in detail
On May 1, 1933, Dr. Werner Best, Special Commissioner of the Hessian police, ordered a concentration camp to be erected for the state of Hessen in Osthofen near Worms. All residents of the state of Hesse who the police had arrested for political reasons and who were held longer than a week were to be interned there. The establishment of the concentration camp was founded on the basis of the executive order passed on February 28, 1933 by Reich President Hindenburg: the „Decree for the Protection of the People and the State,” which allowed the Nazis to take political opponents into “protective custody” without trial or evidence.
In truth, however, this concentration camp had already existed since early March 1933 and the first prisoners were brought there before the official opening. By March 6, a few prisoners from Osthofen had already arrived in the concentration camp. The first large transport with about 80 political protective custody prisoners had to walk from Worms to Osthofen under strict surveillance.
The SS-Sturmbannführer Karl d’Angelo, a native of Osthofen, was appointed director of the camp. The camp was at first guarded by SS and SA men from Worms and the surrounding area who had been appointed as assistance policemen. The SA men were replace by SS men from Darmstadt and Offenbach in the fall of 1933.
In establishing the only “early” concentration camp of the state of Hesse, Dr. Best had created one of the first regular state-run concentration camps while at the same time placing the struggle against opponents of the Nazi regime under the administration of his newly created political state police. Unlike other concentration camps, such as Dachau in Bavaria, no prisoners died at Osthofen. But the prisoners suffered from mistreatment, humiliation, illness, hard work and poor hygiene conditions. At least 3,000 prisoners were incarcerated in the camp. A prison term usually lasted four to six weeks, in some cases up to a year. A neighboring property with an abandoned wood mill and on occasion the Osthofen court prison were used to carry out “severe imprisonment.” The prisoners held in the “Old Wood Mill,” also called Camp II, were completely sealed off from the rest of the world and isolated from other prisoners. They were systematically terrorized and tortured. The Osthofen camp came to an end rather quickly. In Autumn 1933 Dr. Best was dismissed as Hesse Police Commissioner. In May 1934 the Bavarian police chief, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, commissioned the Dachau concentration camp commandant Theodor Eicke, to take over the existing concentration camps, to reorganize them and make them uniform. The Osthofen concentration camp was one of the last “early camps” to be closed down. 84 people were still held under protective custody in the state of Hesse at that time.
In 1991 the state of Rhineland-Pfalz purchased the buildings and grounds of the former concentration camp with the aim of setting up a Rhineland-Pfalz Documentation Center on National Socialism and Osthofen concentration camp memorial site.
The first important step was made with the opening of the permanent exhibition in the memorial in November 1996. A new, revised exhibition was opened in May 2004 on the first floor of the former concentration camp. Since 1994 written documents from other archives, photographs, eyewitness reports (both written and audio/video recordings) microfilm, and microfiche have been systematically collected, especially when relevant to the two former concentration camps in Rhinland Pfalz: the Osthofen camp near Worms and the Hinzert camp near Hermeskeil.
March 6, 1933
The vacated paper factory building belonging to Ludwig Ebert, an Osthofen Jew, becomes the first concentration camp in the Hessen region. Until 1934, political opponents and Jewish citizens from the nearby areas are interned there.
1936-1978
After the camp is closed, the building is used as a furniture factory.
1978
The community of survivors of the camp, formed in 1972, erects a memorial plaque on the former concentration camp exterior wall.
1989
The grounds are placed under memorial protection.
1991
The state of Rhineland-Pfalz buys the former paper factory with the intention of establishing a "Rhineland-Pfalz National Socialist Documentation Center/Osthofen Concentration Camp Memorial Museum".
1994
Maintenance and partial interior reconstruction measures are taken.
1996
Opening of the permanent exhibition "Rheinland-Pfalz: The period of National Socialism in our state" by the minister president Kurt Beck and Hans-Georg Meyer, director of the State Office for Political Education in Rheinland-Pfalz
1998
Special meeting at the memorial of the Rhineland-Pfälz Landtag on the day of commemoration of the victims of National Socialism, January 27, 1998
1999
Completion of the first renovations in the main building. A seminar room is operated by the State office for Political Education and the Sponsor Association Project Osthofen e.V.
2000
A five week long sculpture symposium takes place at the memorial site. Five stone monuments are produced.
2001
Extensive renovations of the memorial main building; the rooms of the Documentation Center are completed, a new exhibition is developed.
2002
The entire staff of the memorial work department of the Mainz State Office for Political Education moves to the memorial in Osthofen.
