Foundation as a potash mine

The history of the mine in Beendorf begins on 12 May 1897 with the drilling of the ‘Marie’ mine shaft. On 8 March 1910, an underground escape shaft connected to it was drilled two kilometres away: the ‘Bartensleben’ shaft in Morsleben.

You can click through the gallery using the arrows.

Chicken farming and final storage

Mining operations at the Marie mine shaft were ceased as early as 1923. Since then, the mine has been used for various purposes.
From 1959, the Marie shaft served as an underground chicken fattening facility. A few years later, from 1978 to 1998, radioactive waste was stored in the Bartensleben shaft.
Today, the two shaft complexes are managed by the Federal Company for Final Storage (BGE) as Germany’s sole final repository.

Beendorf Concentration Camp

On our tour, we will be looking at a particularly dark chapter in its history. From 1937 onwards, the now-decommissioned ‘Marie’ mine shaft and the above-ground factory site were leased to the Wehrmacht and used as an ammunition plant.
From February 1944, both shaft complexes were converted into underground armaments factories.
Forced labourers were now to work here for the German war effort.

Marie Shaft

Originally, this was the mine’s administrative building; later, it housed parts of the administration for the Beendorf concentration camp and the munitions factory.

One of the forced labourers was Albert Rohmer, a French paediatrician. Initially, he was employed as a doctor in the camp; later, he too was forced to work in the mine. His memoirs have been preserved in writing. We shall hear an excerpt from his account.

Countless eyewitness accounts describe just how gruelling the working conditions were, such as that of Eligia Piotrowska, who was abducted from Warsaw at the age of 18 for forced labour.

To manufacture the armaments by hand, the workers operated in shifts. In the memoirs, this work becomes a monotonous, horrific routine – as, for example, the Dutchwoman Antje van M. recalled.

A letter

After the closure of the Beendorf concentration camp, a note was found here. It reads in Russian:

Forced labourer, prisoner
Lieutenant Filatov Fyodor, worked
here.
Moscow, Frunzenskaya Naberezhnaya,
House No. 18, Flat 22

I would ask the finder of this note to write to the above address.
Imprisoned from 1941 to 1943, forced labourer
from 1943 to 194? Chance of survival: none

Black Guard

The concentration camp’s guardhouse was called the Black Guardhouse. From here, SS troops controlled the concentration camp.

Forced labour was perfected throughout the Reich. Well-known companies were awarded the contracts and carried them out under cover names; the SS provided the guards and the forced labourers to carry out the work. Torture and harassment were systematic; the forced labourers were collectively humiliated and tortured.

The camp commander was SS-Obersturmführer Gerhard Poppenhagen, a commercial clerk from Hamburg. The block and roll call leader was SS-Rottenführer Anton Jansen Brunken, a farmer from East Frisia.
The French doctor Rohmer describes them as contradictory personalities.

After the end of the war, camp commander Poppenhagen was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment.
SS-Rottenführer Brunken was sentenced to death by a military court for multiple counts of manslaughter.

Beendorf railway station

The station has since been closed down. This is where the forced labourers arrived when they were brought to Beendorf, and from here they were transported away again as Allied forces approached Beendorf.

On 9 April 1945, 1,350 men and over 3,000 women were forced into 40 railway carriages and sent on a journey lasting several days. For the women, the journey took them via Wöbbelin to Hamburg, where they did not arrive until 21 April 1945.

Eligia Piotrowska recalls this “death march”.