Holocaust Memorials - Monuments, Museums and Institutions in Commemoration of Nazi Victims

in detail

Because the Gestapo prison was overcrowded, the Sarbrücken Gestapo (residing in the north wing of the palace) used a barrack camp on Neuen Bremm as an (extended) police prison from 1943 until the end of 1944. The camp, located directly on the busy street heading to Forbach, was situated vis à vis a popular restaurant that has since closed down. The Alstinger public road separated the camp for men from the women’s camp that had been added in 1943. The camp grounds that were secured by barbed wire and watchtowers measured 150 x 80 meters in size. The narrow prison blocks, special purpose buildings and guard room were located in the central block. There was a static water basin at the center of both camps.

For prisoners that had been apprehended by the Saarbrücken Gestapo or who were handed over to them by officials in France, the camp was mostly a way station on their way to a concentration camp in Germany or to the Natzweiler concentration camp in the Vosges mountains. It is not known how many prisoners were incarcerated at one time. Witnesses report that in the male camp an average of 400 to 500 people were crowded together. It has not been possible to establish the entire number of prisoners that passed through the camp during its existence.

The largest prisoner group came from France. It included resistance fighters, individuals arrested for reasons of preventive terror, people from Lorraine and Alsace, who had resisted the annexation policies, relatives of deserters from Lorraine and a few Jews, mostly from Drancy (the largest Paris collection camp) who were most likely deported from the Saarbrücken main train station to Auschwitz or to other extermination camps. Two English officers from France --agents that had parachuted and were captured-- were also held there.

The next largest group consisted of Wehrmacht and civil administration forced laborers who were forcibly recruited from the Soviet Union and Poland. As it was the case throughout the Reich territory, large numbers of foreign workers also worked in the Saarland industry. (By mid-1944 the number was almost 50,000 and prisoners-of-war amounted to ca. 80,000). Workers who committed the slightest violation were handed over by the businesses to the Gestapo where they were often maltreated and sent to a concentration camp. According to the “völkisch” ideology and the extermination policies against the Soviet Union, the so-called “eastern workers” were treated especially harshly.

The third victim group was made up of Germans: emigrants from France, including members of the resistance movement and former members of the International Brigade, people arrested for political offenses, so-called “social outsiders” and victims of preventive terror. After the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler, large numbers of former representatives and functionaries of the KPD, SPD and Center parties were arrested. Prisoners from the region were generally treated better than others.

The camp commandant was a Sarbrücken police commissioner and Unterstürmführer of the SS. A police official and two secretaries assisted him. The entire additional administration and guard personnel consisted of civilians. For a time 20-30 so-called “ethnic Germans” who had settled from Rumania also worked there. Two Polish prisoners rose to the position of “Capo.” The majority, however --and this is what is remarkable about the history of the camp-- were ordinary people from the Saarland. Due to a shortage of labor, invalids and pensioners were called up for emergency service and people who had lost their work as a result of the war were also hired by the Gestapo as assistants. Among the watch guards were ten ordinary staff workers or freelance worker, 17 workers (including seven retired miners) and two housewives. About one-third of the guard staff was over 60 years old and the average age was about 50. Three-fourths were fathers, often with many children. One member of the guard staff lost his son through a death sentence of the People’s Court. But he nonetheless still participated in the maltreatment of prisoners.

The administration and guard personnel of the Neue Bremm police prison that worked in the men’s camp were known to be even more brutal than the deaths’ head division of the Waffen-SS in the concentration camps. Not only were the prisoners’ rations stolen so that they often starved; prisoners were brutally exposed to the heat and cold, and they were beaten, harassed and tortured in the most horrible ways. Even the water basin at the center of the camp was used as a torture site. The prisoners were forced to stand attention in front of it for hours. They had to squat with their arms crossed behind their head, to jump around the pond or drag heavy objects around it. Many were thrown into the water below freezing temperatures. Many drowned. Other prisoners were beaten or shot to death. There is evidence of 82 cases of death at Neue Bremm: 43 Frenchmen, 15 citizens of the Soviet Union, 9 Poles, 4 Germans including a women, who died as the result of a diptheria epidemic. Those who were murdered were between the ages of 17 and 64. Whether all the cases of death, in particular those of forced laborers from the east, were registered, is unknown. But it is certain that countless, perhaps hundreds, of prisoners died during transport to or shortly after their arrival in the concentration camps.

In May and June of 1946, a trial took place before the Tribunal Général du Gouvernement militaire de la zone Francaise D’occupation in Rastatt against over 30 former guard personnel. Fourteen of them were sentenced to death and shot: three Gestapo officials, a Capo, and ten ordinary men. It is striking that of the ten mainly responsible civilians, only two were members of the NSDAP whereas of the other twenty men, eight were Party members or belonged to other Nazi organizations. Even the two NSDAP members who were labeled by the court as strongly politically active - both were block wardens – were not among the those who were mainly responsible. This suggests that the Nazi ideology played only a minimal role in the perpetrators’ motivation. The carpenter Eduard Leibfried from Aschbach did not participate in the crimes and was imprisoned for two weeks as a result. The example of Liebfried proves that even under the conditions of Nazi tyranny, humane action was possible. The Rastatt court honored him for his extreme kindness and deeply religious conviction.

 

2. The camp grounds from 1945-2000

The barracks camp was torn down in 1945. The flooring and the foundations of the barracks disappeared under the ground that is now covered over with grass. The area, which had previously only contained a nursery, over time was developed into a commercial area that is found typically on the outskirts of cities. Most recently, a hotel company built a business chain hotel on the grounds of the women’s camp (with a swimming pool close to the former water basin).

A monument erected in 1947 by a committee of French prisoners and the high commissioner displays a high column in the form of a bayonet and a commemorative plaque for the resistance movement recalls the military victories of France and the heroism of resistance, but not the suffering of the victims and the brutality of the perpetrators. The bayonet column was originally integrated into the traffic travelling between Saarbrücken and the French border and could therefore not to be overlooked by passing travelers, but it lost its connection to the camp grounds when the line of the street was altered. As a result the passersby no longer recognize its original purpose. At the former camp grounds, long periods of decay and neglect have been interspersed with short moments of action to preserve and design the remains as a memorial site. In 1978, for example, after protests against the deteriorating conditions of the grounds, the weathered water tank of the men’s camp --until then the only remaining authentic remnant-- was covered with a new layer of concrete. Three double-faced panels from the 1980s display text about the existence of the camp and its victims but the information is no longer up to date with the current research that has been conducted by Rainer Hudemann, Elisabeth Thalhofer (see literature references). Neue Bremm, for example, is referred to as the “official concentration of the police prison.”

Another panel that was erected in the 1980s with a quote taken from an interview with a prisoner is part of a historical educational path that leads to the nearby Jewish cemetery and the Spicherer Höhen. The historical connection between these two sites, however, is not explained.

In 1999 the Saarbücken state capital resolved to have the foundations of the barracks excavated in order to make the rest of the camp visible again. The Neue Bremm Gestapo Camp Memorial opened on May 8, 2004.

1943/1944
The barracks camp is used by the Gestapo local branch office located in the Saarbrücken Palace. Between 600-800 prisoners are incarcerated here. The names of 82 murdered prisoners have been identified.

1945
The barracks camp is torn down

1975
A hotel is built upon the terrain of the women