MASAKRA IN ARNSBERG
Between 20 and 23 March 1945, Russian and Polish forced laborers were murdered in 3 locations close Arnsberg in present-day North Rhine-Westphalia. At that time 208 people died, including many women and 2 children. They reminded of these murders late discovered objects after victims dug up as a consequence of archaeological works. In Poland, the memory of the massacre in Arnsberg Forest does not truly exist. At the end of 1958, a evidence of the trial of the crime was published in the Western Review, which was guilty of that crime, which received sentences deploring the feeling of simple justice. The killers were Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht soldiers. Victims - withdrawn east with raids destroyed Russian factories and Polish forced workers. By the end of March, they were located in temporary concentrations in the area of Warstein and Suttrop close the town of Arnsberg. Division Commander Waffen-SS ‘Zur Vergeltung’ (Retaliation) General Hans Kammler considered them a threat and ordered them to ‘decimate’. Silent evidence average forest road. At the end of the clearing, on which archaeologists present miserable remains of people who have been brought here - decently lured by deception - and deprived of life. 56 adults and 1 kid died in this part of the forest close Arnsberg. There are 2 more specified places in the forest between Arnsberg, Warstein and Meschede. The crime is reminded of the plaque, from the ground was extracted the modest possessions of the victims accompanying them in fresh moments - a part of oral harmonica, a book for service in Polish, a dictionary, coins of kopecka, spectacle cases, shoes, parts of clothes, buttons, dishes, spoon... There's so much left of the dead and these things are talking to the surviving present without words. The victims' bones were collected and placed mostly in the cemetery in Meschede. The work of archaeologists besides brought crucial information about the perpetrators. In all 3 execution sites, different patterns were followed - in 1 of them a mass grave was created utilizing explosives, shells and missiles indicating that the brought to death tried to escape in vain. Order to decimate! Kill as many as possible! Columns of forced laborers passed through the region around these towns. Among the inhabitants there was a belief that forced laborers bargain and commit rape, but they deny the preserved documents. In an atmosphere of fear of the 3rd Reich's defeat, it was believed that at the time of the withdrawal of the army from the area, its inhabitants would be sentenced to revenge and would fall victim to the plunder of erstwhile prisoners. At Warstein headquarters, General Kammler called a briefing and issued appropriate orders. Victims were brought to the scene by trickery. It has been announced that it is essential to study to transport, which any forced workers will transport to other, better adapted places of concentration and work. 129 men and 77 women with 2 children volunteered. The execution was carried out with single shots to the back of the head or with long and device guns. 1 of the torturers named Anhalt was celebrated for his unique cruelty - the survivor of the execution the girl knelt begging for mercy, but Anhalt came from behind and shot her in the head. A man named Antoni Bros was celebrated for killing 2 children. 1 man, about a year old, crashed his head into a tree. The military faked the causes of the execution by shooting looting Russians, but the size of the action, its course and that among the victims there were women and children trying to keep secret. After a fewer days, however, many details penetrated local residents from random witnesses and forest workers. And then the dead in the woods were told by the Americans, who had already occupied the area close Arnsberg on April 7, 1945.
The American commandant was initially carrying on with the intention of giving up the area for the loot of erstwhile forced laborers and allowing them to retaliate within 24 hours, but that did not happen. He forced local members of the NSDAP to exhume the murdered. Then residents of surrounding towns and villages - families with children - had to walk along arranged bodies. The pictures of these events have been preserved - on 1 parent goes with 2 children and blindfolds them... This understandable motion in the case of a parent could besides well illustrate Germany’s postwar attitude toward disgraceful past deeds.
