Projects | Kaufering IV (2023/24)

Death camp below ground water

Site of the Kaufering IV Conc. Camp | May 2, 2024 © Helga Deiler

Inspired by the pioneering commitment of historian and secondary school teacher Anton Posset (1941 – 2015), various citizens' initiatives in the area of the Kaufering concentration camp complex have been working to come to terms with the National Socialist legacy of their home region.

In the course of preparing a youth encounter as part of EVZ’s funding programme YOUNG PEOPLE remember international, Memos joined forces with one of them, the European Holocaust Memorial Foundation. The first meeting with the organisation’s president Manfred Deiler and his wife Helga was held in July 2023.

Central theme of the collaboration between the Memorial Foundation and Memos is the Kaufering IV concentration camp. There, Max Livni, the protagonist of the planned youth encounter, was imprisoned from 10 October 1944 to 24 April 1945.

The Kaufering IV concentration camp was liberated by the 12th Armored Division of the U.S. Seventh Army on April 27, 1945, with help from soldiers in the 101st Airborne Division. Kaufering IV was one of 140 sub-camps of the Dachau concentration camp.

Below, six photographs taken by US-soldiers in Kaufering IV at the end of April 1945 are interlaced with texts about the last days of the death camp. These documents are excerpts from Max Livni’s Memoirs, a letter from US-soldier Alvin Pheterson to his parents and a report written by the Kaufering railroad official Joseph Hackelsperger.

Kaufering IV Concentration Camp | April, 1945 © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

"Kaufering had barracks that were completely different from what we knew in Birkenau, for example. A trench was dug in the ground, about one meter wide, half a meter deep and 15 or 20 meters long. Above it two surfaces of wooden boards were placed, covered with tar paper, which formed sloping walls, as well as the roof of the shack. At one end of this semi-subterranean shack, there was a window where the 'block Elteste' (block elders) lived, his 'room' was separated by blankets. At the other end was a door, from which three steps led into the trench. About 50 prisoners lived in each such block, on each side of the trench, 25 people lay on straw spread on the ground. The trench was used as a corridor, and when sitting during the distribution of bread, for example, the feet were in the trench. The camp, which was very new, was surrounded by a double wire fence, charged with electricity. Most of the officials in the camp, the 'elders of the blocks', 'Capos', were veteran prisoners who had known the German concentration camp procedures from the inside for many years." 

Source: The Voice of Memory by Max Mordechai Livni, page 39

Kaufering IV Concentration Camp | April, 1945 © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

"Over time, Kaufering IV became a detention camp. All the sick and unfit prisoners were brought to us from the other ten Kaufering camps, including friends such as Zeev Shek and his brother, who died within a few days. I helped the 'new ones' as much as I could, it was not much. Rumors of the approaching front multiplied. From our camp we saw the huge numbers of Allied planes that bombed the city of Munich not far away, turning it into a heap of ruins and ashes. The factory halls we set up were also completely destroyed. Around March 1945 it was clear that the Germans would lose the war very soon. Now it was doubly important for us to survive the remaining time until liberation. I got typhus and managed to get well; I was very weak. On April 24th, a rollcall was held, we were told that the main camp in Dachau was already in the hands of the International Red Cross and that we would be transferred to the auspices of this organization. It was also said that everyone who could walk, would walk there, the others must stay in their huts, and they would be brought by train. We heard the noise of the guns of the approaching front, it sounded reasonable. Nevertheless, from our bitter experience from trips organized by the SS, I decided together with my friend Dr. H. Kafka, to walk, despite my poor physical condition, and give ourselves a chance to escape into the forest, if the SS wanted to kill us."

Source: The Voice of Memory by Max Mordechai Livni, page 43

Kaufering IV Concentration Camp | April, 1945 © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

"Landsberg, April 30, 1945

Dear family,

In yesterday's letter I announced that I would write you a long letter to tell you about the 'special' concentration camp for Jews that I saw.
 
