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The editors of the new catalog: Anja Henschel, Dr.
Gabriele Hammermann and Albert Knoll (from left).
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The Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial has the newly published catalog for the special exhibition “Traces of Time.
“The Allach subcamp complex” is presented.
“We want to make the soil speak as a witness,” explained the historian Dr.
Jochen Haberstroh from the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation at the presentation.
At the event, some of the approximately 1,000 finds that had been “snatched from oblivion” during archaeological excavations by the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation in 2016 and 2017 in the Aussenlanger Allach concentration camp were also on display, as Karl Freller, director of the Bavarian Foundation, put it Memorials formulated.
He emphasized that they wanted to make these locations “visible to the population”.
The Allach subcamp was a labor camp for the BMW company, which produced aircraft parts for the Nazi regime.
More than 20,000 prisoners had to live and work under inhumane conditions in the area, which covered around two thirds of the concentration camp roof area.
They had to build the living barracks themselves.
Prisoners repeatedly died due to hunger, overwork and torture.
15 skeletons were also found in Allach during archaeological excavations in 2016 and 2017.
These dead were interreligiously buried in the forest cemetery in Dachau.
Many years after the end of the war, today's Ludwigsfeld housing estate was built on the site of the former satellite camp.
The prisoners never received any wages
History: During the Third Reich, BMW was supposed to build a bunker hall in Allach on Adolf Hitler's orders so that it could continue producing aircraft engines even in the event of aircraft attacks.
BMW had paid the prisoners.
However, the money never reached them, but rather the Waffen-SS.
In one month alone in 1945, according to researcher Albert Knoll, “half a million Reichsmarks” flowed to the SS.
As part of the catalog presentation, Karl Freller thanked representatives of the BMW Group for their financial participation in the excavations.
“You have brought the dark side of your own past to light,” said Freller.
This is not a given.
The catalog for the special exhibition was published by memorial director Dr.
Gabriele Hammermann and her colleagues Anja Henschel and Albert Knoll.
Knoll emphasized that it was particularly important to him to “point out the prisoners,” which Hammermann also emphasized.
It is important to her and her team to gain “new insights into the prisoners’ everyday lives and experiences of violence” and to show these to the population.
The archaeologist Sikko Neupert, who carried out the excavations with his company, described the exact excavation process, which lasted 309 days.
Hats, shoes, spoons, cups and more appeared among the finds.
But also porcelain bowls with the BMW logo and beer bottles that could be attributed to the SS.
Pieces from the liberators, such as US Army canteens and Coca-Cola bottles, were also found.
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Anton Biebl, cultural officer for the city of Munich, spoke of the finds as “touching evidence that brings the traces of time to life”.
The new catalog is a means of bringing the past to life.
Contemporary witnesses would increasingly die.
Places and objects would now become contemporary witnesses instead, explained Biebl.
Among the finds were, for example, spoons, shoelace wires and straps.
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The Allach subcamp complex
The Allach subcamp complex was built in 1942. Thousands of prisoners had to do forced labor there until the end of the war.
The OT camp (Organization Todt) Karlsfeld, set up in 1944, was a place of suffering, especially for Jewish concentration camp prisoners.
Archaeological excavations by the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation in 2016 and 2017 uncovered over 1,000 objects from the concentration camp period and the subsequent uses of the area on the site of the former OT camp.
On the initiative of the Comité International de Dachau, the finds came into the possession of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial.
Almost 100 of these finds were presented as part of the exhibition “Traces of Time.
The “Allach” subcamp complex was presented to the public for the first time from May 2020 to February 2022.
The objects bear witness to the prisoners' everyday lives, their experiences of violence and their liberation 79 years ago.
The finds were supplemented with a historical narrative with photographs, plans, film recordings and contemporary witness reports.
A tour of the exhibition is available online at www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/360-allach/.
dn