Moringen Concentration Camp and "Jugendschutzlager"/ Protective Custody Camp for Juveniles

The collection contains among others:

Personal files of prisoners from the women’s “protective custody” camp Moringen (containing primarily prisoner registration forms, medical examination forms, “protective custody” arrest warrant, as well as correspondence with the admitting government office and release orders), various documents concerning prisoners, “health pamphlets”, correspondence concerning: founding of “protective custody” camp Moringen, administration, financing, camp inspection, arrivals, inmate categories, status reports, placement and rations, work deployment, medical care, surveillance, releases; orders of the Reich minister of the Interior Berlin, report on the inspection of the “youth protective custody” camp Moringen, excerpt from the ministry pamphlet of the Reich- and Prussian Ministry of the Interior (MBLIV), various documents concerning corrective training in the Third Reich, the juvenile law and the detention of adolescents in “youth protective custody” camps.

History of Concentration Camp Moringen 1933-1945:

Moringen is a small town in the south of Lower Saxony, around 20 km away from Göttingen. The concentration camp was located in the rooms and on the grounds of the Moringen “workhouse” and came about within the framework of the so-called “wild camps”, which were created in the first months or even weeks of the Nazi regime in cellars or community centers, aboard ships or in vacant factory buildings. The establishing of CC Dachau as a “model camp” in March 1933 led Heinrich Himmler Theodor Eicke, as of June 1933 Commandant in Dachau, to order in May 1934 the organization of the concentration camps be done according to the “Dachau model”. Also affected by this was CC Moringen, which, as one of the “wild camps”, existed beyond the first weeks, resp. months, of Nazi rule.

In April 1933, the concentration camp was set up in the rooms of the so-called “regional work house” in Moringen, and which, albeit under changing stipulations, remained in place until 1945. Workhouses were a 19th century institution; in the approx. 50 facilities existing in Germany socially conspicuous individuals were placed for “correction”.

On 11 April 1933 the first people were brought to the CC, primarily members of the political opposition. The prisoners came largely from the province of Hannover. They were guarded by more than 50 men of the Security Branch and the SS, as well as by the police. On 21 June 1933 the majority of the prisoners went on a 5-day hunger strike against the internment and the prison conditions.

In June 1933 CC Moringen had its own “women’s protective custody department”. The first female CC-prisoners were placed there together with inmates of the work house already there. What at first had been a relatively low number of female prisoners climbed to more than 140 in November 1933. Besides political opponents of National Socialism, it was primarily Jehova’s Witnesses as well as Jewish re-emigrants and women accused of having committed so-called “race defilement” who were deported to CC Moringen. Parallel to this, the SS transferred the male prisoners to other CCs, such as Emslandlager, Oranienburg, and Brandenburg. After the “protective custody department” for women in CC Brauweiler near Cologne was closed, Moringen was made into the central women’s CC for Prussia. 1,350 women were imprisoned in CC Moringen between 1933 and 1938. After the CC was disbanded in late 1938, the women were sent in three separate transports to the women‘s CC Lichtenburg. From there many of them were later deported to CC Ravensbrück.

In September 1939 Reinhard Heydrich made the first demand for a camp exclusively for the internment of “scruffy and antisocial” youth. Heinrich Himmler gave his approval and so, in the spring of 1940, the Reich Criminal Police Department was contracted to establish such camps. In June 1940 the youth-CC Moringen for male adolescents was opened; in 1942 it received its counterpart for girls: das KZ Uckermark located near the KZ Ravensbrück. The boys who were sent to the “police youth-custody camp” Moringen were between 12 and 22 years old. An official request to have an adolescent sent to a youth-CC could be made by schools, instructors, doctors, the HJ (Hitler Youth) and the BDM (League of German Girls). “Reasons” were, for example, refusing to join the HJ or the BDM, or to do “proper” service, refusal to work, “unruliness”, “kin liability” in the case of political opposition of the parents or one’s own opposition, belonging to the “swing youth”, homosexuality, promiscuity or physical and mental illness. Between 1940 and 1945 some 1,400 adolescents were imprisoned in the Youth-CC Moringen. The young prisoners were deported to Moringen from Germany, Austria and also from countries under Nazi-Germany occupation, e. g. Luxemburg or Slovenia. By the SS making use of terror, forced labor and hunger, the young people were to be broken and/or “re-educated”.

In 1941 watch towers and a barracks camp, surrounded by barbed wire, were constructed on the workhouse grounds. Two outlying camps, one in an underground ammunition factory (as of summer 1944) and one in Berlin-Weißensee (as of summer 1943) are proof that this CC was not organized in the same way as other camps of the Nazis. Until 1944 Criminal Counsellor und SS man Karl Dieter was the Commandant in Moringen, where he was assisted by 120 guards, as well as civilian employees and administrative officials. From 1941 on, “criminal biologists” were active in CC Moringen. Dr. Dr. Robert Ritter, since 1936 head of the “Department for Research on Race Hygiene” of the Reich Department of Health, headed the “racial-biological registration” of Sinti and Roma in Germany. In both Moringen and Uckermark Ritter, as “Head of Criminal Biology”, together with his staff, tried to substantiate their hereditary-biological theses/ideas about “asocial” and criminal” behavior. By using pseudoscientific, “statistical” data taken from CC Moringen, the sterilization or even killing of certain social groups should be given a “reputable” foundation. Ritter implemented a cynical system of “differentiation“ in both of the youth-CCs, i.e. the adolescents were assigned to specific blocks according to “hereditary-biological” principles – the observation block (Block B), the block of the “unsuitables” (Block U), the block of the “troublemakers” (Block S), the block of the “deadbeats” (Block D), the block of the “occasional deadbeats” (Block G), the block of the “doubtfully educable” (Block F), the block of the “possibly educable” (Block E) and the Stapo block (Block ST), with those youth who had been categorized as being political-oppositional. Depending on which Block they were assigned to, the young people were faced with the possible threat of either being transferred to another CC, of forced sterilization or even being institutionalized. More than 20 cases of forced sterilization and 89 deaths have been vouched for.

In March 1945 approx. 250 adolescents were forced to join the Wehrmacht. In early April the CC Moringen was cleared out/emptied; only those who were severely ill were left behind. The Death March set out towards the Harz region; the SS left the young prisoners behind, however, when the US Army started approaching. The adolescents were liberated near Lochtum and Appenrode.

The “work house”, including its barracks, was converted into a DP-Camp for Polish people; the Americans returned it to the State of Lower Saxony in August 1947. Today a psychiatric hospital is located there.

Robert Ritter became city doctor in the Municipal Health Department in Frankfurt/Main in 1947. There he was responsible for the “juvenile support office” and the “Welfare Office for emotionally disturbed and mentally ill persons”. The investigations of the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor, begun in 1948, didn’t make any significant progress, due to the fact that the witness testimonies of Sinti and Roma were given only scant consideration. Ritter claimed that he knew nothing about Sinti und Roma being deported to Auschwitz. In 1950 the investigative proceedings were closed.

Author: Susanne Urban, former Head of Research Branch, ITS