A few days ago we moved into the town at Lechfeld. We arrived a few hours after the Germans and actually took them by surprise. The town itself was an ordinary, small place. It had a large number of stores, beer bars and a church, as all towns have. But the people were different, they knew something and had helped with something that was the most horrific thing I have ever seen or will ever see.
 
The Kaufering camp was four or five kilometers from the town. This was a special place for oppressed Jews from all nations - Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Lithuanians - and the playground for the inhuman bastards of Nazis. The camp itself was about 100 yards wide and 400 to 500 yards long. The 'dwellings' for the inmates were holes dug in the ground, covered with a grass roof. As one inmate told me, about seventy people were put into each of these rooms, which were 12 by 12 feet. There was no light or heat and everything stank of decaying bodies and feces. A huge barbed wire fence had been erected around the entire camp. There were actually four fences, as there were several layers; three vertical and one slanted. The fence itself was a terrible thing. The landscape in which the camp is situated is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. It seems that in addition to destroying their comrades, they also wanted to mark nature itself.
 
When I reached the camp, everything was on fire. The Germans had stopped at nothing and tried to erase all signs of what they had done, but they were taken by surprise. We advanced faster than expected. There were 4,000 male prisoners in the camp and the Nazis had tried to kill and burn them all. This was done with the intention of eliminating all traces of their very existence. But they did not succeed completely …"

Source: Letter written by the 20-year-old American soldier Alvin Pheterson to his family, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Pheterson. 417 Joseph Avenue, Rochester, New York on April 30, 1945

Kaufering IV Concentration Camp | April, 1945 © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

"… Hundreds of naked or almost naked bodies lay on the paths between the barracks. They could not be called men; they were nothing but skin and bones, and I do mean that. Their bones were practically sticking out through the skin. Many of them were horribly burned, like a roast that had been cooked for a few hours too long or a marshmallow that had been roasted too long. A large pile of corpses had been gathered together and was destined to be burned words cannot describe this sight. There are none in the dictionary …"

Source: Letter written by the 20-year-old American soldier Alvin Pheterson to his family, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Pheterson. 417 Joseph Avenue, Rochester, New York on April 30, 1945

Kaufering IV Concentration Camp | April, 1945 © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

"Landsberg, 29.04.1945

This morning my wife and I tried to get into the train station. We were refused entry by an American guard. As we were leaving the station, an American patrolman arrested me and led me to a truck near the Lech Bridge and loaded me onto it. There were already 10 – 12 men on it. More men followed, then the truck, with American soldiers in the back, drove off. We didn't know where we were going. The truck drove towards Kaufering, on to Hurlach, then turned left into the concentration camp where the Jews had previously been housed. We all thought we would be the prisoners now. But things turned out differently. There were already men at work digging a large pit in the camp. We new arrivals now had to collect the dead Jews in the camp. When the dead Jews in the camp had been placed in the pits – another one had been dug in the meantime – with the Jews already lying there (there were very many), we were led to the pit near the Kaufering-Hurlach railroad embankment. A large number of dead Jews were lying there. They were supposed to have been killed by German airmen. A desolate picture and the strong smell of corpses. The Jews were also carried to the collection point near the pits. Two men always had to carry a corpse, at first without any makeshift means. Once, when I came to the pit with my helper, I heard the supervisor in charge of the graves shout: 'We learned that from the Germans!' He was absolutely right. In the afternoon we changed jobs. I came to the graves in the second pit. Soon about 100 farmers from the surrounding area appeared and had to stand in front of the dead Jews. A high American officer – it may have been a high official of the American administration – appeared and gave a speech in American; an American soldier standing next to him translated sentence by sentence into German: We have sent you here as representatives of the surrounding villages so that you can see how the Germans have raged here. Take note of this and pass on what you have seen and heard to your relatives and friends what the Germans have done here. We want a peace in which Germany may rise again. The farmers took note of this. During the speech, the peasants repeatedly shouted 'Pooh!' at the Nazi government during the informative explanations. Finally, the camp leader who was in charge of the camp was presented. Then the farmers were shown the Jews’ accommodation so that they could see the appalling conditions in which the Jews were housed during their six years of suffering.

