Leitmeritz was the largest
subcamp of the
Flossenbürg concentration camp, operated by
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
in
Leitmeritz,
Reichsgau Sudetenland (now Litoměřice,
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...
). Established on 24 March 1944 as part of an effort to disperse and increase war production, its prisoners were forced to work in the caverns Richard I and II, producing
Maybach HL230 tank engines for
Auto Union (now
Audi
Audi AG () is a German automotive manufacturer of luxury vehicles headquartered in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany. A subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group, Audi produces vehicles in nine production facilities worldwide.
The origins of the compa ...
) and preparing the second site for intended production of tungsten and molybdenum wire and sheet metal by
Osram
OSRAM Licht AG is a German company that makes electric lights, headquartered in Munich and Premstätten (Austria). OSRAM positions itself as a high-tech photonics company that is increasingly focusing on sensor technology, visualization and trea ...
. Of the 18,000 prisoners who passed through the camp, about 4,500 died due to disease, malnutrition, and accidents caused by the disregard for safety by the
SS staff who administered the camp. In the last weeks of the war, the camp became a hub for
death marches. The camp operated until 8 May 1945, when it was dissolved by the
German surrender.
Establishment
During the last year of the war, the
concentration camp
A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...
prisoner population reached its peak. The
SS deployed hundreds of thousands of prisoners on war-related
forced labor
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, or violence, including death or other forms of ...
projects, including some of the most important to the war effort. In the meantime, many war factories had been
bombed by the Allies, leading to the decision to disperse production. In 1943, the
Auto Union factory in
Chemnitz-Siegmar was ordered to be turned over to the production of
Maybach HL230 tank engines, much in demand due to attrition on the Eastern Front. By late 1943,
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician, aviator, military leader, and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which gov ...
(head of the
Four Year Plan for war production, which involved mass forced labor) was planning to disperse the Maybach production from the Chemnitz plant to an underground factory under
Radobýl Mountain just west of the town of
Leitmeritz (now Litoměřice in the Czech Republic). Although there was an existing quarry, the facility had to be expanded in order to accommodate planned spaces for production and assembly several kilometers long. The site was located in
Reichsgau Sudetenland, a territory of Czechoslovakia that had been annexed to Germany in 1938 following the
Munich Agreement
The Munich Agreement was reached in Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, the French Third Republic, French Republic, and the Kingdom of Italy. The agreement provided for the Occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–194 ...
.
The largest
subcamp of
Flossenbürg concentration camp, Leitmeritz was one of the largest of the
subcamps in the Sudetenland, whose remote location was favored for armaments production because it was not easily accessible to Allied bombers. Official names for the camp included "SS Kommando B 5", "
Außenkommando Leitmeritz" and "
Arbeitslager
''Arbeitslager'' () is a German language word which means labor camp. Under Nazism, the German government (and its private-sector, Axis, and collaborator partners) used forced labor extensively, starting in the 1930s but most especially durin ...
Leitmeritz". The camp was located west of downtown Leitmeritz, distant from
Theresienstadt Ghetto in the
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was a partially-annexation, annexed territory of Nazi Germany that was established on 16 March 1939 after the Occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945), German occupation of the Czech lands. The protector ...
, a transit ghetto for Jews.
The camp was established by a transport of 500 men from
Dachau concentration camp, who arrived at nearby
Theresienstadt Small Fortress on 24 or 25 March 1944. Due to the lack of accommodation at the work site, they stayed at the Small Fortress (temporarily a Flossenbürg subcamp) until June. The Small Fortress was away from the Leitmeritz camp site. From 27 March, they went each day to work in Leitmeritz. By early April, there were also 740 civilian workers, mostly skilled, and 100 prisoners were sent back to Dachau.
Slave labor
In May 1944, the authority (SS Leadership Staff) B 5, under the authority of SS magnate
Hans Kammler, was created to oversee the forced labor projects at Leitmeritz. The companies involved, Auto Union and
Osram
OSRAM Licht AG is a German company that makes electric lights, headquartered in Munich and Premstätten (Austria). OSRAM positions itself as a high-tech photonics company that is increasingly focusing on sensor technology, visualization and trea ...
