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Hirzenhain. Forced labour, a mass shooting and remembrance

Photograph of the unveiling ceremony of the monument in Hirzenhain The Polish delegation is standing before the monument, October 1945.
©
IPN BU 3695/325

Under the National Socialist regime, there were forced labourers in nearly all German villages, towns and communities. Hirzenhain was no exception. On 26 March 1945, shortly before US troops entered the village, the SS shot 87 forced labourers here in a mass execution. Although the names of most of the victims remain unknown to this day, their memory remains alive.

A contribution as part of the joint project with the German Institute of Polish Studies in Darmstadt: Lebenszeichen ⋮ Znaki Życia Polen und der Zweite Weltkrieg – Erinnerungsorte in Deutschland.

Mediathek Sorted

Media library
  • Fig. 1: Acceptance order of Władysława H. - “Place of residence: Hirzenhain satellite camp”, 12/8/1943
  • Fig. 2: Letter from the Gestapo in Darmstadt regarding Anna G. - Release from Hirzenhain and transfer to the Gestapo, 9/9/1943
  • Fig. 3: Poetry album of Maria F. from the AEL - With entries by female Polish prisoners
  • Fig. 4: Poetry album of Maria F. from the AEL - Entry by a fellow prisoner from Hirzenhain, 1/10/1944
  • Fig. 5: Poetry album of Maria F. from the AEL - “Moments spent in sadness”, 1/10/1944
  • Fig. 6: Poetry album of Maria F. from the AEL - “Remember our shared suffering in Hirzenhain”, November 1944
  • Fig. 7: Polish civilian forced labourers in Hirzenhain - In the background, the “free” camp life
  • Fig. 8: Polish civilian forced labourers - In the Breuer-Werke camp, the prisoners were permitted to move freely and go on excursions.
  • Fig. 9: “In remembrance of the time in the shared barracks in Hirzenhain” - Dedication on a photograph, 6/9/1944
  • Fig. 10: Polish civilian forced labourers - In the background, the barracks where prisoners lived in the Breuer-Werke forced labour camp
  • Fig. 11: “My photograph is for my dear mother. Your stepdaughter” - Dedication on a photograph (Fig. 10)
  • Fig. 12: Topography of the camp, drawn in 1948 - The AEL and the forced labour camp were situated right next door to each other.
  • Fig. 13: Contemporary witness report, dated July 1950 - Locked in for three days during the massacre...
  • Fig. 14: Trial of Emil Fritsch - Newspaper cutting dated 17/1/1951, “Gießener Anzeiger” newspaper
  • Fig. 15: A witness names the precise time at which the execution took place - Newspaper cutting dated 20/1/1951
  • Fig. 16: Witness statements on the mass grave - Newspaper cutting
  • Fig. 17: A surprising turn in the statement made by defendant Fritsch - Newspaper cutting dated 26/1/1951, “Gießener Anzeige” newspaper
  • Fig. 18: The German Federal Court of Justice confirms the judgement - Newspaper cutting dated 6/7/1951, “Freie Presse” newspaper
  • Fig. 19: Photograph of the exhumation, Hirzenhain, May 1945 - Mass grave on the edge of the forest
  • Fig. 20: Photograph of the exhumation, Hirzenhain, May 1945 - Mass grave on the edge of the forest
  • Fig. 21: Photograph of the exhumation, Hirzenhain, May 1945 - Mass grave on the edge of the forest
  • Fig. 22: The monument in Hirzenhain, October 1945 - Photograph of the unveiling ceremony with commemorative panels in four languages
  • Fig. 23: Photograph of the unveiling ceremony of the monument in Hirzenhain - The Polish delegation is standing before the monument. October 1945
  • Fig. 24: Photograph of the unveiling ceremony of the monument in Hirzenhain - The third person to the left of the monument is Jan F. in a scout’s uniform. October 1945
  • Fig. 25: US report dated 23/6/1947 - Information about the exhumation and execution of 9 men and 78 women in Hirzenhain

Hirzenhain. Forced labour, a mass shooting and remembrance
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Foto von der Zeremonie zur Enthüllung des Denkmals in Hirzenhain. Die Polnische Delegation steht am Denkmal, Oktober 1945. © IPN BU 3695/325
Photograph of the unveiling ceremony of the monument in Hirzenhain The Polish delegation is standing before the monument, October 1945.
©
IPN BU 3695/325

Criminal prosecution
 

Immediately after the discovery of the mass grave in April 1945, American functionaries began the first investigation into the events in Hirzenhain, and questioned the inhabitants of the town. In August 1946, the family of the Luxembourg citizen Emilie Schmitz reported her death to Dr. Hans Niedner, the attorney in Duisburg, who then also began an investigation into what had happened. The family had already had contact with the attorney during the war, since he was a customer at the family’s shop in Luxembourg. Emilie’s sister contacted him and asked him to take on the case. In July 1947, in the wake of a decree issued by the Allied Control Council, Dr. Niedner filed charges against at least nine SS and Gestapo men from Wiesbaden and Hirzenhain for crimes against humanity. The charges related to the murder of inmates from the AEL prison, in particular Emilie, whose identity was confirmed when her remains were exhumed. In 1948, a preliminary investigation was begun.

