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

The story behind the satellite concentration camp in Frankfurt/Main
 

The Adlerwerke factories in Frankfurt/Main was a well-known company with a long tradition. It had made a name for itself as a producer of cars, bicycles and typewriters. During the war, they switched to producing armaments, specialising in the construction of “traction vehicles”. These were half-track vehicles that had a steerable front axle with wheels and continuous track propulsion at the rear. They were used as a chassis for lightweight armoured personnel carriers, among other things. (Figs. 1 . , 2 . ) 

Like all German companies, the Adlerwerke suffered from a lack of labourers during the Second World War. From 1941 onwards, this was compensated by the use of civilian forced labourers from Poland, Ukraine, France, the Soviet Union and, from the autumn of 1943, from Italy. The influx and violent deportation of forced labourers had dwindled due to the advances being made by the Allies. During the final year of the war, armament companies began to make increased use of prisoners from the concentration camp as a source of labour, for whom they paid the SS a daily rental fee. However, since the SS were keen to retain control of the prisoners, this led to the creation of more than 1,000 satellite concentration camps within the German Reich and the occupied territories. This was also the case in Gallus (a district in the centre of Frankfurt – translator’s note), where in August 1944, an advance party of 200 prisoners and a squad of SS guards arrived at the Adlerwerke factory building on Kleyerstrasse. The official application for the employment of 1,000 prisoners for the production of traction vehicles and the related gears and engines was submitted in early September 1944. (Figs. 3 . , 4 . ) For reasons that are not known, the satellite camp was given the code name “Katzbach”. It was placed under the purview of the Natzweiler concentration camp.

 

Who were the prisoners?
 

In total, the SS provided the Adlerwerke with 1,616 prisoners, who were taken to Frankfurt in four larger-scale transport operations. All the prisoners from the first three transports were Polish men who had been seized from August 1944 onwards during the Warsaw Uprising. They had been taken to the Pruszków transit camp, which the Germans had set up a few days after the start of the uprising for the purpose of deporting the population of Warsaw. From there, they were sent to various concentration camps within the German system. Originally, the SS, the Reich Security Head Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt) and the Wehrmacht had planned to take mostly active fighters from the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) to the concentration camps, and to use the remaining citizens of Warsaw as civilian forced labourers. However, the process of distributing the prisoners among the transports in the transit camp in Pruszków was chaotic and arbitrary. The prisoners taken to Frankfurt included a large number of civilians as well as fighters. After arriving in Buchenwald or Dachau, they were haphazardly assigned to one satellite camp or another. In the autumn of 1944, no-one foresaw that Frankfurt would become one of the most murderous places to work, with little chance of survival.

The final transport, in February 1945, included prisoners from different countries for the first time. Most of them were former civilian forced labourers from Poland and the Soviet Union, who had been incarcerated in a concentration camp by the Gestapo for committing various “offences”. Often, they had attempted to flee or to improve their appalling living conditions by stealing clothes, food or heating materials. Other prisoners came from Belgium, France, Greece, Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Many of them had been transported to Buchenwald during the clearance of other concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, and had then been sent from Buchenwald on to Frankfurt. The final transport to the camp also included 36 prisoners of Polish-Jewish origin, as well as 28 German prisoners.

Lists containing precise information about the names, ages and origins of the prisoners have been preserved for all transports. (Fig. 5 . , 6 . ) We therefore know the prisoners included a large number of children, such as Andrzej Branecki, who was just 14 years old, who returned to Frankfurt multiple times after the war to report on his experiences. (Fig. 7 . ) For many of the prisoners, the identity cards created by the SS administration have been preserved, which provide information about their family circumstances and where they had previously lived. In some cases, relatives have also provided photographs. (Figs. 8 . , 9 . , 10 . )

Only 30 survivors have recorded their testimony about their experiences in the concentration camp assigned to the Adlerwerke. The earliest report, which dates from December 1945, was written by Witold Szuman.[1] Several survivors testified as witnesses as part of various investigation proceedings or gave interviews during the 1990s.[2] Two autobiographical novels were also published. The “Diary of a Clairvoyant”, which appeared in Warsaw in 1976 under a pseudonym, was written by the former prisoner Józef Marcinkowski, but only features the “Katzbach” camp a few times.[3] The second novel, which has now been translated into German, is by Janusz Garlicki. “Von der Wahrscheinlichkeit zu überleben” (“On the Probability of Survival”) provides an extremely vivid description of the period from the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising to the author’s liberation by the Americans.[4] No other testimony enables us to imagine everyday life and the mental state of the Polish prisoners during their brutal incarceration in the “Katzbach” concentration camp to the same degree of intensity. 

