Pfaffenwald. One camp, multiple crimes

In 1983, Susanne Hohlmann from Bad Hersfeld, the author of a wide-ranging local study, noted that “the Pfaffenwald camp has become a forgotten place”. In this moving book she asks, “Is it even possible that in the forest of Asbach and Beiershausen there was a camp where several hundred people died without the inhabitants of the nearby villages knowing the details?”[1] More than 40 years later, not a lot has changed in this regard. We still know very little about the Pfaffenwald camp and its victims. The site also lacks suitable commemoration, as the camp is fully overgrown. A war cemetery located one kilometre away is the only reminder of the victims. The aim of this text is to depict the history of the camp and the crimes committed there. 

 

Reichsautobahn camp 1938–1942
 

The history of this site began in summer 1938, as the autobahn network covered ever more of the German Reich. Here too, between the town of Kirchheim and Hersfeld (now Bad Hersfeld), one of these motorways was built, the “A 4”, which remains an important federal autobahn today. The bridge over the Asbach Valley was a particularly challenging aspect of construction. The Hersfeld company Bolender was contracted to build this section. Alongside Germans drafted for labour, men from the Sudetenland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia also worked there. A Reichsautobahn (RAB) camp with capacity for around 400 people was set up for these labourers in the immediate vicinity. Germany’s invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 created a new “reservoir” of labourers. As a result, Polish civilians were also soon brought to Pfaffenwald against their will. One of them was 29-year-old Albert N., who was forced into hard labour in November 1939 despite suffering from mental illness.[2] In addition, in summer 1940 French prisoners of war were sent from the Stalag IX A Ziegenhain camp to Pfaffenwald and housed in a separate, guarded barracks. From autumn 1941, labourers from eastern Europe (“Ostarbeiter”) were also forced to work on this autobahn section. From reports from other RAB camps we know that the living and working conditions were extremely hard.[3] In addition, the labourers did not return home after completing work on the autobahn in spring 1942, but were instead employed in the rapidly expanding armaments industry. However, forced labour was also an everyday reality in agriculture in the area around Pfaffenwald. “Every farmer in the village had his Pole,” Susanne Hohlmann wrote.[4]

 

Pfaffenwald “Auxiliary Hospital”
 

The RAB camp was empty for just a few months before it was given a new purpose. In 1942, the National Socialist regime increased the severity with which it treated foreign forced labourers who were unable to work. This system, characterised by totalitarian rule and radical racism, had no place for sick forced labourers. In order to separate them from “ethnic” Germans (“Volksgenossen”), an increasing number of separate locations and even “hospitals for foreigners” with “foreign” (“fremdvölkisch”) staff were set up.[5] If it was not possible to restore their ability to work within a few weeks, the sick labourers were allowed to return home. The “incapacitated foreigners” were brought to camps for returnees, which were under the control of the Employment Office (Arbeitsamt) and designed for maximum physical exploitation.[6] One such camp was established in Pfaffenwald in late summer 1942 by the Regional Employment Office Hessen in cooperation with the Regional Insurance Office. The camp consisted of five stonewalled barracks and was overseen by guards, who maltreated the women, children, and men housed there. Two Soviet doctors were in charge of the more than 400 patients. The camp’s primitive conditions did not allow for any sterile medical care. Dressing materials and medication were in short supply. Operations were carried out using a pocket knife.[7] A former Soviet prisoner of war and patient at the camp described it as a “plague-ridden hell”. In his memoirs he describes the conditions as follows: “50 to 60 sick people crammed together in a 49 square metre room. The beds are fully occupied with dying tuberculosis patients alongside people with heart problems, stomach issues, sexually transmitted diseases, mental illness, etc., and often pregnant women and women there for abortions, men and women placed together. The groans, curses, and sobs of the dying make life intolerable.” The person who wrote this eye-witness report had no doubt that the purpose of the camp was to kill off the sick.[8] In an interview in 1981, Marcin B., a Pole who also spent time at this “hospital”, particularly stressed the poor nutrition, which consisted only of nettles and “a small piece of bread for 12 people, baked from chestnuts. […] The food then made us sick. We slowly perished because of it.”[9]

