Ladelund concentration camp
The Friesenwall was a planned but only partially completed fortification that was to be built on the German North Sea coast towards the end of World War II.
The concentration camp near Ladelund was responsible for the construction of trenches and gun emplacements for a militarily pointless "blocking position" south of the Danish border.
About eight kilometers from the actual camp is the train station in Achtrup, where 2000 prisoners from many European countries arrived in covered goods wagons.
Ladelund was chosen as a subcamp because of its location, the existing RAD camp area and the good transport routes.
In 1938, the Reich Labour Service set up a barracks camp for 250 young men north-east of Ladelund.
More than 600 Dutch men aged 17 and over were arrested in Putten on October 1, 1944, as part of a punitive action on behalf of the German Wehrmacht commander.
The "Putten raid" was considered a reprisal action after resistance fighters had attacked a Wehrmacht off-road vehicle near the village.
Exposed to malnutrition and the beatings of Kapos, prisoners often worked eleven to twelve hours a day in freezing water.
[3] The camp guards often consisted of SS-Totenkopfverbände (death's head units), which were reinforced by older marines who were no longer fit for field service.
In Ladelund, this meant that only the commandant and a few Unterscharführer belonged to the SS, while the guards consisted of soldiers from the navy.
[2][3] They were usually convicted violent criminals who had been brought into concentration camp service from penitentiaries and prisons, as they were believed to have a high propensity for violence.
In some cases, the SS selected prisoners from the outset who were prepared to earn their privileges through particular brutality and who had already "proven themselves" in the Husum-Schwesing camp.
However, in contrast to common practice, the concentration camp victims were buried by the then parish pastor Johannes Meyer (who was himself a long-time member of the NSDAP and a German Christian and refused to participate in the prosecution of the perpetrators of Ladelund)[4] as best as was possible under Christian tradition on church land.
Pastor Meyer reported in detail about "The concentration camp" in the church chronicle and justified the attitude of the parish.
Due to his early commitment to National Socialism, he had to fear being removed from office by the British occupying power.
After that, the barracks were gradually sold by the responsible district administration and the land was handed back to the tenant.
It officially began its memorial work in 1950 on the initiative of the local parish pastor, who had kept the register of the prisoners buried in the church cemetery in 1944, with the participation of those affected and relatives of the victims.
In summer 2006, an extension to the building was inaugurated, enabling the memorial and meeting place to cope with the growing number of visitors.
At the edge of the former camp, the last barrack of which was demolished in 1970, a memorial stone commemorates the events of 1944 and bears the inscription:"THE DIGNITY
NOV. - DEC. 1944"In May/June 2002, as part of a joint project with the Ladelund Memorial, young people from the Theodor Schäfer Vocational Training Center in Husum erected a steel sculpture commemorating the fate of the concentration camp prisoners.
On Remembrance Day 2010, the steel column Das Mal by Ansgar Nierhoff († August 2, 2010) was unveiled at the former Panzergraben as a "memorial, landmark and sign of expiation".
In the exhibition, which opened in November 2017, display boards, audio and film stations as well as biographies in German, Danish, English and Dutch provide information about the fate of the prisoners.