Following the questioning of numerous witnesses, the suspects were named as Emil Fritsch and his SS unit. It became clear that the crime was not committed by AEL functionaries, but by a special unit that was subordinate to the headquarters in Wiesbaden. Fritsch had joined the SS in 1935 and was by no means averse to the use of violence, since he had served in the Neue Bremm Gestapo camp in Saarbrücken in 1944, among other places. In February 1949, the search began for Fritsch, who had settled in Berlin without his former SS membership having been registered with the authorities.

On 22 September 1949, he was arrested and taken to the remand prison in Berlin-Moabit. During his first hearing in September 1949, he adamantly denied any wrongdoing, claiming that he had only recently heard about the massacre. After his transfer to Gießen in April 1950, where the investigations were being conducted, he repeated that he “was in no manner involved in the shooting of concentration camp prisoners in Hirzenhain”. He claimed to have spent just four days in Hirzenhain and that he had been in poor health. He said that he had also never led an SS unit. He placed the blame for the murders on the camp personnel and the “Russian members of the guards unit”. 

His denials were not believed, however. On 30 September 1950, the state prosecution service filed charges against Fritsch. It was not until the criminal trial that he finally changed his statement and admitted that he had received the order to execute the prisoners from Trummler’s assistant. At the same time, however, he claimed that he had refused to carry out the shootings. A short time later, he gave another version of events, claiming that when he arrived at the place of execution, the shootings had already begun. However, witnesses stated that Fritsch had by no means kept the massacre secret among his colleagues; rather, he had even boasted about it, and Trummler had given him a bottle of schnapps as a reward for his good work.

During the trial, Fritsch pleaded that he was merely carrying out an order issued by a superior. However, this line of argument was rejected by the jury court in Gießen: “He was thus aware that in complying with the order, he was committing a crime. [...] the defendant revealed a high degree of reprehensible convictions.” Fritsch was found guilty of the execution and was sentenced to lifelong imprisonment. The judgement of 1 March 1951 stated that Emil Fritsch had “intentionally and cruelly killed 87 people in collusion with others.” In April 1951, the lawyer acting in his defence submitted a request for the judgement to be rescinded, on the grounds that “[The] defendant must be granted clemency due to the necessity to act on an order and in light of the prevailing conditions that presented a risk to his life and limb.” On 5 July 1951, the German Federal Court of Justice rejected the appeal. On 8 April 1952, Fritsch submitted a statement claiming that the command to carry out the shootings had come from the head of the camp – a claim that was not corroborated by witnesses. 

Other members of the SS were also accused of being accessories to the murders. The shots that were fired during the execution were allegedly fired by an SS man who was in a state of inebriation and who was barely able to stand. This circumstance, which was confirmed by the witnesses questioned, meant that the investigation proceedings against him (2 Ks 1/53) were brought to a close. Due to his state of inebriation, it was not possible to formally accuse him of attempted murder, but only of the crime of “complete drunkenness”, which had already lapsed after five years. Thus, during the post-war period, Fritsch was the only perpetrator to be charged and punished for the massacre in Hirzenhain (Fig. 14–18 . ). His SS superiors succeeded in evading prosecution for the murders in Hirzenhain. On 22 October 1948, in Landsberg am Lech, the head of the SS in Wiesbaden, Hans Trummler, was executed for the murder of US pilots.

The massacre at Hirzenhain also came to the attention of the Polish legal authorities after the end of the war. In December 1947, the sister of the murdered Luxembourg citizen, Emilie Schmitz, sent a list of the Frankfurt prisoners to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and requested that further investigations be conducted due to the large number of Polish names it contained. The reason for doing so, she said, was to “remove our heroes from enemy territory and to bury them in their homeland, for whose liberation they had sacrificed their lives.” In April 1948, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw began to search for further information. In 1951, the Luxembourg mission in Moscow sent a copy of an article from a Luxembourg newspaper about the Hirzenhain massacre to the Polish embassy. In the years that followed, however, no further investigations were conducted in Poland. It was only several decades later that the case was taken up again by the judiciary there. The decision to do so was made after three photographs were received by the district commission for the pursuit of National Socialist crimes in Katowice. The images were of the commemorative ceremony for the victims in October 1945, and had been sent by Antoni K., who was interned in the forced labour camp of the Breuer-Werke production plants at the time of the massacre. In 1983, he was questioned by the state prosecution service and gave details about the “Hirzenhain concentration camp”, the massacre, and the exhumation of the bodies. In order to obtain more information about the crime, calls for witnesses to the crime to come forward were issued on the radio. As a result, women who had worked as forced labourers in Hirzenhain contacted the authorities, although they had only heard about the massacre through conversations later on in the DP camps. Above all, however, the witnesses questioned had no doubt that all of the victims were Polish women, and the Polish judiciary took this to be the truth. However, enquiry was brought to a halt when it became clear that the state prosecution service in Gießen had already pursued investigations into the crime during the 1950s.[23]

 

[23] IPN BU 3695/325.

Photograph of the unveiling ceremony of the monument in Hirzenhain The Polish delegation is standing before the monument, October 1945.
©
IPN BU 3695/325
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