Hirzenhain. Forced labour, a mass shooting and remembrance

In the middle of the Second World War, Hirzenhain, a small village at the foot of the Vogelsberg hill in Hessen, had just 600 inhabitants. Thanks to its location in a narrow valley, Hirzenhain was relatively well protected against air raids. This hilly landscape was home to the Breuer-Werke factories, which were owned by Buderus AG, an armament production company. During the war, these factories employed forced labourers, as did local farmers. The Breuer-Werke began producing cast iron parts for the VI Tiger armoured battle vehicles. The plant also produced petrol engines for the Wehrmacht, and was therefore classified as a second-highest priority war production operation. From 1943 onwards, production was increased, resulting in a need for more workers. On 26 March 1945, the treatment of the forced labourers became even more brutal. An SS unit shot 87 women and men, many of whom came from Poland. 

There were three labour camps in Hirzenhain: a camp for convicted prisoners, which was part of the Rodgau-Dieburg prison complex, the labour education camp run by the Gestapo, and a forced labour camp that was directly owned by the Breuer-Werke, which held mainly civilian labourers from Poland and the USSR.

The Hirzenhain satellite camp belonging to the Rodgau-Dieburg prison complex
 

The prisoners’ camp in Hirzenhain was created specifically for female Polish prisoners and was run by the Darmstadt prosecution services as a satellite of the prison in Dieburg (Rodgau).[1] The decision to build the camp was made in November 1942; construction was completed in March 1943. Conditions in the camp were harsh. In the makeshift barracks, the Polish women suffered from the extreme cold and had only limited sanitation facilities and an inadequate drinking water supply. In the Breuer factories, they performed hard labour seven days a week, working in shifts.[2]

Transport lists from Ciechanów (German: Zichenau in the Reichsgau of East Prussia) that have been preserved record female prisoners being deported directly to Hirzenhain from the town.[3] Polish women were also deported to Hirzenhain from prison camps in the Warthegau region, including Wronki. They lived under guard in isolated barracks. Among the many prisoners in Hirzenhain was 38-year-old Władysława H., who was sentenced by the German court in Ciechanów to one year and nine months’ imprisonment. She was not released when her term came to an end in August 1943; instead, she was transferred to the Gestapo, who sent her to the Ravensbrück concentration camp (Fig. 1 . ).[4] 28-year-old Anna G. shared the same fate. A German court in Ciechanów in occupied Poland sentenced her to nine months’ imprisonment in Hirzenhain for “war economy crimes”. On 9 September 1943, the camp commanders transferred her to the Gestapo in Darmstadt, who also deported her to the concentration camp in Ravensbrück (Fig. 2 . ). Anna survived the camp, and with the support of the Swedish Red Cross was taken to Sweden after the end of the war to convalesce.[5]

After serving their terms, the women were taken to the police prison in Darmstadt, from where they were transferred to the Buchenwald or Ravensbrück concentration camps by order of the Reich Security Head Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA). Some were able to escape the concentration camp by remaining in Hirzenhain at the request of the Breuer-Werke “in the interest of armaments production”, because they had conducted their work “well and with ease”.[6] The company also requested that Anna G. and Władysława H. remain, but the application was made too late, since by that time, the two women were already in Ravensbrück. In December 1943, the RSHA rejected a submission for the women to be returned to Hirzenhain from Ravensbrück, although it did allow for the women prisoners who had not yet been transferred to the concentration camp to remain in Hirzenhain for eight weeks longer.[7] The company justified its request by saying that taking these “trained labourers” away would have a highly negative impact on tank production, which would have disastrous military consequences. At the end of March 1944, the company’s directors even asked for highly productive women to be released as prisoners and granted civilian status. As civilian workers, they would have received a wage and been able to provide support for their children back home.[8] However, their request was denied, since according to the RSHA decree of 11 March 1943 (II A 2 Nr. 100/43–176), after serving their time in prison, the women were to spend at least six months in “protective custody” and interned in a concentration camp.

Not all the female Polish prisoners were deported to Ravensbrück from Hirzenhain. Some of them succeeded in avoiding being sent to the concentration camp and remained in Hirzenhain after serving their sentence. Maria F., for example, managed to evade the concentration camp. She had been found guilty of anti-German sentiment in Chojnice and was sent by a German special court to a penal camp in Fordon (a district of Bydgoszcz). From there, she was transferred to Hirzenhain.[9] Her poetry album from Hirzenhain, in which her fellow camp inmates wrote entries in 1944/45 (Fig. 3–6 . ), has been preserved. They included Janina Ch., who was a year younger than Maria. She came from Poznań, where she had been arrested in 1940 for helping English prisoners of war. Like Maria, Janina worked in the Breuer engine factory until the end of the war. On 4 April 1945, at the orders of the US authorities in Germany, she was sent to a Displaced Persons (DP) Camp in Hanau, and shortly afterwards, to a DP camp in Gießen.[10] Wacława M. from the Poznań region also wrote an entry in the album. The young married woman was arrested together with her father when she was just 22, and incarcerated in Konin, Wronki, Fordon, Braunau and Hirzenhain. After liberation, she was taken to the DP camp in Gießen, from where she was later repatriated to Poland.[11]

Despite running to just a few words, the album entries give us an idea of just how much the young women prisoners suffered. They write about moments of sadness, of shared periods of suffering and of their hopes of liberation and a quick end to the war. The entries also clearly show that the Polish women stuck together and supported each other, mainly with words of comfort. The number of fellow sufferers was by no means small. In October 1944, there were 319 female Polish prisoners in the Hirzenhain camp.[12]

The women were placed under guard in their living spaces and at their place of work in the Breuer armaments factory. One of the guards helped them as far as he could. In particular, he would turn a blind eye when they failed to fulfil their daily quotas, and gave them larger bread rations. We know this from the report given subsequently by the prisoner Edmunda Z., who at 20 had been found guilty in Gniezno in the Warthegau region for helping prisoners of war.[13]