, worked closely with both the B 5 and the
Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production
The Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production () was established on March 17, 1940, in Nazi Germany. Its official name before September 2, 1943, was the 'Reichsministerium für Bewaffnung und Munition' ().
Its task was to improve the sup ...
. The SS
shell company
A shell corporation is a company or corporation with no significant assets or operations often formed to obtain financing before beginning business. Shell companies were primarily vehicles for lawfully hiding the identity of their beneficial ...
, Mineral-Öl – Baugesellschaft m.b.H., set up to subcontract construction tasks, hired many enterprises from Germany, the Sudetenland and the Protectorate for various roles involving the camp. There was continual conflict between the SS and the companies because the goal of terrorizing and killing prisoners by
extermination through labor was incompatible with the aim of securing the highest production possible. Whether they were working on the camp or underground, prisoners were not given appropriate equipment and even the most basic safety precautions were not followed. Many prisoners died in accidents due to these deliberately murderous working conditions. Almost every day, the tunnels suffered collapses; 60 prisoners died in just one such incident in May 1944.
Richard I
The estimated cost of establishing Maybach production at Leitmeritz was 10 to 20 million
Reichsmark
The (; sign: ℛ︁ℳ︁; abbreviation: RM) was the currency of Germany from 1924 until the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, and in the American, British and French occupied zones of Germany, until 20 June 1948. The Reichsmark was then replace ...
s, equivalent to at the time or $– million in dollars. In early April 1944, the SS' goal was to begin production of the engines by July, which would have required 3,500 prisoners. However, the SS withdrew from the project—possibly because it was unwilling to accept the responsibility for a risky project—and it was taken over by (GB-Bau, "Office of General Representative for Regulation of the Construction Industry"), part of the Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production. On 30 April, Hitler ordered that the dispersal to Leitmeritz be expedited because the Maybach plant in
Friedrichshafen
Friedrichshafen ( or ; Low Alemannic: ''Hafe'' or ''Fridrichshafe'') is a city on the northern shoreline of Lake Constance (the ''Bodensee'') in Southern Germany, near the borders of both Switzerland and Austria. It is the district capital (''K ...
had been bombed by the
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...
on the night of 27–28 April. From early May, the SS took over the project again.
On 11 September 1944, the Auto Union plant in Chemnitz-Siegmar was bombed. Between 25 September and 30 October, the two most important production lines of components—
cylinder heads and
crankcases—were transferred to the underground factory at Leitmeritz, comprising 180 machines in total. From 3 November, entire Maybach HL230 engines were manufactured in Leitmeritz; the first was completed on 14 November. The production lines were manned by selected skilled prisoners whose detachment was known as Elsabe AG. The lack of air circulation in the underground factory exacerbated the illness and exhaustion of many inmates and rusted the production machines, causing many of the completed products to fail quality control. In February, the command made efforts to improve the conditions for Elsabe prisoners in order to reduce death rates. The prisoners were housed separately in a warehouse with washrooms and given increased rations of food, while they did not have to participate in as many roll calls. Production at Richard I continued until 5 May 1945.
Richard II
On 15 May 1944, the Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production decided to use Leitmeritz to expand the production of tungsten and molybdenum wire and sheet metal produced by Osram's Berlin factory. For this, of underground floor space was required as well as 300 civilian workers and 600 prisoners. The Hamburg company Robert Kieserling was contracted to construct this space. The cover name of Osram operating in Leitmeritz was Kalkspat K.G., which was responsible for machinery, power, access roads, and accommodation for civilian workers. Production was scheduled to begin by the end of 1944, but none ever took place because Osram executives recognized the hopelessness of the war situation.
Command
This first commandant, Schreiber, arrived with a contingent of 10 SS men who accompanied the transport. Schreiber was replaced by Erich von Berg within a few months. The third commandant, Völkner, tried to improve conditions for prisoners but was replaced in November by Heiling, who had the most brutal reputation of the SS leaders. From February 1945, Benno Brückner was the commandant. The of the camp had the greatest control over camp conditions. All three of them— Willi Czibulka in 1944, Kurt Panicke through March 1945 and Karl Opitz—had a reputation for arbitrary cruelty. Supervising prisoners in their barracks was the responsibility of the
block leaders, while the Labor Operations Department (commanded by Tilling and later Piasek) oversaw labor deployment. The
Political Department was headed originally by Willi Bacher and later by Hans Rührmeyer. Hans Kohn initially commanded the supply department. In 1945, Kohn was put in charge of the prisoners' kitchen and Günter Schmidt and Eduard Schwarz succeeded him.
