GERMANY - Langenstein – Zwieberge Memorial

The memorial is dedicated to the more than 7.000 inmates of Langenstein-Zwieberge Concentration Camp who had to perform forced labour constructing a tunnel system designed to house an underground factory for war plane production. About 4.000 of them did not survive. Today, the memorial is an international place of remembrance, political education and historical research.

Brief history of Langenstein-Zwieberge 

1) Buchenwald Subcamp “Malachit”

   Langenstein-Zwieberge was established in April 1944 as a subcamp of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. The aim was to construct a tunnel system of an overall length of 13 km with an area of almost 70.000 m² for war plane production. Two major developments lead to this: the overall labour shortage in Germany since the beginning of the war and the destruction of armament factories by allied air forces since 1943. Hence, underground factories safe from allied air raids were to be built by exploiting concentration camp inmates as forced labour. The Langenstein-Zwieberge project was code-named “B2” or “Malachit” (malachite). A huge network of private construction companies was set up to plan, supervise and execute the construction of the tunnel system and the necessary infrastructure above ground such as a railway connection – and also the large camp for housing the prisoners, which was dubbed “Camp Zwieberge” (“two mountains”) after a hill with two peaks nearby.

The SS provided Concentration Camp prisoners as workforce against payment. Thus, large amounts of money were made by both the companies, paid by the German state, and the SS, paid by the companies, with prisoners not seeing a single penny.

Working conditions were extremely harsh: prisoners had to work in shifts of eight or twelve hours without breaks and without proper security equipment. Accidents leading to injuries or death were frequent. Beatings by both guards and foremen were widespread as reported by survivors. In addition to the long shifts, prisoners had to walk on foot from the camp to the construction sites and back, and had to stand several hours for roll call twice a day. This time regime resulted in insufficient sleep time. Food rations were insufficient from the beginning. As a result of these conditions, at least 175 prisoners died from Mai to December 1944. The death rate was constantly on a rise.

In Winter 1945, several Buchenwald subcamps were closed or reduced in size; the “excess prisoners” deemed no longer fit to work were sent to selected camps, Langenstein-Zwieberge being one of them. At the same time, the already insufficient food rations were reduced further. This resulted in a rapidly increasing death rate in the camp, with malnutrition being the most important cause of death. In February, more than one thousand prisoners were brought to Langenstein-Zwieberge from the dissolved large Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen camp complexes in occupied Poland. The number of prisoners in camp Zwieberge thus reached its peak with more than 5.900 in late February. The death rate exploded, leading to 1.565 dead from January to mid-April 1945. About 900 of them were buried in mass graves next to and in the camp.

Shortly before the arrival of allied troops, on 9 April 1945, 3.000 prisoners had to depart on a “Death March”, which probably only 500 survived.

US-Army troops liberated the Camp on January 12. About 1.000 of the liberated 1.400 inmates were hospitalized, about 70 of them died in hospital.

2) Memorial: Mahn- und Gedenkstätte 1949 – 1989 

   Since July 1945, Halberstadt and Langenstein were situated in the Soviet Zone of Occupation and later the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Monuments were erected on the sites of the mass graves and inaugurated with a mass rally on 11 September 1949. The ceremonies under the motto “Days of Fighting for peace” mark the founding of Langenstein-Zwieberge memorial, making it one of Germany’s oldest Concentration Camp memorials. A tree used for executions by the SS, dubbed “Pine of Death”, was marked with a commemorative plaque. Since then annual commemorations took place on every 2nd Sunday in September, marked in the GDR as “International Day of Commemorating the Victims of Fascism and of Fighting Fascism and Imperialist War”.