Since taking photographs inside the factory at this time was prohibited, we have no photographic evidence of the camp or the prisoners. The drawings made by the former inmate Zygmunt Świstak (1924–2022) are therefore of particular value. They document the life and suffering, the hard labour and the violence from the perspective of the prisoners. 

 

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 . )

 

What did the citizens and people living in the neighbourhood know? 
 

The city authorities were confronted with the camp and the high death rate among the prisoners in a number of different ways. The city not only took on the task of officially registering the names of those who died, but also their transfer to the crematorium in the main cemetery and their cremation and burial. In October 1944, camp director Franz informed the Frankfurt burial authority that the dead needed to be taken from the satellite camp to the nearest city crematorium. After being cremated, they were to be buried in a secluded part of the cemetery in unmarked graves. The burial authority was requested to claim for the costs by sending a bill to the commander of the Natzweiler concentration camp. (Figs. 18 . , 19 . )

At their places of work, the prisoners came into contact with Germans, particularly with the foremen, who inducted them into their work and monitored their progress, as well as with ancillary guards who were provided by the Adlerwerke as a support for the guard squad. The people living in the neighbourhood saw the prisoners when they were made to clear the rubble on the streets in the area. The work in the mine clearance squad, which was tasked with defusing unexploded bombs, was particularly dangerous. Some of the prisoners were also deployed in the private homes of Adler workers after bombing raids. (Fig. 20 . ) The weakened prisoners walked to the bathing facilities in the nearby Ackermannschule school at least three times. (Fig. 21 . ) The “delousing procedure” conducted there was torture for the prisoners, who were forced to stand naked for hours in the cold waiting for their clothing. During this process, they came into contact with the factory employees. One member of staff was of Polish origin and tried to help the prisoners. For example, he gave Jan Kozłowski a pair of trousers, which helped him escape, since he would have attracted attention in his striped prisoners’ trousers. 

The shop owners in the area knew the members of the SS who worked in the camp, particularly the head cook Martin Weiß, who set out every day to procure food and alcohol. In March 1945 at the latest, the camp was being talked about in the city, when the camp SS shot Georgiy Lebedenko and Adam Golub, two Ukrainian prisoners who had escaped in the early hours of the morning, on Lahnstrasse. Lebedenko was shot by two SS guards shortly after his escape. Golub managed to hid in cellars in apartment buildings for several hours before the people living there helped the SS to find him. He was seized during the afternoon and shot right in front of several of the neighbours. Today, there is a square named in memory of the two prisoners, Golub-Lebedenko-Platz. (Fig. 22 . )

 

The murderous camp clearance
 

In March 1945, shortly before the Americans entered Frankfurt, the SS cleared the camp. In mid-March 1945, 450 prisoners who were unable to march were transported by train to Bergen-Belsen. At least 100 of them died during the journey, while most of the others did not survive the appalling conditions in the completely overfilled and undersupplied camp. Only eleven are known to have survived. They were freed on 15 April 1945 when Bergen-Belsen was liberated by British troops. On the evening of 24 March 1945, the SS forced the approximately 360 prisoners who remained in Frankfurt to march along the railway track to Gelnhausen, Schlüchtern and Fulda until they reached Hünfeld, where they were loaded onto trains that took them to Buchenwald. During the march, the SS shot anyone who was too exhausted to keep pace. Days, weeks and in some cases even years later, a total of 50 bodies were discovered along the route which can be ascribed to the death march. (Fig. 23 . )

The post-war investigations clearly demonstrate the extent to which the civilian population was witness to these crimes. For example, Ferdinand Müller from Fulda gave the following statement on 29 November 1947: “On 29/3/1945, on Maundy Thursday, at around 10 a.m., I travelled from Fulda to Lehnerz in the direction of Hünfeld. At the exit of the town, at the level of Kollmann’s barn, a transport of around 150 concentration camp prisoners emerged from the barn. As they continued their march along the road, a person suddenly fell down at the end of the line of prisoners. This person was taken to the side of the road by an SS man and a person wearing civilian clothes. After the unconscious person had been dragged to one side, the SS man shot him through the head with his automatic pistol without any hesitation. The body of the man who had been shot was then thrown down the slope into the gallows ditch. During this time, there were a lot of people about on the street. All the people using the road were very angry with the SS man. They protested against his behaviour, whereupon he threatened the people with his automatic pistol.”[6]

A few days after their arrival in Buchenwald, the survivors were sent on further death marches by the SS. The majority were forced to march to Flossenbürg and then on to Dachau, where around 40 former prisoners from the Adlerwerke were liberated on 29 April 1945. Many of them did not survive the death marches. Some succeeded in fleeing along the way. Among them was Janusz Garlicki, who described in detail in his book how he made the decision to escape and what conditions needed to be in place for him to succeed.

