KZ-Friedhof Vaihingen an der Enz

Cemetery description

The cemetery of the commando (sub-camp) of the Natzweiler concentration camp in Vaihingen/Enz is the final resting place for 1,265 prisoners who died between 4 October 1944 and 12 April 1945. The remains of 223 victims, whose names were identified after their exhumations, were sent back to their home countries in 1955.
In 1942, an experimental military training area was created in a closed stone pit in Vaihingen/Enz in order to conduct research on the V-1 flying bomb launcher under the surveillance of the Ministry of Aviation of the Third Reich.
In March 1944, there began, in the stone pit, the construction of underground bunkers into which the production of Messerschmitt planes was moved. At the same time, there was established a forced labour camp under the administration of the Todt organisation, for civilian forced labourers - Polish, Russian and French citizens above all. Not far from there, in August 1944, a commando (sub-camp) of the Natzweiler - the Veihingen an der Enz concentration camp was opened where, immediately afterwards, 2,189 persons, selected on the ramp of the Auschwitz concentration camp, were brought for extermination through hard labour on the ‘Soffel’ project (the construction of a well-hidden multi-storey underground Messerschmitt plant). The prisoners were brought there from the liquidated Radom ghetto. With time, the two-shift twelve-hour work, seven days a week, on the construction of the bunker-factory led to the death of 113 victims from this transport.
In late October 1944, the construction works on the ‘Staffel’ project were suspended on account of constant Allied air raids. In the meantime, another selection of the still-living Radom transport prisoners took place. The SS commanders deemed most of the severely emaciated men suitable for work, and reassigned them to other sub-camps and the Nazweiller concentration camp labour commandos (work units). Thus, 200 prisoners from Radom stayed in Vaihingen, accommodated in one of the 4 barracks, divided into commandos and sent to work for the Vaihingen commune and for clean-up work on the premises of the former ‘Staffel’ construction site. As of 1 December 1944, the concentration camp served as the central ‘SS camp for the sick and those requiring convalescence’ for other concentration camps in south-western Germany. The term meant to hide the real extermination function of the place to which the sick, those exhausted through hard labour, and the dying were brought.
As of November 1944, 2,442 prisoners from 25 countries, mostly from Poland, Russia, and France, were brought to Vaihingen. Soon, deprived of food and basic medical supplies, they either froze to death in the unheated barracks or, as of 1945, died of typhoid. In consequence, until April 1945, the bodies of 1,578 prisoners were interred in collective graves in direct proximity to the camp. After the camp’s liberation, more prisoners, weakened by the inhumane labour conditions they had endured, as well as disease, died in the Vaihingen hospital. In total, approximately as many as 1,700 prisoners died in this concentration camp within a short time period; hence its infamous name - the ‘Vaihingen death camp’ (Todeslager).
It is assumed that out of 1,177 Polish citizens brought to the Valhingen camp from more than a dozen sub-camps belonging to the Nazweiler concentration camp, 771 died and were buried in the camp cemetery.
In October 1945, the Allied occupational authorities gave the order to build a war cemetery for the unidentified victims of the Vaihingen ‘death camp’. In 1954, the French government commission conducted the exhumation of 1,844 bodies. The examination of the remains enabled the researchers to identify 223 victims, who were sent back to their home countries. The remaining unidentified victims were buried in the war cemetery established between 1956 and 1958.
Nowadays, 1,267 victims of the Vaihingen concentration camp rest here. Sadly, the cemetery, marked by 744 anonymous concrete gravestones, is a frequent target of neo-Nazi attacks and hooliganism (1958, 1990, 2003, 2005).
In October 2013, a monument consisting of four columns was erected. There are also black granite memorial plaques with the 1,342 names of the camp’s victims inscribed in an alphabetical order. The names of 11 victims remain unidentified. The exact number of those who were victims of the Veihingen concentration camp is still unknown and it seems that, after so many years following the end of the war, will never be established.

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