Those who died were initially buried at the cemetery in Beiershausen and later in the nearby forest, where several corpses were thrown without a coffin into excavated pits. Despite their health problems, the sick were forced to work, usually in the forest and on nearby farms. One of the camp inmates was ten-year-old Mitka Kalinski, who had been brought there in an ill state from Dachau concentration camp. He left the camp in December 1942 and was forced to work at Rotenburg an der Fulda.[10]

At the latest following the Reich Ministry of Labour decree of 21 May 1943, there was a stop on repatriation, meaning that the sick were no longer returned to their countries of origin.[11] The camps for the sick thus completed their transition to camps for dying. While the most gravely ill died without medical help and in great pain in these camps, mentally ill Polish and Soviet inmates were killed in one of the eleven collection centres as part of the National Socialist euthanasia programme “T4”, including in the State Hospital Hadamar.[12] Several “mentally ill” patients from the camp in Pfaffenwald died there.[13]

Forced labourers with tuberculosis were also considered terminally ill and thus unable to work and were isolated in the most primitive way in their place of accommodation. In the view of the Employment Office Hersfeld, which was responsible for this region and subordinate to the Regional Employment Office (Gauarbeitsamt) Kurhessen, the Pfaffenwald camp with its primitive barracks was very well suited to housing tuberculosis patients. However, they did not receive any medical care there; either they were left to their fate or, upon instruction from the Employment Office, collectively sent from Pfaffenwald to the State Hospital Hadamar 150 kilometres away, where they were murdered as part of the “decentralised euthanasia” programme. As a result of these transports, “the official mortality rate in Pfaffenwald dropped sharply”. A total of 180 ill persons from the “Pfaffenwald Auxiliary Hospital” were killed by gas in Hadamar. Some of these transports included mothers with babies, for whom no doctor’s referral was provided.[14]

 

“Maternity hospital”
 

Pregnancies among Polish and Eastern European forced labourers were undesirable for the National Socialist regime for two reasons. Firstly, the women were unable to work either temporarily or throughout pregnancy. Secondly, their babies were seen as representing undesirable growth of the “racially inferior” population. For economic as well as racist reasons, the regime wanted to prevent both consequences. In the early years of the forced labour system, pregnant Polish women were still usually sent back home. But the policy changed in 1943. The Reich Ministry of Labour decided that pregnant Poles and Soviet citizens were not to be sent home, but should rather give birth near their place of work. The regional employment offices in cooperation with businesses were to ensure that suitable and accessible places were set up for this purpose. Pfaffenwald camp with the train line in nearby Asbach was deemed ideally suited for this task, and thus a “maternity hospital” was set up there for Eastern European women coming from North Hesse region. The first babies were born there in September 1942. A total of 758 births at the camp were registered by the authorities, of which officially 53 children died.[15] The number of stillbirths is not included in this figure; presumably such cases were not even recorded. As Pfaffenwald fell under the responsibility of the registry offices in Hersfeld and Kerspenhausen, births and deaths were recorded there. At least 114 of the children were of Polish origin.[16] The Polish database straty.pl (“Losses”) records numerous births registered as merely “Hersfeld-Beiershausen” or “Hersfeld”. However, it can be assumed that these entries refer to the Pfaffenwald camp.[17] More than 50 years later, some of the survivors, who were Polish children at the time, were able to claim compensation thanks to payments by the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation. At the Archive of Modern Records (Archiwum Akt Nowych) in Warsaw there is an inventory detailing the claims for compensation. These valuable autobiographical testimonies could provide a starting point for future research into the history of the Pfaffenwald camp and its victims. 