At the end of the 1960s, the burial grounds were redesigned and the memorial became “Mahn- und Gedenkstätte” (“Site of admonishing and commemoration”). The mass graves were covered with a monumental parade ground for mass events, serving the purpose of showcasing anti-fascism as one of the ideological pillars of the GDR. Mass rallies were organized on commemoration days, gathering inter alia soldiers or children organized in the Young and Thälmann pioneer organizations for oath taking ceremonies. The memorial also held contact to survivors, mostly with a communist background, and conducted research into resistance in the Concentration Camp. Over the years, additional commemoration monuments were placed on the former camp grounds. In 1976, a memorial building housing an exhibition was erected.

The unfinished tunnel system in the Thekenberge hills became a military area in the late 1970s. 

3) After 1989

   In 2001, a new permanent exhibition was opened in the memorial building. Since 2007, the memorial is part of the Saxony-Anhalt Memorials Foundation. Since 2011, the burial ground were redesigned and inaugurated with survivors and their relatives attending. The redesign with name plaques allows for individual remembrance. The military moved out of the tunnel in 1994, which since then is private property. The memorial has partial access for educational projects and guided tours. In 2005, a 120-metre section of the tunnel system was opened to visitors.

Link to the Holocaust/ WWII 

   As Germany had been declared “free of Jews” in 1943 by the national socialist leadership, no men persecuted as Jews were among the prisoners sent from Buchenwald Main Camp to Langenstein-Zwieberge in 1944. The first were brought to Langenstein-Zwieberge in February 1945. They had been forced to work in subcamps of Auschwitz, many in the Blechhammer subcamp, and Gross-Rosen before. Having survived the death marches and transports from there to Buchenwald main camp, they were transported further to Langenstein-Zwieberge. Others came from Buchenwald subcamp Niederorschel. Together with the prisoners came SS-Guards from Auschwitz.

Langenstein-Zwieberge thus became one of the places where men persecuted as Jews whom the National Socialist regime intended to exploit as forced laborers before killing them were gathered in the final stage of the war. As the SS cynically let Langenstein-Zwieberge prisoners starve to death, the racial hierarchy was no longer decisive for chances of survival in the camp. How many prisoners persecuted as Jews survived the death march is unknown.

Langenstein-Zwieberge was one of twenty projects managed by an SS-Sonderstab (Special Staff) within the SS-Construction Department, or office C of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Head of the SS-Sonderstab was Obersturmführer Wilhelm Lübeck. Before being sent to Halberstadt, he had acted as head of SS-Bauabteilung in occupied Warsaw. In this position, he was responsible for bulding the Warsaw Ghetto wall, the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto after the uprising in 1943, and the subsequent construction of Warsaw Concentration Camp. He also played a significant role in the construction of Treblinka death camp, were approximately 800.000 people were murdered. The highest-ranking SS-officer for Langenstein-Zwieberge thus was a man responsible for constructing mass murder facilities in the Holocaust.

Purpose and mission of the institution 

   As part of the Saxony-Anhalt Memorials Foundation, our statutory mandate is to contribute through our work to preserving and passing on knowledge about the unique crimes committed during the Nazi dictatorship. We understand ourselves as a non-partisan actor and partner of civil society. In this capacity, we contribute to the development and shaping of a democratic culture of remembrance in our federal state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Activities: Examples of 1-2 main projects for young people 

   Each year, young people from various types of school spends three months of their free time researching and reflecting on a topic set by family members of camp survivors. As an artistic and creative translation of this topic, they develop a theatrical performance that is presented to the public on the anniversary of the liberation.

Annually for the last four years, another group of youth explored the former camp grounds from different perspectives, taking photographs of the memorial and finding words to express their personal views. The result is presented as an exhibition of compositions of words and images, dubbed “Visual Language – Photography and Words”.

Why is your institution involved in Neshama 

   NESHAMA is an excellent opportunity for the Langenstein-Zwieberge Memorial to improve international relations on the level of student exchange and intensify its network with memorials throughout Europe. For youth from our small-town and rural area, it provides a unique chance both to understand the crimes of National Socialism in their European dimension and complexity as well as creating ties to youth from other European countries.