Forgotten Horrors
The Nazi sub-camp system
Moschendorf
Moschendorf
This camp was situated on the southern outskirts of the city of Hof, near the Saale river in Bavaria. It was located to the south of the railway yard, adjacent to the curve of the railway line in the district of Neudohlau. The the site is now occupied by a textile warehouse.
Moschendorf was a forced labour camp from 1941 until 3rd September 1944, when it became a satellite camp of Dachau and then subsequently come under the control of Flossenburg. The camp was commanded by Ludwig Bauer and guards were drawn from the SS.
There were about 100 inmates in the camp, of whom four died. The prisoners were employed on the repair of weapons for the SS. At the end of the war it became a transit camp for refugees with room for over 5,000 people. Up until 1957, released POWs were also housed in this camp.
According to Roderick Miller, writing for the Frank Falla Archive website, Moschendorf camp was located about half a mile south of Saale forced labour camp (see ) on the site of a former porcelain factory.
Trials for the four murders at Moschendorf commenced in 1967, but ceased in 1973, with no convictions.
Sources:
Saale camp and other forced labour camps in Hof
Hof forced labour camp (Saale) was one of 30 camps in the city. According to Roderick Miller, writing for the Frank Falla Archive website, two Channel Islanders may have been confined in Saale camp for brief periods.
One of them, John Finkelstein, was deported in February 1943 because he was Jewish. In his 1964 application for compensation as a victim of the Nazis, Finkelstein mentions that he was confined in 'Hoff' for a brief period of only two days, beforre being moved elsewhere. He states that he was moved to the Gestapo prison in Munich, but it is far more likely, from the geographic location, that he went to Buchenwald (in October 1943) after his stay Hof.
The second Channel Islander to be confined in Hof, again briefly, in early 1944, was Emma Marshall, who was deported in December 1943. In her 1965 application for compensation, she wrote that she was moved to Plauen and Oft and then on to Nuremberg. 'Oft' is almost certainly 'Hof', because of the geographical location.
The problem with both these testimonies though is that they could technically apply to any of the 30 forced labour camps in the city. Labour camps did not often keep much in the way of documentation, thus it is almost impossible to say with any certainty which of these 30 camps Finkelstein and Marshall may have stayed in. The difficult is exacerbated by the fact that they were two different prisoner types - Finkelstein being male and Jewish and Marshall female.
Miller argues that the most likely location of Finkelstein's imprisonment was in one of four barracks on a site in Hof bordered by the Ostpreussenstrasse on the south, the Moschendorfer Strasse on the west and railway lines on the east. These barracks were empty for a short while and so they may fit Finkelstein's description of a 'staging camp'. This particular site was later used as a sub-camp of Flossenburg and also as a forced labour camp for the German railway network (Reichsbahn).
Finkelstein may also have been confined in Moschendorf Camp, which was located half a mile to the south of the Saale forced labour camp.
Marshall writes that she worked in a spinning factory, which was the case for many female forced labourers. This means that her place of imprisonment could have been one of several forced labour camps operated by the city's textile industry. The Spinnerei Neuhof, for example, operated three camps located in the north west part of the city. The Weberei Rammensee operated in Hof's Fabrikvorstadt district. These two sites were responsible for the confinement of some 900 prisoners in total.
Hof was heavily bombed by the US Army Air Force (USAAF) on 14th February 1945, killing 100 civilians and probably some of the forced labourers also. This was followed by a second heavy air raid on 8th April 1945, shortly after which American troops entered the city.
While there is a memorial to the inmates of the Moschendorf concentration camp, there is no memorial to the inmates of the forced labour camps in the city.
Sources:
Frank Falla Archive - citing Bald, Albrecht, "Zwangsarbeiter in Oberfranken 1939-1945" in Sources below, pp. 74-75, - this contains a detailed list of forced labour camps in Hof with company names, street addresses, types of forced labour, and prisoner counts.