 

Liberated, yet still not free
 

Most of the few prisoners who survived returned to Poland. Some remained in Germany, while others tried to emigrate to the US, Canada or Australia. Many of the survivors remained in displaced persons camps for months, in some cases even years, or spent long periods of time in sanatoriums in order to return to health. Many families in Poland waited in vain for their husbands, sons, fathers and brothers to return. While those whose relatives’ deaths had been officially recorded in Frankfurt/Main were able to obtain information from the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, this was not the case for the families of the many hundreds of people who had died during the death marches. Their places and dates of death will remain unknown forever – a cause of agony for the families involved even today. 

Years after the war ended, they were still issuing missing persons notices in the hope of finding their loved ones. (Figs. 24 . , 25 . ) Wiktoria Bittner, the mother of Zdzisław Bittner, published a missing persons notice in the “Repatriant” newspaper in May 1947. She received a letter from his childhood friend, Zygmunt Świstak. Zygmunt had been deported to the “Katzbach” satellite camp together with Zdzisław, but at Christmas 1944 was transferred to Vaihingen. He was therefore unable to provide any information about the circumstances in which Zdzisław died. However, he wrote in detail about their last meetings, the conditions in the camp and his own situation following liberation. He had been deported to the Adlerwerke together with his father and brother. Neither had survived. His postcards and letters to Zdzisław’s mother illustrate how difficult it was for the survivors to return to normal life. The loss of their health, their family and friends, their homes and their prospects for the future, as well as the destruction of Warsaw, meant that they also lost their courage to face life again. The letters he received from Wiktoria Bittner, his friend’s mother, who had known him from before the war, gave Zygmunt Świstak the feeling that he was not entirely alone in the world. In one letter, he wrote: “Now I know that someone knows me and knows who I am.”[7]

 

Was there any atonement for the crimes committed?
 

The first criminal investigations into the murders in the “Katzbach” camp and during the death march began as early as 1945. Two employees of the Adlerwerke who had maltreated the prisoners as ancillary guards were sentenced to prison in 1946; another employee was deported to Poland, where he stood trial in court.[8] It is no coincidence that in the case of the Adlerwerke, it was only ancillary guards who were found guilty of violence against the prisoners. Unlike the former SS men, they lived in Frankfurt and the surrounding area, and were therefore easy to find for the law enforcement agencies. By contrast, the SS men had already left the city. It was not until the 1960s, after the investigations of the legal authorities were conducted on a more professional basis with the founding in Ludwigsburg of the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, that former members of the SS who worked in the camp could be located. None of them were convicted, even though reliable allegations had been made against camp director Erich Franz, his deputy Emil Lendzian and the camp cook Martin Weiß. Responsibility for the proceedings against Erich Franz was transferred to the Austrian legal authorities due to his place of abode in Austria. The Austrians conducted half-hearted investigations before finally closing the case due to lack of evidence. Emil Lendzian had already died in Mönchengladbach in 1956. Martin Weiß, an ethnic German from Transylvania, returned to Romania after the war, and the German authorities felt they had no possibility of putting him on trial. 

The company managers, Ernst Hagemeier and Franz Engelmann, were interned in a US prison until the spring of 1947, before being allowed to go free as part of a mass prisoner release operation. Attempts to bring them to trial again failed. The half-hearted legal investigations into the crimes in the Adlerwerke is by no means unusual. Rather, it can be seen as typical of the way in which justice for National Socialist crimes was pursued. The way in which compensation payments were handled is just as appalling. The survivors who returned to Poland did not receive any supplementary pension payments until the 1970s as a consequence of the German government’s change in policy towards eastern Europe. One-off payments were made as a result of the “Good neighbourhood agreement” between Germany and Poland in 1991, and were administered by the “Erinnerung, Verantwortung, Zukunft” (“Remembrance, Responsibility, Future”) foundation, which was set up in 2000. By that time, only a small number of them were still alive, and the amounts paid did not constitute serious compensation for what they had suffered.

The information sources that emerged during the course of the legal proceedings, particularly the statements made by members of staff and people living in direct proximity to the Adlerwerke, documented the entire range of contemporary perspectives on this camp soon after the events occurred, and in stark detail. Their reports illustrate the dynamics that led to a situation in which the death by starvation of so many people in their own factory was perceived to be simply part of everyday life in war. However, they also show that there were large numbers of company staff and neighbours who did not think that this was “normal”, and who did what they could to intervene under the circumstances. 