There was a separate command for B 5, headed first by Werner Meyer, and from November 1944 Alfons Kraft. Initially, the camp was guarded by thirty
Luftwaffe guards, who reported to the
Fighter Staff command in Nordhausen. The first commander of the guard was Emanuel Fritz, a former prosecutor from Vienna, who was replaced by Jelinek in mid-1944 and Edmund Johann in November. As the camp expanded, the number of Luftwaffe guards increased to as many as 300, who had been seconded from Vienna, Leipzig and Buchenwald. Guards who
shot a prisoner were rewarded with leave and a commendation.
Prisoners
By August 1944, there were more than 2,800 prisoners, which increased further to 5,000 by November. In April 1945, the population peaked at 9,000, nearly as many as were held in the Flossenbürg main camp. An estimated 18,000 people passed through the camp. The plurality of prisoners came from Flossenbürg (3,649); large numbers also came from
Gross-Rosen (3,253),
Auschwitz II-Birkenau (1,995), and Dachau (1,441). In March and April 1945, 2,000 people were deported to Leitmeritz from various Flossenbürg subcamps and 800 from subcamps of
Buchenwald
Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (Old Reich) territori ...
due to the advance of Allied armies. Leitmeritz began as a male camp, but from February to April 1945, 770 women also were imprisoned at the site, to work for Osram. An unusually high number of the prisoners, about 3,600 or 4,000, were Jews, most of whom were from Poland and the first of whom arrived on 9 August 1944. By country of origin, the largest groups were Poles (almost 9,000), Soviet citizens (3,500), Germans (950), Hungarians (850), French (800), Yugoslavs (more than 600) and Czechs (more than 500).
Conditions

The camp itself was located in a former
Czechoslovak Army base. The SS guards and administrators as well as civilian laborers lived in the original soldiers' quarters, while prisoners were warehoused in the former stables, indoor riding arena, and storage depot, which were surrounded by a double barbed-wire fence and seven watchtowers. During mid-1944, the prisoners renovated the buildings in order to house more prisoners. A kitchen was set up in June 1944 and the infirmary was built around September. Additional barracks were built during the winter of 1944–1945 to accommodate increases in the prisoner population. By April 1945, seven additional barracks had been built for prisoners while an additional two were planned. The capacity was 4,300 men—which had already been exceeded—and 1,000 women in the separate women's camp.
Despite the continual increase in the number of prisoners, not enough accommodation was built, resulting in serious overcrowding and major problems with hygiene. Rations of food were completely inadequate. The rate of infectious disease, especially
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...
, was very high; at the end of 1944 many prisoners were
x-rayed, showing that nearly half had the disease. By February 1945, a third of prisoners were incapacitated by disease, preventing sufficient prisoners from being mustered for slave labor. As a result, the companies constantly had to train new prisoners. Initially the prisoners were grouped in quarters based on the transport they arrived in; later they were organized by work group but not nationality as was typical elsewhere.
Prisoners called it the "death factory"; about 4,500 prisoners died at the camp. According to records, 150 people died through November 1944 and after that the mortality rate climbed, with 706 deaths in December, 934 in January 1945, and 862 in February. The increase in the death rate coincided with the arrival of Jewish prisoners. The
Warsaw Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising (; ), sometimes referred to as the August Uprising (), or the Battle of Warsaw, was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from ...
detainees were specifically targeted by the
kapos and SS guards; a third did not survive. Victims were first cremated at the at the Small Fortress. Due to the large number of deaths, another crematorium was built at Leitmeritz in April. The remains of 66 others, who had been buried in seven mass graves, were exhumed in 1946; another 723 bodies were found in a long anti-tank ditch. After the war, these victims were reburied in the . Before the evacuation of the camp, 3,869 prisoners, primarily those unable to work, were sent to other camps, including 1,657 to Flossenbürg and its subcamps and 1,200 (suffering from
typhus
Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposu ...
and
dysentery
Dysentery ( , ), historically known as the bloody flux, is a type of gastroenteritis that results in bloody diarrhea. Other symptoms may include fever, abdominal pain, and a feeling of incomplete defecation. Complications may include dehyd ...
