Vulkan Memorial

Gedenkstätte Vulkan

Since 1998, a memorial commemorates the three Nazi camps that existed in Haslach in 1944/45 and the fate of the victims.

History

At the beginning of the 20th century, deposits of amphibolite rock were discovered near Haslach, which is mainly used in road and railway construction. In the course of mining from 1911 onwards, numerous tunnels were driven through the rock mass, some of them several hundred metres long.
In 1944, when the Allies regularly flew missions against German targets, the German leadership tried to relocate armaments production underground. Prisoners of war, forced labourers and concentration camp prisoners were used as labourers to an extent never seen before. At the same time, the front came closer and closer after the Allied invasion of France in the summer of 1944, so that the Natzweiler-Struthof and Schirmeck-Vorbruck camps in Alsace were evacuated.
From September 1944 onwards, three camps were established in Haslach with the purpose of producing engine parts in the tunnels for the Daimler-Benz company. The first camp, called Sportplatz (sports field), was set up as a satellite camp of Natzweiler concentration camp in a Wehrmacht camp shed on the edge of the town. The first 399 prisoners were mostly French resistance fighters, most of them being transferred through the Dachau concentration camp. Later 251 prisoners were added from the Flossenbürg concentration camp. The prisoners were used in the construction of roads and the expansion of tunnels. The prisoners had to cover the five-kilometre climb to the tunnels on foot every day. Many of them died of exhaustion and diseases, which were raging in the camp because of the poor hygienic conditions.
The second camp, »Vulkan« (volcano), existed from December 4 in a tunnel with 700 prisoners, most of them French or Soviet. The living and working conditions were catastrophic, the guards regularly abused the prisoners.
The third camp, »satellite camp Kinzigdamm«, was set up on December 10, 1944 in two barracks in the city area. The prisoners of this camp also had to conduct forced labour in the tunnels or in local businesses.

Haslach, 2010, Vulkan Memorial, Daniela Schaffart

Haslach, 2014, Paths of remembrance, Daniela Schaffart

Victims

Up to 1,700 prisoners from 21 nations were imprisoned in the three Haslach camps until their dissolution in spring 1945. The prisoners came from concentration camps, but also from other National Socialist forced camps. 223 prisoners of the three camps died of illness, exhaustion or maltreatment in Haslach. Many others died on the death marches after the dissolution of the camps in March/April 1945.

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

French troops captured Haslach on April 21, 1945. In 1946 the French army opened mass graves with the remains of 210 prisoners. They were ceremoniously reburied on a new cemetery for the Allies. In the following years, those who could be identified were transferred to their home countries. Today, the remaining 75 are buried in a grave of honour in the Haslach cemetery.
In 1947, members of the former guards were brought before a French military tribunal. SS-officer Karl Buck (1894-1977), responsible for the Vulkan camp and notorious for his brutality, was sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. In 1955 he was handed over to the German authorities, who released him and in 1957 discontinued all proceedings against him.
In 1948 the French military blew up the tunnels. In the 1950s, the French army used the grounds of the Vulkan camp as a munitions depot. In the 1970s a municipal landfill was established nearby.
The first commemorative event was organised in October 1970, when some 300 former prisoners, French resistance fighters and members of the Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime (VVN) met on the former site of the camp Sportplatz (sports field) and inaugurated a memorial plaque at the barracks. In 1979, the barrack was demolished and the plaque was attached to the market hall, which was built in its place.
Apart from a few committed citizens, hardly anyone on site was interested in the history of the camps in Haslach for decades. In the 1990s, however, on the initiative of two local politicians of the Social Democrats it was resolved that a memorial would be erected on the historic site. On July 25, 1998 the Vulkan Memorial was finally inaugurated just below the former quarry. The central element is a sunken cross surrounded by stones. The memorial was created by the Haslach artist Frieder Haser. Nearby, twelve information panels inform about the history of the camps and the fate of the prisoners.
Since its establishment, seven large commemoration ceremonies were held at the memorial with survivors of the camp and their family members.

Haslach, 1944, French prisoners of war who worked for the company Hartsteinwerke Vulkan, KZ-Gedenkstätte Vulkan

Haslach, 1944, Foreign labourers from the Netherlands, KZ-Gedenktsätte Vulkan

Possibilities

Guided tours on request

Open

The memorial is accessible at all times.

Contact

http://www.gedenkstaette-vulkan.de

info@gedenkstaette-vulkan.de

+49 (0)7832 2015

Breitestraße 4
77716 Haslach im Kinzigtal

Haslach, 1950, Former barrack of the camp Sportplatz (sports field) 5 years after the end of the war, KZ-Gedenkstätte Vulkan

Haslach, 2014, Inscription on the monument of the Vulcan Memorial, Daniela Schaffart

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