 

A decades-long fight for remembrance
 

During the period immediately after the end of the war, the crimes committed against the concentration camp prisoners in the Adlerwerke were known among the people living in Frankfurt. However, in light of the general state of emergency in the destroyed city, they did not attract much attention. The “Frankfurter Rundschau” newspaper reported on the investigations and trials. After the war, the more than 500 prisoners interred in the main cemetery were reburied. In places along the death march route, such as Dörnigheim, where the bodies of prisoners who had been shot had been hastily covered over with earth, the Americans ordered the local population to exhume the dead and to bury them with dignity. During the exhumations in Dörnigheim, the local people even found two survivors who had returned to their place of suffering. (Fig. 26 . )

The grave site in the main cemetery became the most visible trace of the camp in the city. In the decades that followed the war, it was expanded several times with the addition of memorial structures.[1] In 1972, the ministry of internal affairs in Hessen had the site enclosed by stone panels, which showed the names of all those who had died in Frankfurt. It was here, in 1988, that Zygmunt Świstak found the grave of his brother, Tadeusz. (Figs. 27 . , 28 . ) In 2025, a glass stela was installed bearing engravings of the name of every prisoner who died in Frankfurt, in alphabetical order. (Fig. 29 . ) 

As is the case with many other places where crimes were committed by the National Socialists, the story of “Katzbach” concentration camp has begun to fade from memory over the years. During the 1980s, civil society groups began to draw attention to the events that occurred in the Adlerwerke and to campaign for public remembrance of the satellite concentration camp there. Ernst Kaiser and Michael Knorn headed research projects and established contact with survivors. In 1994, they published the first monograph about the camp. The workers’ council of the Adlerwerke, chaired by Lothar Reiniger, raised the subject internally at a council meeting. In 1993, the LAGG, Leben und Arbeiten in Griesheim und Gallus e.V. (the Living and Working in Griesheim and Gallus association) was founded. Today, it still promotes remembrance of the satellite concentration camp and organises visits for survivors. (Fig. 30 . ) In 1998, the association successfully contended a payment from the Dresdner Bank of 8,000 Deutschmarks to eleven survivors of whose existence was known at the time. As a large shareholder in the company at the time, the bank was found to have borne part of the responsibility for what happened.

At first, the city of Frankfurt/Main showed little interest in these initiatives. At times, the existence of the satellite concentration camp in the Adlerwerke was even called into doubt. However, since 2016, it has actively supported the creation of a memorial site there. In March 2022, the Geschichtsort Adlerwerke: Fabrik – Zwangsarbeit – Konzentrationslager was officially opened at the site on Kleyerstrasse where the crimes were committed. There, people now have an opportunity to closely study and reflect on the events in the Adlerwerke satellite concentration camp. The aim is to pass on knowledge about the past in order to create a better understanding of events in the present. The crimes are also remembered in public spaces in the city. In March 2022, in a campaign organised by the LAGG association, thousands of Frankfurters gathered along the banks of the Main river and commemorated each individual prisoner with hand-made placards. Many of them took the opportunity to examine the fate of the person whose name they were carrying more closely. (Fig. 31 . , 32 . ) In March 2025, to mark the 80th anniversary of the death march, numerous events were held in Frankfurt and in the communities along the death march route in commemoration of the events there.

 

Andrea Rudorff, July 2025

(The research project by Dr. Andrea Rudorff on “Katzbach” was held at the Fritz Bauer Institute in Frankfurt/Main from 2018 to 2020).

 

Literature:

Andrea Rudorff: Katzbach – Das KZ in der Stadt. Zwangsarbeit in den Adlerwerken Frankfurt am Main 1944/45, Göttingen 2021.

Ernst Kaiser and Michael Knorn: „Wir lebten und schliefen zwischen den Toten. Rüstungsproduktion, Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung in den Frankfurter Adlerwerken“, Frankfurt am Main/New York, 1994.

Joanna Skibinska: Die letzten Zeugen. Gespräche mit Überlebenden des KZ-Außenlagers „Katzbach“ in den Adlerwerken in Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main/Hanau 2005.

Janusz Garlicki: Von der Wahrscheinlichkeit zu überleben. Aus dem Warschauer Aufstand ins KZ-Außenlager bei den Frankfurter Adlerwerken, Wiesbaden 2021.

https://geschichtsort-adlerwerke.de/