Russian Memorial Hocklingerweg Hemer, Germany

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In the final months of World War II, the area around Islerohn Germany saw the surrender of German forces to the American troops. My father, 1st Lieutenant Arthur Thorspecken with his C-Company in the 75th Infantry Division, moved into Hemer to help liberate Stalag VI-A, one of Germany’s largest POW camps.

The Americans of the 75th Infantry Division distributed U.S. Military rations to the starving prisoners. Approximately 22,000 men were found at the camp with 9000 of those in the camp “hospital”. Patients suffered from Tuberculosis, Dysentery, Malnutrition, and Typhus fever. Inmates were from the Soviet Union, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Romania, Great Britain, Canada and America. American War photographer Joseph D. Karr was on the scene documenting the struggle to keep men alive. Despite being offered food rations, many men were just too far gone. Over 100 men (mostly Soviets) kept dying every day. Soviets were given half or less of the rations that other nationalities were given and over the week before liberation there was no food distributed in the camp since the cooks and guards had retreated East away from the advancing American troops.

Two cemeteries were established for the mass graves for all the men who were dying. The exact number of men who died is hard to calculate. Some researchers think 24,000 men lie in the two cemeteries. Others think that number is too high, while others think that number may be far higher, based on the rising numbers of inmates who died at the end of the war. The goal of commemorating is to never forget. Future generations need to know what man is willing to do in the name of an ideology and how quickly a society is willing to throw away basic moral principles.

Early in the war, the first men who died were buried in a forest near the Stalag. The dead were buried in simple wooden coffins. Most of these men were French (166) and Polish (42). By 1945 there were 335 graves. War graves agreements after the war, insisted that the bodies be returned to home countries. The remaining graves were then moved to the two cemeteries dedicated to the Stalag dead in Hemer.

The numbers of Soviet dead kept growing exponentially. They had been through the hell of war, capture, forced stays in the front-line Stalags followed by excruciatingly long cold train rides into the Reich where they were immediately put into forced labor details. Additional land had to be acquired from a Protestant parish for the hundreds of men who were dying each week. The bodies were carried on a horse drawn carriage on the shortest route up the hills and winding roads to the cemetery. Long excavated trenches had been dug, and the bodies were unceremoniously thrown into the pit. People walking down the street, or passing by train could see the grisly scene. There was no secrecy to the mass murder taking place.

By the end of 1943 all the rows had been filled with bodies. The capacity of the cemetery was exhausted. More than 3,500 Soviet prisoners were buried in 16 mass graves in about 15 months. Since men were buried with bodies stacked on top of one another, about 3 men deep, it became impossible to figure out who was buried where. At first there were distinct rows with metal plates to delineate the rows, but over time the landscape was flattened and a featureless lawn with a few birch trees remains. The metal plates had been discarded or lost.

A small concrete monument had been built by Soviet inmates after the liberation of the camp, but it was replaced by a memorial stone designed by Menden Germany sculptor, Walter Voss. It was dedicated on the Sunday of the Dead, in 1967. The stone says: Rest. Soviet Citizens who died in the years 1941-1945 far from home. The number of deceased, at 3000, was the credible number at the time when the stone was carved. As of 2021, 3,513 of the Soviet prisoners could be named. The exact number may never be known.

Witten Germany: Zeche Nachtigal

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After my failed attempt to sketch remnants of a Forced Labor Camp in Witten-Annen Germany, I decided to sketch the Zeche Nachtigal which is now a museum. I figured that the forced laborers who were not working in the Annen Steelworks Factory building weapons, would be at Nachtigal. Nachtigal means nightingale which is a bird known for or its powerful, complex, and beautiful song, which is often heard at night.

I sketched the historic twin engine winding machine. It is roughly the same size as the steam engine used previously in operation starting in 1871. It was used to hoist coal from the Hercules shaft. As the shaft was deepened a stronger winding machine was needed. In 1892 the coal mine shut down due to flooding. The machinery was sold off and soon the site became a brick works. By 1897 the brickwork’s produced up to eleven million bricks annually for the construction of industrial facilities and houses. The history of the brickwork’s jumped from 1897 to 1983. There is no mention of what happened at the brickwork’s during WWII, but it is safe to say the business would have been booming in war time.

