Schirmeck-Vorbruck Concentration Camp

Scope and content

The collection contains among others.:

Names register of persons who were taken to the Security Camp Vorbruck-Schirmeck; excerpt from the deaths register and grave reports, transport lists, documents relating to transfers of prisoner funds from different prisons to Schirmeck-Vorbruck, certificates of death, documents relating to requirements for prisoners for labor detail, prisoners lists

Also contains:

report on Security Camp Rotenfels (post-war report), prisoner and death lists Rotenfels

History of Concentration Camp Schirmeck-Vorbruck 1939-1944:

In the autumn of 1939 the French government allowed several wood barracks to be built on the outskirts of the La Broque community (dt.: Vorbruck) in Alsatian Breuschtal. They were intended to serve as accommodations for some of the civilians who had been evacuated following France’s declaration of war on the German Reich on 3 September 1939. However, because the majority of the some 600,000 people in total could find refuge in the southwestern area of France, the barracks were soon available for other purposes. The French Army took over the complex and set up an emergency ward and an infirmary there. After German troops marched into France in June 1940 and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine which followed, the existing barracks complex was re-formed on 2 August 1940 into a Security Camp and/or Re-education Camp, with the intended function of „educating“ and/or „re-educating“ oppositional Alsatians in accordance with ideals of National Socialism. In the Schirmeck Camp, a defined period of incarceration was planned for those Alsatians in particular who had stood up to the „Germanization“ of the Alsace-Mosel area, as envisaged by the National Socialists. Thus, speaking the French language, wearing a beret, protesting against the forced Germanization of one’s name or criticizing the National Socialists could be possible justification for being sent to the camp. Within a short period of time, people from numerous other nations were also to be found among the prisoners, e.g. Americans, Belgians, Germans, English, French, Polish, Romanians, Russians and Scandinavians. An estimated total of some 25,000 prisoners passed through the Schirmeck Camp, whereby on average presumably around 1,000 men and 250 women were imprisoned in the camp. The men had to work in maintenance of the camp or on road construction. The women worked primarily in the laundry as well as doing tasks involving sewing and patchwork. Outside of the camp there were various labor units in several stone quarries, in the forest as well as at different factories, where the prisoners as forced laborers were „rented out “. The day-to-day camp life of the prisoners was, in addition to the work, marked by violence and terror of the guards. For the time period from 26 August 1940 until10 November 1944 the camp administrators officially recorded 76 deaths. The true numbers are in all likelihood considerably higher. Estimates assume some 500 captives who were either murdered in the camp or who died there as a result of illnesses and abuse. In late August 1944 the dissolving of the camp was begun. In several different transports most of the prisoners were deported to places in Germany, among others to Rotenfels, Haslach and Sulz am Neckar. After the Allied forces had bombed strategically important areas in Breuschtal in November 1944, the last prisoner transport left the camp in the evening of 22 November 1944. Approx. 300 female prisoners remained, some of them finding refuge with the local residents in the Schirmeck surroundings the following day. On 24 November 1944 American soldiers liberated the camp.

Source: http://www.gedenkstaettenforum.de/nc/gedenkstaetten-rundbrief/rundbrief/news/sicherungslager_schirmeck_vorbruck/ [Latest access: 2012-08-15].