in detail
On the upper Seestrasse a subcamp of the Natzweiler concentration camp (Elsass) was run by the SS from spring 1944 to April 1945. The camp contained prisoners from 24 European countries. Most of them came from Poland, USSR, France, Hungary, the Balkans and Germany. The prisoners worked almost exclusively for the "Presswerk Leonberg", a factory of the Messerschmitt AG in Augsburg.
In April 1945 the machinery was moved and the camp was evacuated due to the advancing French troops. A mass grave on the Blosenberg was left behind for the prisoners who died under the terrible conditions of imprisonment and work.
Commemoration of the concentration camp and forced labor in Leonberg led over the years to an ensemble of sites of remembrance and information dispersed throughout the entire city and only in part recognizable through information panels. The reason for the dispersal lies in the special history of the city during the last years of the war when Leonberg turned into a “city under the spell of rearmament.” Thus in Leonberg, like in other places, there is not just one single place of memory but instead in a sense a “great work of art” consisting of many places of memory.
In 2001 the “Path of Memory” was dedicated. It includes six stations: the Seestrasse Cemetery (grave of concentration camp prisoners), the Samariten Foundation (the subcamp of the Naztweiler concentration camp that was erected in December 1944 for “newcomers”), the Blosenberg church (memorial book with the names of the prisoners who died in Leonberg), Fliederstraße/ Seestraße (the subcamp of the Natzweiler concentration camp erected in April 1944 for “oldtimers” ), the Engelbergautobahntunnel (productions site of the Messerschmitt Presswerk company and Blosenberg (former mass grave).
On May 8, 2005, 60 years after liberation, the concentration camp memorial initiative erected a wall of names designed by Johannes Kares in front of an authentic site of forced labor, the old Engelbergtunnel. Fifteen steel plates engraved with the names of the 2892 known concentration camp prisoners and 16 Gestapo prisoners and forced laborers hang on the 25 meter wide wall. In this way the over 4,000 concentration camp prisoners and forced laborers of the SS run Leonberg concentration are commemorated.
