Landshut

According to the memories of Professor Dr Georg Spitzlberger, who witnessed events at this camp as a 14-year old boy, Landshut sub-camp was operated by OT (Organisation Todt) from September 1944 to the end of April 1945. It contained about 500 prisoners who were sent to the camp from other concentration camps, particularly the parent camp, Dachau, but also from Sachsenhausen and Oranienburg.

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In his report Kindheit unter Kreuz und Sternen (Childhood under Cross and Stars), Professor Spitzlberger writes:

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"According to current definitions it was an extension branch for work, but all in all, you get the repulsive view of a labour camp with people in lack of freedom and held under inhuman circumstances which resulted with death for more than 80 prisoners" (Spitzlberger, page 151/152).

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It seems that, as a 14-year old boy, Spitzlberger met 4-6 thin prisoners on a street near the camp. He was carrying some apples with him at the time and he allowed one apple to fall and roll towards them. One of the prisoners grabbed it and bit into it, causing Spitzlberger to become afraid as to what the accompanying guard would do. Fortunately, nothing happened.

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Hans Emslander records in Gedenktafel im Friedhof Achdorf fuer KZ-Angehoerige, Landshut (Memorial Plaque in the Cemetery Achdorf for KZ Angehoerige, Landshut) (1981, page 11) that a squad of OT workers consisting of around 60 people arrived in Landshut from Berlin in December 1944 to build barrack huts on the site of the former 'Kleiner Exerzierplatz' (small parade ground). This was a parade ground of the Schochkaserne, a pre-WW2 Wehrmacht barracks located in the southern part of the town of Landshut. The camp mentioned here consisted of a supply camp for the Wehrmacht, consisting of an administration barrack and 24 barrack huts. However, a separate camp for Jews was subsequently constructed some distance to the north of the Schochkaserne, near the railway line to Plattling. This consisted of a number of corrugated iron barracks housing around 500 Jewish prisoners plus a single barrack hut for the SS guards. The site was served by a railway siding connected to the main Reichsbahn network, but the prisoners also constructed a single line railway connection to the OT Camp at the Schochkaserne. Both the siding and the route of the single line railway are still visible on Google Earth, if you know where to look (see Google Earth screenshots below).

Most of the prisoners in the camp were German, but there were some foreign Jews as well. The camp was commanded by SS-Hauptscharfuhrer Stoller, who was later hanged in Dachau. His deputy was SS-Unterscharfuhrer Henschel. The prisoners were put to work producing cement. Many of them died from exhaustion and various diseases and some from brutal treatment by the guards. One former prisoner by the name of Simon Klapstein recalls "baracks with walls, thin like paper", like 'dog huts':

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"...through whose the wind whistled and in whose the coldness entered directly. Heaters were there, but it was not allowed to use them. Food they got only one three-pound bread for 15 men a day, one pound margarine for 34 men; in the morning and evening you got a cup of coffee, at midday a thin water soup. The prisoners did not get meat, at least sometimes stinking horses meat on which they got a bad stomach. Sometimes they got black pudding for 500 men - for ten days 22 and a half pounds - many, many of them were very sick, they could not get medical treatment, because the two camp doctors, prisoners themselves, had neither material nor medicine" (Interview report with Simon Klapstein, Isar Post, No 16, 8th March 1946)

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According to Dachau KZ blog, citing a former prisoner, SS-Unterscharführer Henschel beat a prisoner named Walter Bär in January/February 1945 in punishment for a minor offense in the laundry room. Henschel beat Bär with with an electrical cable end and he died four weeks later. Henschel also beat Hugo Kozen with a belt-buckle and kicked him, causing Kozen's death on 22 April 1945 after his transfer to Dachau.

Some of the prisoners were killed during air raids and the dead were loaded on to a cart and taken to the cemetery at Achdorf (south west of the Schochkaserne on the same side of the River Isar, see screenshot below). Hans Emslander records that this was routine practice, occurring every morning at 4 am. The dead prisoners were buried in a mass grave outside the cemetery wall. A memorial tablet can be seen there to this day, recording the deaths of 83 Jews in the camp, although the bodies themselves were exhumed in 1961 and taken to the KZ Honour Cemetery (Ehrenfriedhof) in Flossenbürg.

Shortly before the arrival of American troops in Landshut on 1st May 1945, the prisoners from the sub-camp were evacuated on a forced march by the guards. A witness report records that this march was towards Geisenhausen. Another witness stated that the camp was closed at some point between 22nd and 24th April 1945. A later trial conducted against Henschel by the central office of the Justice Administration in Ludwigsburg had to be stopped because he could no longer be identified with any certainty. The site on which the barracks stood at the OT camp was subsequently acquired by the Eduard Leiss paint factory and the Emslander furniture factory and was redeveloped. 
 

Sources:

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Akt "Henschel" SS-OSCHA im KL Dachau" der zentralen Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltung Ludwigsburg (TV 410 AR 1371/68)

Auerbach, Hellmuth, Institut fu?Nr Zeitgeschichte Muenchen: Brief vom 19.12.1989

Emslander, Hans: Gedenktafel im Friedhof Achdorf fuer KZ-Angehoerige, Landshut 1981

Internationaler Suchdienst (Hrsg.) Vorlaeufiges Verzeichnis der Konzentrationslager und deren Aussenkommandos sowie anderer Haftanstalten unter dem Reichsfuehrer-SS in Deutschland und deutsch besetzten Gebieten(1933-1945), Arolson, Februar 1969.

Isar-Post Nr. 16, 8. Maerz 1946 (Interview Simon Klapstein)

Kagerbauer, Max (Erlebnisbericht) in : Ziegler-Schultes, Seite 396-397

Kimmel, Guenther: Das Konzentrationslager Dachau, in Bayern in der NS-Zeit, Teil 2

Klapstein, Simon (Interview), in Isar Post Nr. 16, 8. Maerz 1946

Kloppert, Wilhelm (Bericht), in Emslander, H. Gedenktafeln, S. 10-11

Koenig, Maria, muendliche Berichte vom 8.5.1989 und 23.4.1990.

Spitzlberger, Georg: Das Aussenkommando Landshut des Konzentrationslagers Dachau, Verhandlungen des Historischen Vereins fuer Niederbayern 114-115,1988-1989,151-162

Puvogel, Ulrike: Gedenkstaetten fuer die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, Schriftenreihe der Bundeszentrale fuer politische Bildung, Bd. 245, Bonn 1987.

Trautmann, Heinz: Bericht vom 17.4.1982

Trautmann, Heinz: LZ Juli 1990, Seite 42.

Verzeichnis der Konzentrationslager und ihrer Aussenkommandos gemaess ??42Abs. 2 BEG, Bundesgesetzblatt Nr. 64 vom 24. September 1977, S. 42

Weinmann, Martin: Das nationalsozialistische Lagersystem, Frankfurt/Main 1990

Ziegler-Schultes, Hildegard: Entweder - oder, Arbeiterbewegung in Landshut 1933-1949, Bd. 2, Landshut 1987.