Forced laborers were extensively used in German brick factories during WWII, particularly to produce building materials for Nazi construction projects. Concentration camp prisoners and millions of civilians from occupied territories were exploited by German industry to support the war effort, including the production of bricks. With over 200 forced labor camps in Witten it seems very likely that the forced labor would have been used in the Nachtigal brick factory. With the Ruhr area being constantly bombed by the allies there would have been a need of bricks to repair damaged buildings. Young eastern European men were obliged to join the German workforce, but both men and women were forcefully abducted from the streets.

Camp barracks in industrial centers varied in size, but most have been described by former forced laborers as poorly constructed, surrounded with barbed wire, and heavily guarded. The barracks were typically equipped with one small stove, a limited number of washrooms and toilets, mattresses filled with sawdust to make crude beds, and few blankets. Eastern Europeans working in factories, like the brickwork’s, received one cup of coffee or tea, 200-300 grams of bread, and one or two cups of watery cabbage soup per day. These rations, however, largely depended on what food was available, and as the war continued, food rations often decreased.

A sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp was established in Witten on September 16, 1944, utilizing an existing barrack complex built in 1942 near the Dortmund-Witten railway line. The initial transport from Buchenwald Concentration Camp brought 700 male prisoners, primarily political detainees aged 16 to 63 from the Soviet Union, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Belgium, and Germany, with about one-third of a subsequent group of 50 arrivals in February 1945 being Polish Jews. These prisoners, housed in wooden barracks with double bunks and minimal facilities, performed grueling 12-hour shifts in Hall 7 of the Steelworks foundry, operating furnaces and machines to produce steel components for naval armor and aircraft, under constant threat of violence from SS guards and kapos.

A Kapo was a Nazi concentration camp prisoner—often a criminal or political prisoner—assigned by the SS to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks, acting as a collaborator in exchange for privileges. They were hated by fellow inmates for their brutality and held authority over them, often enjoying better food and conditions.

The camp, secured by barbed wire and watchtowers, operated until late March 1945, with prisoner numbers fluctuating to around 600 by evacuation due to deaths, escapes, and returns to the main camp; the SS received four Reichsmarks daily per prisoner from the factory.

Conditions in the sub-camp were dire, marked by undernourishment, exposure to cold, disease, and brutal oversight by SS, leading to frequent accidents and illnesses like pulmonary infections. By late March 1945, at least 16 prisoners had died from exhaustion and related causes, with nine Soviet inmates secretly executed by transfer to Buchenwald’s crematorium and over 60 sick individuals returned to the main camp, of whom at least 14 perished shortly after.

On the night of March 29, 1945, the SS evacuated the remaining approximately 600 prisoners on a death march northeast toward Lippstadt Germany, to the west of Dortmund-Witten, during which an unknown number were killed; the survivors were abandoned on April 1 and liberated by advancing U.S. forces, with some succumbing to their ordeals in the following days. Post-liberation investigations in the 1960s and 1970s examined SS crimes at the site but resulted in no convictions. Most Germans kept silent about the crime of forced labor or completely denied it.

Holocaust survivor Irene Weiss put it this way, “The most dangerous animal on earth is man. A man can turn into animal in no time. All he needs is permission. As soon as permission is given from government, it accelerates. Even a hint of permission that it is OK to attack this group or exclude this group, or shame that group. It’s happening, it never stopped.”

April 9-10, 1945: Dortmund-Oespel Germany

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It started to rain as I sketched. Rain drop blasts littered the surface of the sketch. I could not protect the page. I closed the sketchbook and sat as it rained, thinking it might stop. I was sheltered in a rain jacket. I finally gave up and put the sketchbook away. After walking half way out of the cemetery, the rain stopped. I went back to my spot and sketched again quickly. I managed to cover the page before another wave of rain started. As I was leaving, I noticed a headstone for Fritz and Gerta Torspecken. My last name is Thorspecken and in America that is quite unique. With just one letter missing, I thought these might be long lost relatives. I know that my original ancestor, Dr. Elias Julius Thorspecken emigrated to America in 1830 or so to build a new life. He served his new country as a doctor during the Civil War. Arolsen Germany the city that Augustus left, is just 142 miles due west. This headstone left me thinking that I might have deep roots in this area of Germany.

Oespel is a district in Western Dortmund Germany. The attack by the 75th Infantry Division continued through April 9-10, 1945 with the 2nd Battalion advancing south to capture Oespel and Dorney Germany with light enemy opposition to their regimental objective which was ultimately the Ruhr River.