We then continued digging until about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Before being transported to Landsberg by truck, we were instructed about the precautions to be taken because of the danger of epidemics. At about 6 o’clock in the evening I arrived at my daughter’s apartment, completely exhausted by what I had seen and heard and by the extraordinarily hard work.

That was just one day of the gruesome events, the Jews had been doing this for almost 6 years with a completely inadequate diet and the worst possible housing.

Joseph Hackelsperger"

Translated and reproduced with the kind permission of "Themenhefte Landsberger Zeitgeschichte", Heft 2: Todesmarsch und Befreiung – Landsberg im April 1945: Das Ende des Holocaust in Bayern

Joseph Hackelsperger was a senior railroad clerk at the station in Landsberg am Lech. He was one of the honorary leaders of the Landsberg Red Cross. His experiences on April 29, 1945, gave him a terrible shock and he died in 1946 at the age of 59. A few weeks after the liberation, surviving concentration camp prisoners and gave him food, as he had often given them bread and other things that were important to them during track construction work under dangerous circumstances. This letter was left to the Citizens Association Landsberg by Mr. Hackelsperger’s daughter.

Kaufering IV Concentration Camp | April, 1945 © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Background of the Landsberg/Kaufering Concentration Camp Complex

"In 1944, the Nazi leadership, together with the SS and representatives of industry, decided to relocate German armaments production to bomb-proof production facilities. Planned were six large bunkers, three of which were in the Landsberg area. In order to protect against Allied air raids, the production of fighter planes was to be relocated to the facilities. Almost exclusively Jewish concentration camp prisoners were forced to carry out the work. Thus, from June 1944, the largest subcamp complex of the Dachau concentration camp was built in the Landsberg/Kaufering area. By the end of the war, the National Socialists had deported up to 23,500 people there. The prisoners suffered from acute malnutrition and disease. They were constantly exposed to violence by SS. More than 6,500 people – known by name – died in the Kaufering camps. 3500 concentration camp prisoners deemed 'unfit for work' by the SS were deported to other camps such as Auschwitz, where they were usually murdered upon arrival. At the end of April 1945, the SS disbanded the camps because of the approaching American troops. The SS brutally drove thousands of prisoners on death marches to Dachau, Allach, and then south. On October 25, 1944, the last deportation from the Kaufering subcamp complex to Auschwitz-Birkenau took place with 1,020 concentration camp prisoners, including 150 people from this camp. Afterwards, the sick and those unable to work remained in Kaufering IV, which had been declared a sick camp from the beginning of December 1944."

Source: Excerpts from the information board created and set up by the municipality of Hurlach in cooperation with the European Holocaust Memorial Foundation Landsberg and the Memorial Foundation Bavaria.

***

Historic photos above: Kaufering IV after liberation in April 29, 1945 (© United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park)


We mourn the loss of Manfred Deiler, the long-serving president of the European Holocaust Memorial Foundation. He passed away on 12 November 2023 at the age of 71. This page is dedicated to his memory.


Further Information

The Wikipedia page "Kaufering concentration camp complex" provides detailed information about the 11 Kaufering satellite camps as part of the Dachau concentration camp. The subsection "Liberation and aftermath" includes disturbing footage filmed by the US Army’s signal division. The eight-minute reel documents the mandatory participation of residents from the surrounding towns and villages in the burial of the 500 charred corpses found by the liberators at Kaufering IV. The German Wikipedia edition is organised differently by offering the page "KZ-Außenlager Kaufering IV – Hurlach". The above-mentioned documentary is showcased there as well.