Hinzert Special SS Camp

Scope and content

The collection contains among others:

Prisoner number lists, labor detail of prisoners, lists concerning “French protective custody prisoners unfit to serve”, correspondence, letters of the Gestapo, names lists, prisoner-list of commando Mainz-Finthen, prisoner transfers and releases as well as a catalog of valuables and cash the prisoners took with them, SS personal files.

History of SS Special Camp Hinzert 1939-1945:

The SS Special Camp/CC Hinzert, where a total of more than 13,000 men from 20 countries were imprisoned, existed from 1939 until 1945.Originally constructed as a police detention camp, it later became a “labor reformatory camp” for workers of the Organisation Todt (OT), who were considered criminal by the National. Socialists and used as forced laborers on the Westwall. After the police detention camp was disbanded in early summer of 1940 and SS Special Camp Hinzert was placed under the Inspector of Concentration Camps (IKL) on 1 July 1940, the camp served as a “transit camp”. From then on, next to “Westwall” workers convicted of criminal offenses, the SS also imprisoned in Hinzert Soviet prisoners of war, forced laborers and increasingly persons who criticized the regime. Among them especially were Luxembourgian, Belgian, French, and Dutch resistance fighters, who had been deported from Hinzert to Buchenwald, Natzweiler or Dachau. As of 1943 Polish civil workers were also detained here, who, within the scope of a planned inclusion in the German “people’s community” from the “Race and Settlement Department”, were evaluated regarding their ethnic heritage. Originally intended for approx. 550 prisoners, the main camp had by then become completely overcrowded, with 1,200 to 1,500 people held captive there. But it was not only the intolerable accommodations und sorely insufficient hygienic facilities which accounted for the catastrophic living conditions. The prisoners were repeatedly subjected to cruel and vicious abuse by the SS guard units. It was not uncommon for inmates to be shot dead, either individually or in groups, or murdered by lethal injection. On 7 February 1942 the camp was placed under the Economic and Administrative Main Office of the SS (WHVA). As was the case in other concentration camps, the prisoners in CC Hinzert were put to work doing forced labor in the German industry. On a formal level the SS Special Camp/CC Hinzert retained its autonomy, until it was allocated to Concentration Camp Buchenwald am 21 November 1944. Whether the decreed subordination was actually put into practice remains unclear. The camp existed until March 1945, when, with American troops approaching, it was partially evacuated. Most of the prisoners were forced to set out on a foot march, under guard, towards Buchenwald.

Source: http://www.ns-dokuzentrum-rlp.de/index.php?id=259 [Latest access 2012-08-02] and http://www.memorialmuseums.org/denkmaeler/view/229/Gedenkstätte-SS-Sonderlager-/-KZ-Hinzert [Latest access.2012-08-02].