Wolfenbüttel Prison Memorial

Gedenkstätte in der JVA Wolfenbüttel

Since 1990, a memorial in the Wolfenbüttel prison serves as a reminder of the executions which took place in the prison building between 1937 and 1945. During this period, at least 527 death sentences were carried out on non-German forced labourers, political prisonders, members of the Wehrmacht but also on German civilians on grounds such as the »decree against public enemies«.

History

From 1933 onwards, sentences were carried out in the Wolfenbüttel prison not only for classical criminal offences, but also on the grounds of special legislation enforced by the National Socialist regime. For example, political opponents of the regime were persecuted because of critical statements or illegal gatherings. Religious groups such as Jehovah's Witnesses were also affected. With the legislation becoming stricter in 1935, homosexual men were persecuted more rigorously as well. In 1938, the prison was used to hold Jewish men arrested during the November pogrom before they were transported on to the concentration camp Buchenwald.
Upon orders of the Reich Ministry of Justice, the Wolfenbüttel prison became the central execution site for several state judicial districts in Northern Germany in 1937. The guillotine was moved from the Hanover prison to Wolfenbüttel, and a metal working shop in the prison's courtyard was remodelled to be an execution site. The reason behind this was that the National Socialists had introduced legislation according to which even the most minor misdemeanour could be punishable by death. Especially the »decree against public enemies«, which was issued in 1939, and the »special decree for criminal law during war times« against all deemed to be »undermining military morale« placed actions critical of the regime under the death penalty. The judiciary began carrying out death sentences issued by civil and military courts; from 1941 on, the sentences were also carried out by hanging. German civilians were executed for »looting«, »listening to enemy radio stations« or »illegal butchering«, while members of the Wehrmacht were punished by death for »cowardice in the face of the enemy«, »desertion« or »self-mutilation«. Many of those executed were foreign forced labourers who were sentenced to death for misdemeanours such as stealing bread. Between 1937 and 1945, the National Socialist judiciary executed at least 527 people in Wolfenbüttel.

Wolfenbüttel, 1938, The prison's execution site, Gedenkstätte JVA-Wolfenbüttel, Carl Oberst

Wolfenbüttel, 2016, Former execution site, Gedenkstätte in der JVA Wolfenbüttel, Jesco Denzel

Victims

At least 527 people were executed in Wolfenbüttel, among them German civilians, members of the Wehrmacht and non-German forced labourers. About 70 men and women from the resistance movement in Belgium, France and the Netherlands were held captive as so-called Night and Fog prisoners (due to the fact that they were arrested in secret and transported to Germany) and executed.

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

After the war, the Wolfenbüttel execution site remained in operation: the British military administration handed down 67 death sentences to German war criminals and former non-German forced labourers who had breached decrees of the Allies between 1945 and 1947. The prison remained in existence and is currently administered by the state of Lower Saxony. In 1956, a memorial plaque to the victims of the National Socialist judiciary was affixed at the prison church. From the mid-1960s on, the former execution building housed delousing facilities; in the mid-1980s, there were plans to tear down the building. Following protests from within Germany and abroad, these plans were abandoned.
In April 1990, the Lower Saxon Ministry of Justice set up a documentation and memorial site to the victims of Wolfenbüttel. In 1999, a permanent exhibition followed with the title »Judicial System in National Socialism«. After a fundamental renovation in the years 2014 to 2016, new interactive and multimedia elements can be used for educational purposes. The former execution building is accessible also in which the 527 executed women and men are commemorated by name.
Since 2004, the Wolfenbüttel memorial has been incorporated into the Lower Saxon Memorials Foundation.

Wolfenbüttel, 2016, Names of those executed between 1937 and 1945, Gedenkstätte in der JVA Wolfenbüttel, Jesco Denzel

Wolfenbüttel, 2016, Former execution building, Gedenkstätte in der JVA Wolfenbüttel, Lukkas Busche

Possibilities

Permanent exhibition with interactive elements, replies to individual enquiries, guided tours, wide range of educational offers, advanced training for teachers

Open

Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Contact

http://wolfenbuettel.stiftung-ng.de

wolfenbuettel@stiftung-ng.de

+49 (0)5331 935 50 10

Am Herzogtore 13
38300 Wolfenbüttel

Wolfenbüttel, 2016, Multimedia elements for educational purposes, Gedenkstätte in der JVA Wolfenbüttel, Jesco Denzel

Wolfenbüttel, 2016, View of one of the former prison cells, Gedenkstätte in der JVA Wolfenbüttel, Jesco Denzel

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