However, little is known about the fate of most children born there. What is certain is that many children in Pfaffenwald died within just a few weeks or months of being born, which indicates that they must have lived there under terrible conditions. Some children survived just a few days, such as Krystyna Derejak, who was born in the camp on 4 March 1945 and died on 21 March, shortly before the arrival of the Americans, of “heart failure”.[18] It cannot be ruled out that some of the children were deliberately killed by injection or pseudomedical experiments. Susanne Hohlmann thus includes Pfaffenwald in the list of places “in which the systematic extermination of the so-called ‘undesirable people’ (‘unerwünschtes Volkstum’)” took place.[19]

Some mothers were able to take their children with them to what had been their place of work. As their labour was deemed essential, their children were often taken away from them and placed in “care facilities for foreign children” (Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätten).[20] The mortality rate there was particularly high. Only in rare cases were women able to bring their children with them to work. Anastazja S. gave birth in Pfaffenwald. She worked as a farm labourer near Wiesbaden and was brought by the employment office to Pfaffenwald to deliver her child in September 1944. Very soon after giving birth she returned with her new-born son to her employer. Her child lived only three months. It presumably never managed to recover from the terrible conditions in Pfaffenwald.[21]

Eugenia B. was more fortunate. Born in Pfaffenwald on 27 May 1944, she and her mother arrived at a Catholic children’s home in Marburg one week later. On 8 June 1944, mother and child returned to Allendorf. Eugenia’s father, Stanisław B., had been forced to work there as a prisoner of war since early 1940. Eugenia’s mother, also called Eugenia, lived in her native village of Osuchy in the Biłgoraj district until August 1943. When the Germans carried out brutal deportations as part of their ethnic cleansing programme “Aktion Zamość”, she fled with her one-year-old son Stanisław to his father in Allendorf and also worked there. After the war, when Polish couples were finally allowed to marry, she got married – no coincidence – on 27 May 1945, her daughter’s first birthday. In 1947, her third child, Barbara, was born at the Wildflecken displaced persons (DP) camp. The family and their three children emigrated from Wildflecken to Australia in 1949.[22]

Being placed at the Pfaffenwald maternity camp was a tragedy for parents-to-be and babies, as is illustrated by the history of Katarzyna W. and Antoni S. Both persons came from the same region in the General Government (part of Poland under Nazi occupation), and both were forced to work for the same farmer in Sontra-Hornel in North Hesse. Katarzyna was deported for forced labour in May 1940. Antoni fought in the Polish army, was taken into captivity as a prisoner of war by the Germans after capitulation, was initially sent to the Stalag Altengrabow camp then interned in Stalag Ziegenhain from 1940. The work and hardship that both Katarzyna and Antoni endured brought them closer together. Before long, the couple were expecting a child. In accordance with the above-mentioned decree, Katarzyna was brought to Pfaffenwald. Her son Antoni was born there in October 1943, but lived only five days. Following this traumatic experience, Katarzyna returned to her employer and the child’s father Antoni. In late 1944, they both came to another farm in the same area, and their second son, Marian, was born there in February 1945. It is safe to assume that they did everything to ensure that the baby was born at the farm where they lived and worked, rather than in Pfaffenwald again. Their second child survived. Katarzyna and Antoni married soon after the war ended, and at the DP camp in Coburg applied for permission to emigrate with their son to the USA, as the post-war political situation meant returning to Poland was not an option.[23]

In the Pfaffenwald camp, as in other racist institutions of this sort, the medical and human needs of heavily pregnant Poles and other forced labourers from Eastern Europe were disregarded, meaning that many women died while giving birth. The top priority was to force the women back to work as quickly as possible after giving birth. Many women spent several months of their pregnancy in Pfaffenwald and worked there until giving birth. They suffered from hunger, cold, and exhaustion.

