The Massacre in the Arnsberg Forest: Nazi crimes perpetrated on Russian and Polish forced labourers in 1945

The shooting place in the Langenbachtal near Warstein.
The shooting place in the Langenbachtal near Warstein.

Shortly after US troops occupied Warstein at the end of April 1945, a tip from the militia revealed the truth about two of these three brutal massacres. The third, the Eversberg massacre, only came to light at the end of 1946. In the Langenbach valley and Suttrop the US soldiers ordered former NSDAP party members to exhume the murdered victims and forced the inhabitants of the surrounding villages to march past the corpses. This shock form of “re-education” was practised by the Allies as a form of 'denazification through confrontation with Nazi crimes' shortly after the end of the war. But whether it really triggered a rethink or rather a defensive reaction, is a matter of controversy. That said, in the socio-political climate of the Adenauer period the reactions of the local population to the massacres were predominantly defensive. They were marked by denial, stylising their own role as victims, a “put-it-behind-us-once-and-for-all” mentality and by insisting that these events had nothing to do with the civil population. Such attitudes were also reflected in the broad protest against the erection of an  “Atonement Cross” in 1947 after the third mass grave in Meschede became known. Shortly after, following heated debates about guilt and responsibility and repeated damage to the cross, it was buried. It was only publicly exhibited once again in the Maria-Himmelfahrt church in Meschede in 1981.
Both the efforts of “re-education” measures and the clashes and protests against the “Cross of Atonement” were regionally limited. The trial against the perpetrators, which began in 1957, was not only covered by the regional media, but also nationwide. Hans Kammler, the man mainly responsible, was now beyond reach as he was said to have committed suicide at the end of the war. In the first instance the verdict on the remaining six defendants was scandalously mild, thereby revealing the striking disproportion between crime and punishment that still prevailed at the time. It was only after a legal appeal that the sentences were significantly increased by a jury court in Hagen.

In 1964 the bodies of the murdered forced labourers from Suttrop and Warstein – with the exception of seven bodies that could no longer be found in Suttrop – were transferred to the “Fulmecke” forest cemetery in Meschede. Here, as in 1947, several corpses could be identified on the basis of their papers. Nonetheless, regardless of the legal regulations they were buried at the new grave site anonymously. Misleading inscriptions on the memorial stones also concealed any references to the murders. Thus the victims of the massacre in the Arnsberg Forest gradually fell into oblivion.

Now, more than 70 years after the appalling deeds, the memory of the victims and the confrontations with the NS crimes have been revived.  After several years of historical research by Dr. Marcus Weidner, archaeological excavations were carried out in 2018 and 2019 by the “LWL (Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe) Archaeology for Westphalia” in cooperation with the LWL-Institute for Westphalian Regional History, at specific locations in the Arnsberg Forest. The archaeological excavations were designed to help reconstruct the exact circumstances of the crimes and shed further light on the National Socialist crimes in the Arnsberg Forest. The latest finds – including projectiles and ammunition, but also everyday objects like a prayer book and a dictionary in Polish, shoes and parts of clothing, colourful buttons and pearls, crockery and cutlery – not only bear witness to the final hours of the murdered victims, but also provide information about the course of these horrific events. So far only a few names of the murder victims from March 1945 are known. Within the framework of the ongoing research in Germany and abroad it has been possible to find 14 names to date and to give the anonymously buried victims an identity. This work offers us the opportunity to contact  their descendants and keep alive the memory of the “long forgotten group of victims” amongst foreign forced labourers.

Marcus Weidner/Katarzyna Salski, June 2019

 

 

Further reading:

Marcus Weidner: Kriegsendphaseverbrechen an Zwangsarbeitern im Sauerland 1945, in: 200 Jahre Westfalen. Jetzt!, Münster 2015, pp. 342-347.

Matthias Frese, Marcus Weidner: Verhandelte Erinnerungen. Der Umgang mit Ehrungen, Denkmälern und Gedenkorten nach 1945, Paderborn 2017.

A film on Germans marching past the rows of corpses, alongside further photos and documents can be found in the Internet portal “Westfälische Geschichte”, https://www.westfaelische-geschichte.de/web1048

 press articles:

Naziverbrechen: Das Massaker im Arnsberger Wald. Erschienen am Mittwoch, 20.03.2019 in SPIEGEL ONLINE: https://www.spiegel.de/einestages/massaker-im-arnsberger-wald-nazi-verbrechen-im-sauerland-a-1258548.html

Media library
  • LWL-Film: NS-Verbrechen an Zwangsarbeitern im Sauerland 1945

    LWL-Film: NS-Verbrechen an Zwangsarbeitern im Sauerland 1945
  • German mother shields eyes of son as she walks with other civilians past row of exhumed dead Russians outside town of Suttrop

    German mother shields eyes of son as she walks with other civilians past row of exhumed dead Russians outside town of Suttrop
  • Funeral of a murdered forced laborer by German civilians in Suttrop, 1945

    Funeral of a murdered forced laborer by German civilians in Suttrop, 1945
  • Dr. Marcus Weidner, historian at the LWL-Institute for Westphalian Regional History, is reviewing the crimes at the end of the war in the Sauerland

    Dr. Marcus Weidner, historian at the LWL-Institute for Westphalian Regional History, is reviewing the crimes at the end of the war in the Sauerland. During the excavation in Suttrop, the sonographers ...
  • Coin and cross with a find number and the location coordinates

    The coin and the cross were also provided with a find number and the location coordinates.
  • Restoration of a pair of shoes

    Restoration of a pair of shoes. Find spot: Warstein.
  • Various projectiles

    Various projectiles. Find spot: Meschede.
  • Metal bottles

    Metal bottles. Find spot: Meschede.
  • Cups

    Cups. Find spot: Warstein.
  • Cutlery

    Cutlery. Find spot: Warstein.
  • Pearls, buttons, bobbin fragments

    Pearls, buttons, bobbin fragments. Find spot: Warstein.
  • Comb

    Comb. Find spot: Meschede.
  • LWL-Historian Dr. Marcus Weidner used the found objects and his documents to reconstruct how the crime was committed

    LWL-Historian Dr. Marcus Weidner, here at one of the shooting sites near Warstein-Suttrop, used the found objects and his documents to reconstruct how the crime was committed.
  • Mescheder cemetery 'Fulmecke'

    LWL-Historian Dr. Marcus Weidner on the Mescheder cemetery 'Fulmecke'