Für das Erinnern
Crimes against Prisoners
The arresting of innocent people, and keeping them inside a prison camp, was a violation of human rights. It is a sad fact that crimes were committed against these people inside the camp and at the construction site. Most of the stories told in this book were presented by eyewitnesses: survivors.
Physical abuse, through the SS, Kapos and some of the Organization Todt personnel happened on a daily basis. There was also a form of "official punishment" which included twenty-five hits with a hard stick among others. Generally, the Rapportfuehrer applied for permission to punish an inmate at the camp commander. Once given, the task of punishing an inmate was given to either the camp elder or block elder. Often, the punishment was carried out on Sunday with all camp inmates present and forced to watch.
Ex-inmate Sandberg tells of an incident that occurred at the Waldlager. An inmate arrived late at roll call and was severely beaten until he wasn’t screaming anymore: the man was dead. Guards were ordered to shoot at inmates that tried to flee. On a December 7, 1944 an SS guard shot the inmate Samuel F., who was trying to flee. Twenty days later, on December 27, an SS guard shot another prisoner who came from the Zangberg camp. The man had been out begging in the local area. During clean-up operations at the Muehldorf train station, a prisoner was shot on the spot after a guard spotted him taking a can of tobacco from a train. A Waldlager inmate lost his life when he was caught eating potatoes from the potato storage shed. He was killed on the spot. On September 21, 1944, seven Italian forced laborers were arrested on the grounds that they refused to work. They were presumably sent to Munich-Stadelheim where they were put to death.
Camp Mittergars was known as a death camp. More inmates were killed through human brutality than from typhus. At fault were particularly brutal camp elders as well as the commander, a man named Kirsch. Kirsch was so sadistic; he apparently killed an inmate after a night roll call with an ax.
Worse than the SS, according to eyewitness testimonies, were the camp elders, block elders and the Kapos. The Kapo "L" as considered an especially brutal man who punched and beat as he pleased. He was a recurring criminal and had been arrested since 1934. Many lives were taken by him. During roll call, he would beat inmates and enjoyed hanging them by their feet. His main area of terrorization was the main construction site.
Eyewitness "K" claims to have transported many bodies to their graves as part of a funeral commando. The degree of brutality was plainly visible on the bodies. Many of the bodies were covered in blood, showed severe head wounds and many had broken bones.
Another eyewitness account claims that his cousin was brutally murdered by Kapo "L" with a shovel, which decapitated the unfortunate man. Such murders were ignored and tolerated by the SS who wrote the deaths down as "construction accidents". The transfer of such brutal Kapos was common practice as they were expected to brutalize inmates.