) to
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Bergen-Belsen (), or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in Northern Germany, northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen, Lower Saxony, Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, ...
. Their fate is not known.
Dissolution
In the last week of the war, Leitmeritz was a hub for many
death marches. Thousands of prisoners arrived at the camp, where there was no space for them. Some prisoners had to sleep outside while others, during the last few days of the war, slept in the tunnels. Prisoners were bundled into almost 100 transports and deported south into
Bohemia
Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...
. The number of deaths during the evacuation is unknown. About 1,222 prisoners, mostly Jewish men—some from Leitmeritz itself, others who had arrived after death marches from elsewhere—ended up in Theresienstadt Ghetto. However, some of them may have been sent there after liberation. Ninety-eight died in Theresienstadt.
After Flossenbürg main camp was liberated by the United States Army on 23 April 1945, Leitmeritz continued to operate, administering nearby concentration camps such as
Lobositz. On the afternoon of 5 May, Panicke summoned the prisoners to announce that the war was over and they would be released. Between 6 and 8 May, many prisoners received certificates for their release. The camp was officially dissolved by the
German Instrument of Surrender
The German Instrument of Surrender was a legal document effecting the unconditional surrender of the remaining German armed forces to the Allies, ending World War II in Europe. It was signed at 22:43 CET on 8 May 1945 and took effect at 23 ...
on 8 May. On 9–10 May,
5th Guards Army
The 5th Guards Army was a Soviet Guards formation which fought in many critical actions during World War II under the command of General Aleksey Semenovich Zhadov. The 5th Guards Army was formed in spring 1943 from the 66th Army in recognition o ...
of the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
arrived at the site, finding 1,200 sick prisoners who had been left behind. The Czechoslovak militia guarded the site until 16 May, when it was taken over by the Red Army. Parts of the Soviet and Czech medical missions to Theresienstadt were diverted to Leitmeritz. The last prisoners were repatriated in July 1945.
Aftermath
The Elsabe production lines were dismantled and shipped to the Soviet Union as
war reparations
War reparations are compensation payments made after a war by one side to the other. They are intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war. War reparations can take the form of hard currency, precious metals, natural resources, in ...
, while the barracks were returned to use by the Czechoslovak Army, and used until 2003. The crematorium is the only part of the former camp open to the public. Nearby, a memorial to the victims of the camp designed by the Czech artist
Jiří Sozanský, was unveiled in 1992. The memorial and the surviving archives of the former camp are administered by the . Leitmeritz is known as "one of the most infamous and best researched Flossenbürg subcamps"; the Terezín Memorial has sponsored research into the camp's history. In 2014,
Audi
Audi AG () is a German automotive manufacturer of luxury vehicles headquartered in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany. A subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group, Audi produces vehicles in nine production facilities worldwide.
The origins of the compa ...
(the successor to Auto Union) released a report by Audi historian Martin Kukowski and
Chemnitz University of Technology academic that it had commissioned into its activity during the Nazi era. According to the report, the company bore "moral responsibility" for the 4,500 deaths that occurred at Leitmeritz.
In 1946, former Karl Opitz was convicted of responsibility for the execution of thirty prisoners and sentenced to life in prison by a Czechoslovak court. In 1974, former guard Henryk Matuszkowiak was convicted and sentenced to death in Poland for committing fourteen murders at Leitmeritz. In 2001, was convicted by a German court of murdering seven Jewish prisoners in an anti-tank trench in the spring of 1945, despite having claimed to be in Vienna when the murders were committed. The information which led to his conviction was given by a Hungarian-born former SS man, Adalbert Lallier. More than 360 witnesses were interviewed by the prosecutors.
Notes
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External links
Timeline of the camp by Terezín Memorial
Exhumation of victimsTestimoniesat the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust, dedicated to the documentation, study, and interpretation of the Holocaust. Opened in 1993, the museum explores the Holocaust through p ...
{{Authority control
Auto Union
Litoměřice
Nazi concentration camps in Czechoslovakia
Subcamps of Flossenbürg