Searching the Arolen archives online, I found 225 Forced Laborers listed as being in Dortnund-Oespel. The first was named Marta Albert born Butschgau. She was 55 years old in 1945 and was born in Belgium. I was left wondering if she survived the war and returned to Belgium.

The Oespel coal mine was in operation in 1945 and this is possibly where Marta would have been forced to work. The mine had up to one thousand nine hundred and twenty workers in the underground shafts and in the sorting area. The Oespel coal mine was one of four mines in the village of Oespel.

Stalag VI-D POW camp was in Dortmund Germany. Over 70,000 prisoners-of-war were imprisoned here in World War II.  The camp was closed in March of 1945, one month before my father’s unit was fighting to take Dortmund. Prisoners in the camp were primarily from Poland, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and Italy. The POWs were forced to perform labor in armaments and industrial plants, in mines and in private and municipal enterprises under inhumane conditions. Several thousand of the POWs died from chronic illness, malnutrition and Allied bomb attacks. There were no air raid shelters for the POWs.

From September 1, 1939, Oespel suffered from Allied bombing raids, direct casualties, and soldiers killed in action during World War II.

On June 4, 1941 there was a low-level air raid that claimed ten lives. Residents sought refuge in the air-raid shelter at the Oespel 3 mine. Forced laborers were not granted shelter in the mines although they were forced to work there.

On March 23, 1944, an American B-17 bomber with a crew of ten, was shot down by an anti-aircraft gun stationed at Dorney Germany. The plane crashed on the spoil heap of the Oespel 3 mine and landed in two gardens in Heuerlingsweg Germany, just south or Oespel.

On December 1 and 12, 1944, the Protestant church, parsonage, community center, and the school were severely damaged in air raids.

On April 10, 1945, after a heavy artillery duel, American troops, including the 75th Infantry Division captured Oespel and Kley and looted valuables. My father, 1st Lieutenant Arthur Thorspecken was leading C-Company during the capture of Oespel Germany and the surrounding area.

On April 13, 1945, with the end of World War II close at hand, the Allies began efforts to repatriate foreign forced laborers from the coal mines. Once liberated, forced laborers became known as displaced persons. Rebuilding lives torn apart by war was a task above an beyond what any soldier could accomplish.

On June 7, 1945, the Americans withdraw from Oespel Germany. The British took over the occupation, and Oespel citizens were transferred to Allied prisoner-of-war camps.

April 12, 1945: Mahnmal Bittermark Massacre

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As Allied troops along with my father, 1st Lieutenant Arthur Thorspecken who was leading C-Company of the 1st Battalion of the 75th Infantry Division, were attacking Dortmund Germany and moving south, the German Gestapo were looking to hide atrocities before they retreated.

The Gestapo marched 300 people into the Bittermark Forest which is just to the south of Dortmund. They were members of the resistance and forced laborers from France, Belgium the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Poland and the Soviet Union.
The killings ended on April 12, 1945, one day before, the area was liberated on 13th April.

The Mahnmal Bittermark Memorial in Dortmund, Germany, was designed by German sculptor Karel Niestrath (1896–1971), with the memorial ensemble completed in 1960.

Hundreds of thousands of forced laborers were exploited in the armament factories and coal mines around the Ruhr River during the Second Word War. An estimated 30,000 forced laborers were deployed in Dortmund during the Second World War. They were accommodated in about 300 camps, one of those being a branch of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Forced labor was no secret, it was a public crime. During World War II, forced laborers were exploited on almost every building site and farm, in every factory, mine and even in private households in Germany. Every German had to decide how to behave towards forced laborers. Every German citizen would see the forced laborers being sent to work under armed guard. A few showed a bit of humanity, but most showed the coldness and disdain of a supposed higher race. How people responded to the laborers showed something not only about the individual but also about the influence and attractiveness of National Socialist ideology and practice.

Forced laborers made up 40% of the workforce mining in the Ruhr Region. Russian prisoners of war and slave labor from the east made up a majority of the forced labor force after 1942. Hard work and meager food rations drained the strength of the men. Physical violence was a daily occurrence. Cold and bad hygienic conditions were further accompanying aspects so that diseases like tuberculosis spread in many camps.

In March of 2012, Dortmund City Council. Lord Mayor Ullrich Sierau said: “The knowledge of the Nazi crimes is a precondition for fighting the ideology of the extreme right. The fight against right-wing extremism is at the top of our urban agenda.”