From the Warsaw Uprising to Frankfurt/Main. Polish concentration camp prisoners in the ‘Adlerwerke’ factories

Survival conditions
 

Soon after the men arrived in Frankfurt, it already became clear that they would not survive the living conditions there for long. By the end of the year, 90 men had died, while 230 were classified as being “unfit for work” and sent to Natzweiler or Dachau, or to the Vaihingen camp for dying prisoners. The prisoners slept on plank beds in large factory halls. It rained through the roof and the ventilation was poor, which meant that the sleeping quarters soon began to stink horribly. (Fig. 11 . ) Twelve hours of heavy work every day in the factory took their toll on the prisoners’ strength. (Fig. 12 . ) The nightly bombing alerts also had a devastating impact. During these alerts, the prisoners were driven and beaten into the cellars, where they were forced to stay until the raid was over. (Fig. 13 . )

The aerial attack on 8 January 1945 was particularly devastating. 50 prisoners died who had been sheltering in an insufficiently secure bomb shelter. As Elisabeth Bäuerle, a worker at the Adlerwerke who cared for the large number of injured, later reported: “It is almost impossible to describe the scene that I witnessed. There were people sitting in front of me who were covered in blood and black as coal from the debris. Some of them were crying, telling me about their wives and stroking my hands in gratitude.”[5] Around 40 injured prisoners were given rudimentary care in the city hospital on Eschenbachstrasse.

However, the most common cause of death was catastrophic malnutrition. The amount of food given to the prisoners was wholly inadequate. Their already meagre rations were reduced even further by the SS head cook, Martin Weiß, who pilfered food intended for the prisoners for his own use. Soon, many of the prisoners were unfit for work. From December 1944 at the latest, people died in the camp nearly every day. 

Depending on how much strength they had left, the prisoners tried to help themselves as best they could in the face of the impossible demands and humiliation heaped on them by the SS. They found ways and means of getting hold of much-needed food and other items by bartering, protected themselves against the cold and formed small groups to provide each other with emotional support. The daily reports from the Adlerwerke, which were seized by the Americans after the war, contained numerous accounts of attempts at escape (37 are documented in total). (Fig. 14 . ) If someone was caught again, they were sent away with the transports for the sick prisoners at the nearest opportunity. We have a report from just one prisoner who managed to get away. Jan Kozłowski escaped from the factory at the start of February 1945. His story has been published in “Die letzten Zeugen” (“The last Witnesses”) by Joanna Skibinska. 

The responsibility of the SS and the company for the high death rate in the camp 
 

The SS guard squad consisted of 35 men, led by camp director Erich Franz, who came from Vienna and who in his previous life was a salesman at Julius Meinl. (Fig. 15 . ) He provided information about events in the camp in regular weekly and monthly reports sent to the main camp. However, only the reports for 1944 have been preserved. (Fig. 16 . )

Many SS guards had been transferred from the Wehrmacht to concentration camp duty not long before. Others had already worked in the Majdanek concentration and death camp, where they had been involved in the shooting of Jewish men and women. A number of them indulged in untrammelled violence in the Adlerwerke satellite camp. Arbitrary beatings were an everyday occurrence, as were pre-announced punitive acts, which took the form of 25 lashes of the whip on the prisoners’ naked backs. In January 1945, two prisoners were hanged on a gallows set up in the camp after being accused of sabotage. 

The company management also bore responsibility for the appalling treatment of the prisoners. During this time, they focused their attention on moving their operational equipment and machinery to places of safety so that they would remain fit for purpose after the war. Even from the point in time of the prisoners’ arrival, the actual production at the Frankfurt site had come to a standstill due to the unreliable supply of energy and raw materials and the delivery and transportation problems that arose as a result of the war, and was only continued on a pro forma basis. They had no further use for the prisoners, and no interest in investing in their continuing to be able to work. As a result, they took no responsibility for their lives. They did not attempt to ensure that the food provided by the company actually reached the prisoners, did nothing to improve the terrible living conditions by providing means for heating the premises or the inadequate sanitary facilities, and took no measures to contain the violence meted out by the SS. The lawyer Franz Engelmann, who was responsible for the foreign forced labourers, was at the same time a political defence attorney for the company and had close connections with the Gestapo. Factory workers who helped the prisoners were threatened, and in one documented case, were even arrested by the Gestapo. (Fig. 17 . )