Hirzenhain. Forced labour, a mass shooting and remembrance

Commemoration
 

By the time the US Army reached Hirzenhain on 30 March 1945, the AEL prison had already been liquidated. Rumours about a mass grave quickly spread throughout the town, causing some of the residents to look into the matter. At first, no-one felt obliged to dig up the bodies, since it was assumed that the mass grave was situated outside of the town’s official boundaries, in the Steinberg district. However, at the end of May, the US authorities ordered the bodies to be exhumed and to be taken initially to the cemetery in coffins. The exhumation work was conducted by the German inhabitants of the town, supervised by Polish servicemen (Fig. 19–21 . ). At that time, the Polish forced labourers who had been liberated thought that only fellow Poles had been murdered.[24] 

At the beginning of October 1945, a memorial to the murdered prisoners was unveiled in the cemetery in Hirzenhain. It took the form of a cross and had commemorative panels in Polish, German, French and English. The English inscription read: 

“Here rest in peace Those who during their lives have gone through the Pains of Concentration Camps. They perished at the hands of their oppressors on April 3 1945. They were denied the privilege of seeing the Evening Star of Freedom... Glory to their memory! Polish soldiers of the ‘Warsaw’ Camp in Hirzenhain, 1945”. 

Directly after the unveiling of the memorial, a group of people, most of whom were probably Polish, gathered to remember the victims. Photographs were taken of the ceremony. In the “Gniezno” DP camp in Niederlahnstein, Jan F., one of the participants, gave Antoni K., the former prisoner mentioned above, the three photographs shown here (Fig. 22–24 . ).

The victims of the massacre found their final resting place in the war victims’ cemetery in Kloster Arnsburg monastery, which was created there in 1959/1960 in accordance with the war graves law. The purpose of the cemetery was to provide a place where individual and mass victims of the war from three districts in Hesse could be laid to rest in dignity. Contrary to the standard practice, war victims of different nationalities were interred next to each other. In 1959, the graves at Hirzenhain were transferred to Kloster Arnsburg. The six allegedly male victims were the subject of particular interest, since rumours were circulating among the residents of Hirzenhain that they were the bodies of SS men who had been shot after refusing to carry out the execution. It was not until the court files from 1951 were examined that it became possible to clarify what had really happened and to clearly identify the bodies as being those of former camp prisoners.

In 1960, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (German War Graves Commission) published a special brochure, “Kriegsopferfriedhof Kloster Arnsburg in Oberhessen” (“The War Victims’ Cemetery at Arnsburg Monastery in Upper Hesse”). It contained information about six male corpses, who were classified as “victims of political violence”.[25] In 1966, the graves were marked with two commemorative plaques, containing information about the crime and its victims. Just two of the murdered prisoners could be identified by name, thanks to subsequent research by family members. Until 2017, it was assumed that 81 women and six men had been shot. However, detailed research revealed that there were 76 female and eleven male victims.[26] It is interesting that US data from 1947 lists 78 women and nine men as the victims (Fig. 25 . ).[27] Recently, new information panels have been created, enabling the memorial site to also be used for educational purposes.

After the graves had been transferred to Kloster Arnsburg in 1959/1960, the memorial cross that had been donated in 1945 remained in the cemetery in Hirzenhain. In 1990, the cross was installed at the site of the massacre, where it remains today. Memorial ceremonies are regularly held at the site. The crime will also soon be the subject of a graphic novel, which will examine the topic.[28]

Katarzyna Woniak, November 2025