THE COMPETENT
The main liable for the massacre of forced laborers in the forest close Arnsberg was SS general Hans Kammler, 1 of the most prominent men in the full 3rd Reich. It wasn't any dumb military man, a man without an ethos, a primitive, and a bandit. Kammler belonged to a actual elite forming the German state under Hitler. He was an excellent specialist in his field. And he had 1 dominant feature - he was cruel. He was born in Szczecin. Engineer, builder, builder. His father was an officer, a colonel. In March 1932, Hans Kammler joined the NSDAP, and a year later besides joined the SS. He supervised all projects related to the construction of concentration camps. It was called the "technocrat of destruction" - he perfected the crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau to accomplish their greater efficiency (80,000 during the month). In the spring of 1943, Kammler was directed to undress the ghetto in Warsaw. Heinrich Himmler then appointed him as a peculiar typical for the V2 rocket program. At that time he became the originator of the relocation of production lines to underground adventures and factories drilled up to Kohnstein, Thuringia (two parallel canals with a full dimension of more than 3 kilometres, with more than 40 tunnels connecting up to 150 metres long, the full presumption seemed almost unrealistic, but the mill was built in evidence time of 4 months). In August 1944, Kammler was entrusted with the work of utilizing V2 missiles to fire London, Paris, Brussels and Antwerp. Due to allied progress, Kammler shortly had to decision behind Ren. During the retreat, the general encountered a congestion caused by forced workers close the town of Warstein. This is where he gave us the order to decimate... The end of the war was Kammler in Prague. According to conflicting information, he either committed suicide by swallowing cyanide, or ordered himself killed by a chauffeur, or faked death and fled to South America. His officer Wolfgang Wetzling, commanding the decimation action, joined the SS for ideological reasons - wanted to be among the highest standards people. As a result, he had to participate in the execution of 208 people. Johannes Miesel studied law and theology. He's been in the SS since 1938. He fought in France, Russia and Yugoslavia. Bernhard Anhalt, Helmut Gaedt, Heinz Zeuner... SS members. The civilian was erstwhile captain Ernst-Moritz Klönne, the boy of a factoryman who spent the time of the end of the war in a household villa close Arnsberg. It was he who, as a acquainted area, pointed out to his SS comrades the convenient places to execute.
CRIME AND CARA
It was not until 1957 that the trial liable for the massacre began. Previously there was a collusion of silence and cover for criminals, and the justice strategy of the West Germany sought amnesty for them and to cut off from the past. An anonymous study decided to initiate the procedure. No suspect pleaded guilty due to the fact that he was only following orders. Low sentences and acquittals fell at first instance. In the second place, Wetzling was given 5 years in prison for the death of 151 people, which gave him 12 days in prison for 1 death. Klönne received a conviction of 1.5 years in prison for helping to kill 71 people. Miesel was acquitted by virtue of amnesty. The another 3 left court as free men.
A massacre in Arnsberg. The Germans revealed evidence of an unknown crime in Poles during planet War II.
Under the supervision of American soldiers, German civilians from Suttrop dig graves for victims of the March massacre.
German archaeologists in North Rhine-Westphalia found traces of mass murder. The items they found belonged to Polish and Russian forced laborers who were murdered by the Nazis between 20 and 23 March 1945.
During excavations conducted at the turn of 2018 and 2019, German researchers found about 400 items – including a prayer book, an oral harmonica and a glasses case, which belonged to the victims of the forest massacre close Arnsberg. At the end of planet War II, Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht soldiers murdered 208 Poles and Russians there.
The crime has not been actually mentioned so far. In March 1945, during the evacuation of forced laborers from the factories destroyed by the Allied, the Nazis spent the population to temporary concentration sites around Warstein, Suttrop and Meschede (near the town of Arnsberg). shortly the command declared the prisoners a threat and ordered them to be decimated.
The first massacre occurred in the Langenbach Valley close the first mentioned cities. 71 prisoners were murdered there – including 60 women and 1 child. It was there that archaeologists found most of the items. Certainly, however, it was not all the property of the victims.
Evidence found at the scene of a war crime indicates soldiers robbed the dead by stealing money and clothes. They left only individual items, from their point of view – useless, specified as the Polish dictionary, damaged shoes, dishes, coins from household sides or buttons and beads. In addition, archaeologists discovered a number of items abandoned by the perpetrators of the massacre, including bullet cassettes, as well as shovels utilized to bury the victims.
Millions of people were transported to forced labour in the 3rd German Reich from the areas occupied by Germany.
As the researchers emphasize, the Suttrop and Meschede criminals were better prepared for execution and masked their tracks more efficiently. This is evidenced by the fact that less artifacts were found at the scene of the crime. In Suttrop, the torturers forced 57 workers to dig ditches that became their graves, while in the second case the Germans utilized grenades to make pits in the ground in which they later buried 80 people.
So far, only 14 of the 208 victims of the Arnsberg massacre have been clearly identified. Crime has been kept secret for over 70 years. While any of the perpetrators were brought to justice in the 1950s, the trial was not publicized and they themselves received disproportionately low sentences. According to expert Marcus Weidner, “no 1 knows who was shot here—and for a long time no 1 wanted to know”.
Archaeologists who have participated in excavations declare that they will make all effort to identify the remaining murdered. According to Deutsche Welle, the task aimed, among another things, at “stopping the ever-increasing tendency to underestimate the Nazi past of Germany”. Landschaftsverband manager Westfalen-Lippe adds: “These murders are part of our past and we must take work for them”.
Forced workers in labour camps are spoken of little frequently than the victims of concentration camps. Meanwhile, specified facilities were the most and were 1 of the key elements that ensured the smooth operation of the Nazi war machine. Only in Poland there were almost 1800 of them.
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