and, from 1943 on, Italian military internees were subjected to horrific prison conditions. Today, the site is home to a memorial which documents the history of the camp up until the establishment of Trutzhain on its premises and honours the fates of the camp internees.

History

At the beginning of the Second World War, the Wehrmacht set up numerous prisoner of war camps. So-called »Stalags« were meant for non-commissioned personnel, separate camps, »Oflags«, were established for officers, and transit camps were set up close to the front line, from where POWs were transferred to other camps in the German Reich. Prisoners of war held captive at Stalags and capable of working were deployed in forced labour. Each Stalag usually deployed several labour commandos. At times these commandos were located in separate camps if the distance to the work site was too large.
In 1944, there were over 50,000 prisoners of war in Stalag IX A Ziegenhain; the majority was deployed in the camp's over 3,000 labour commandos. Several commandos worked in the arms industry in Kassel and in munition factories in Allendorf (today: Stadtallendorf). French POWs were the largest prisoner group. In the summer of 1941, there were 32,000 of them Stalag IX A and in the labour commandos of Defence District IX. The Wehrmacht accommodated Soviet prisoners of war in a separate part of the camp in which the conditions were much harsher than those of other prisoner groups. From 1943 on, the Wehrmacht increasingly interned members of the Italian military. The Italians – considered »traitors« – were admitted into the »Russenlager«, the part of the camp reserved for Soviet prisoners.
After the Stalag was liberated, American troops set up »Civil Interment Camp No. 95« on the camp premises and interned members of the Wehrmacht, the NSDAP, the SS, the Waffen-SS and the SA there. Between 1946 and 1947, the camp also served as a Displaced Persons camp for Jews from Eastern Europe. Later, German refugees from Germany's former eastern territories were accommodated here. In 1951, they established the Trutzhain community on the former camp premises.

Schwalmstadt, 2004, Entrance to the Trutzhain Memorial and Museum, Gedenkstätte und Museum Trutzhain, Waltraud Burger

Schwalmstadt, 2002, Trutzhain Memorial and Museum, Waltraud Burger, Gedenkstätte und Museum Trutzhain

Victims

Apart from French POWs, the prisoners of Stalag IX A Ziegenhain came from Poland, the Soviet Union, Italy and Serbia. In addition, there were small groups of Dutchmen, Belgians and Americans held captive. Evidence shows that several Soviet POWs were selected by members of the Wehrmacht and brought to the Buchenwald concentration camp to be shot. Numerous executions took place in the labour commandos of Stalag IX A. The Polish and West Europeans POWs who died in the camp were buried on a cemetery on the camp premises; the bodies of Soviet and Serbian POWs as well as Italian military internees were buried on a cemetery located in a forest.
According to research, the deaths of 400 Soviet POWs in the Ziegenhain camp can be traced, yet the research is not yet complete and it is assumed that the death toll is in fact much higher.

The entry to power of the National Socialists in 1933 heralded the state persecution of opponents of the regime, Jews, Roma – who were classed as »gypsies« -, the sick and many other groups. For the first time, anti-semitism became part of the government policy of a modern state and the persecution of all groups was progressively heightened. The process was characterised by the interplay between state regulation, violence from supporters of the regime and rabble-rousing propaganda from the press. The acts of terror against the Jews in November 1938 (»The Night of the Broken Glass«), culminating in around one hundred deaths, marked the prelude to the complete exclusion and murder of the Jewish minority. With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, large parts of Europe fell under German control. In Eastern Europe in particular a multi-tiered system of camps and extermination sites was established, in which the SS murdered up to six million Jews, among them around 165,000 German Jews. It is estimated that around seven million Germans lost their lives in the war, including almost 3.5 million civilians. Around 28 million residents of the occupied Soviet Union (both soldiers and civilians) and three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death. These groups are still barely commemorated in Germany. Germany came under Allied occupation in 1945 and 1949 saw the foundation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), who had very different cultures of remembrance. The GDR profiled itself as an »antifascist« state. The former concentration camps at Buchenwald, Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen became »National Memorials« and primarily documented the communist resistance during the war. In the Federal Republic, the dominant memory was initially of the victims of Allied bombing raids and those who had fled or been expelled from their homes in the former territory of the Third Reich. It was left to specific groups to remember Nazi persecution, the Holocaust or the resistance. With the exception of the war crimes trials, there was no public discussion of perpetrators or involvement in crimes. However, the situation was to change in the mid-1960s, when the statute of limitations for murder was lifted following a lengthy debate. Also during this period, memorial sites were established at former concentration camps (1965: Dachau and Neuengamme; 1966: Bergen-Belsen) and the German Resistance Memorial Centre was opened in 1968 in West Berlin. However, it was not until the 1980s that a diverse and often small-scale landscape of memory developed as the result of local initiatives. Following German unification in 1990, a national memorial site concept was developed and there was a major review of German sites of memory. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin was inaugurated in 2005. The Topography of Terror, a comprehensive documentation of National Socialist crimes and perpetrators, has opened with a new centre in May 2010; the documentation centre »Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation« followed suit in 2021. In the meantime, central memorials in Berlin have been erected to commemorate further groups of Nazi victims as well: the murdered Sinti and Roma, the patients murdered in the context of the Nazi’s »Euthanasia« killings and the persecuted homosexuals. The German victims of National Socialist terror in the former Eastern territories of the Third Reich were forgotten by both German states after the end of the war. For decades, memory of these victims was only preserved by West German associations for Germans born in these territories and it mainly excluded the period from 1933 to 1945.

Remembrance

In 1983, a »Museum for Peace« was established in Trutzhain, which is today a district of Schwalmstadt. It was felt, however, that the exhibition did not present enough information about the history of the various camps located on the premises until 1951. Following a decision of the city council assembly, preparations were made to redesign the exhibition and the historic site at the end of the 1990s. The memorial was opened in 2003 after a new permanent exhibition had been completed. The exhibition presents comprehensive information about the camps once located on the area of the Trutzhain community and about all victim groups. Since 2005, it is possible to follow a historic trail on the large premises of the memorial site, which allows visitors to view the 37 remaining camp barracks that today for the most part serve as residential housing. This includes the former commandant's barracks, the barracks of the Abwehr and guards as well as the infirmary, various workshops and the camp kitchen. The building which today houses the museum was a guard room prior to 1945. For many years it was a residential house, then it stood derelict for a while until it was finally restored to its original condition. The two cemeteries on which the POWs who died in the camp were buried are also part of the memorial site.

Ziegenhain, November 1942, Soviet prisoners of war at Stalag IX A, photo taken by a guard, Gedenkstätte und Museum Trutzhain

Schwalmstadt, 2002, Memorial with former barracks (today residential houses) in the background, Gedenkstätte und Museum Trutzhain, Waltraud Burger

Possibilities

Guided tours and large groups by appointment, film screenings, archive/library, seminar room for extracurricular teaching

Open

Tuesday to Thursday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., Friday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., every second and fourth Sunday of the month 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Contact

http://www.gedenkstaette-trutzhain.de

info@gedenkstaette-trutzhain.de

+49 (0)6691 710 662

Ziegenhain, 1942, Main street in the Stalag IX A Ziegenhain camp, Gedenkstätte und Museum Trutzhain

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