 

Forced abortions
 

The decree of May 1943 on the treatment of pregnant Eastern European forced labourers paved the way for forced abortions, even at advanced stages of pregnancy, if there was a “risk” that a “racially undesirable child” would be born. Pregnancies among Polish women were to be immediately reported to the Gestapo, including details of the month of pregnancy and the ethnic and/or national identity of the partner. The report was to be accompanied by the written consent of the respective Polish woman to terminate the pregnancy. If consent was refused, the Gestapo had the right to arrest the Polish woman in question. All administrative delays were to be avoided, as “intervention must occur immediately”.[24]

In many cases, however, pregnancies were terminated without the consent of the women in question or their consent was forced. In April 1944, eight forced labourers from the Soviet Union and Poland refused to undergo abortions in Pfaffenwald, although they had previously, under pressure from the authorities, consented. However, the medical staff at Pfaffenwald did not carry out the abortions and first enquired about the legal situation “under which such foreigners can be forced to terminate pregnancy.”[25] An additional problem was the lack of “medical instruments”, meaning that the Soviet doctors responsible could not immediately deal with all the cases they had been given.[26] More recent historical research does in fact highlight ambivalent aspects in this area. On the one hand, some doctors refused to carry out abortions, on the other hand intensive efforts on the part of the regional authorities to “terminate pregnancy” can be observed.[27] In any case, abortion meant that the woman in question could soon work again. 

It is impossible to verify the number of abortions carried out in Pfaffenwald. It is equally difficult to estimate the number of women who suffered lasting damage to their health or died as a result of forced abortions. The only certainty is the incredible pain and the physical as well as mental suffering the women in question endured. The National Socialist crimes at this camp only ended when the Americans arrived on 30 March 1945. 

A court case against camp guards accused of maltreating camp inmates was initiated in 1947, before ending in 1949 due to lack of evidence.[28] The German justice system conducted no further proceedings relating to the crimes committed at Pfaffenwald.

 

Commemoration
 

Local residents knew of the existence of the camp, but showed no great interest in it.[29] The area quickly became overgrown after the war and was gradually forgotten about. The only trace of what happened there was the Pfaffenwald-Beiershausen war cemetery, set up in 1960 by the German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge), where over 400 victims from Pfaffenwald and other exhumed cemeteries in the region are buried. Two bronze tablets with the names of 453 victims were inserted into the cemetery wall. The following is written on one of the tablets: “Here lie 453 war dead, who died far from home in the difficult period 1940–1945”. The second panel contains a Russian translation of the text. The cemetery still exists in this form and ceremonies are held there on the German day of commemoration (Volkstrauertag). Expanding the commemorative inscription to include a Polish translation would certainly make sense, as at least 46 of the engraved names are of Polish victims.[30] Another way to learn about the history of the location is a walking tour with the “Pfaffenwald-Gedenkrunde” app.[31] The Hersfelder History Association (Hersfelder Geschichtsverein) reconstructed a site map of the camp in 2016 and placed it at the historical location in the form of a tablet. It also published an information brochure titled “Pfaffenwald. Zeugnis nationalsozialistischer Gräueltäten in Bad Hersfeld” (Pfaffenwald. Report on National Socialist Atrocities in Bad Hersfeld). The brochure rightly criticises the fact that the commemorative plaques do not even mention the national origins of the victims, let alone their individual histories.[32]

The former camp site itself has been fully reclaimed by nature. It is mostly covered by forest and just a few foundations of the barracks remain. One can hardly imagine that at this location racism and economic exploitation led to the deaths of many people from Poland and Eastern Europe.

 

Pfaffenwald began as a labour camp and in the second half of the war became a place where Eastern European forced labourers, pregnant women and their babies died. At least 376 people died in this “auxiliary hospital” by the time the war ended.[33] Many children born under these catastrophic conditions in Pfaffenwald died in the following weeks and months, including in the “care facilities for foreign children”. The debilitated mothers also suffered after giving birth and not infrequently also died. That is all the more reason why this site should be marked with appropriate commemorative signs, in line with current historical research.

 

Katarzyna Woniak, March 2026