The Regensburg satellite camp (KZ-Außenlager Regensburg) (Stadtamhof, Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany), also known as the Colosseum subcamp (Außenkommando Colosseum) in the vernacular at the time, was established in 1945 as the last subcamp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp in the Regensburg inn the Kolosseum (originally spelled with K). The Regensburg subcamp was in operation from March 19, 1945, until April 23, 1945. The Colosseum building is located at Stadtamhof 5, approximately 200 meters north of the Danube across the Stone Bridge (Steinerne Brücke) from the Altstadt (old town).
History
In 1928, the owner of the Regensburg Carmelite Brewery Hotel (Dachauplatz 1) refused to rent out meeting halls to the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party, aka the Nazi Party) for NSDAP party events because of complaints from Jewish and other hotel guests. The Augustinian Brewery and the Obermünster Brewery (Obermünsterstrasse 10) also joined in the refusal to rent out halls. The city's magistrate also refused to rent out the Neuhaus Hall in the Regensburg City Theater (Bismarckplatz 7). The magistrate had demanded that signs reading “Jews not allowed to enter” be removed from the posters, but the NSDAP refused to comply. Local NSDAP leaders blamed the Jews, and urged retaliation by calling for a boycott of Jewish shops and the aforementioned restaurants. The NSDAP evaded the refusal to rent out halls, and held their meetings in the restaurants of the Kolosseum and Zur Glocke.Erich Zweck: "Die Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei in Regensburg von 1922–1933" ("The National Socialist German Workers' Party in Regensburg from 1922–1933"). In: Verhandlungen des Historischen Vereins für Oberpfalz und Regensburg 124 (1984) ("Negotiations of the Historical Association for Upper Palatinate and Regensburg 124 (1984)"). Historischer Verein für Oberpfalz und Regensburg, Regensburg, 1984, pp. 188–189. on heimatforschung-regensburg.de.
From March 19, 1945, to April 23, 1945, a temporary satellite camp was set up in the Colosseum inn, located in the Stadtamhof district of Regensburg, where around 400 male concentration camp prisoners were forced to repair bomb damage to the railroads (clear debris, fill bomb craters, lay new tracks, etc.) caused by frequent Allied bombing runs. The work assignments were mainly at the Regensburg Hauptbahnhof (main railway station) and adjacent railway facilities. Among the prisoners were 128 Jews (including 67 Poles and 42 Hungarians), 84 non-Jewish Poles, 63 Russians, 62 Belgians, 25 French, 22 Germans, and the remainder consisted of ten other nationalities. The prisoners were transferred from the Flossenbürg main camp, but by the time they were taken to the Regensburg satellite camp, most of them had already suffered long torturous journeys through various camps, including Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Gross-Rosen, and their various subcamps.Ulrich Fritz: "Regensburg". In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (ed.): Der Ort des Terrors ("The Place of Terrors"), Vol. 4: Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück. C.H. Beck, Munich, 2006, p. 240.
At night the prisoners were housed in the dance hall on the second floor of the inn, where they slept on the wood shavings and sawdust-covered wood floor, packed in like sardines, and where the hygienic conditions were miserable and deplorable.Helmut Halter: Stadt unterm Hakenkreuz: Kommunalpolitik in Regensburg während der NS-Zeit ("City Under the Swastika: Local Politics in Regensburg During the Nazi Era"). Universitätsverlag, Regensburg, 1994, p. 377.Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (ed.): Der Ort des Terrors ("The Place of Terrors"): Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager ("History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps"), Vol. 4: Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück. Verlag C.H. Beck, Munich, 2006, p. 213. The windows were nailed shut and barb-wired. There was only one toilet and one water tap available. There was no possibility of care for the sick or those unable to work. The food was inadequate and consisted only of bread and soup. The open-air makeshift camp kitchen was located in the inner courtyard of the building directly across the street from the Colosseum, and was staffed by two Polish prisoners, one of whom was Tadeusz Sobolewicz.Tadeusz Sobolewicz: But I Survived. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Oświęcim, 1998.
By day the completely emaciated prisoners had to repair the damage after bombing raids on the railway station premises. To this end, the prisoners were forced to march over the Stone Bridge and through the old town center of Regensburg every morning and return every evening (with the sounds of wooden clogs on cobblestones clearly audible along the way). The work was life-threatening, not only from working through the air raids without shelter, but also due to the unexploded ordnance. The SS guards and kapos regularly harassed and beat the prisoners to get them to work harder and faster. The prisoners were warned at morning roll call that any attempt at escape would result in the shooting of ten fellow inmates. At the end of the march procession back to the Colosseum, the somewhat stronger dragged the completely exhausted and injured, followed by the handcart with the dead and dying. After 12 hours of arduous labor, the prisoners were again forced to assemble for roll call, often for hours, and often subjected to further torment and beatings. According to other information, some of the prisoners also had to do forced labor in the Regensburg factory of Messerschmitt AG.Evelyn Zegenhagen: "Regensburg [aka Colosseum]". In: Geoffrey P. Megargee (ed.): Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Vol.1: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2009, p. 662.
The guards included 50 SS men (Schutzstaffel “protection squadron” and SS-Totenkopfverbände "death’s head units") housed in the dining room on the ground floor, and also included many so-called ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche).The Flossenbürg Memorial speaks of 50 SS guards. See entry on the Regensburg subcamp. on gedenkstaette-flossenbuerg.de. The command leader was SS-Oberscharführer (“senior squad leader”) Ludwig Plagge, a heavy drinker who was considered one of the “most brutal and cruel SS men” and was sentenced to death in the Auschwitz trial in Kraków in January 1947.Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich ("The Encyclopedia of Persons of the Third Reich"): Wer war was vor und nach 1945 ("Who Was What Before and After 1945"). S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt, 2003, p. 462. His deputy was SS-Oberscharführer Erich Liedtke, who often beat and mistreated the prisoners without cause.Ulrich Fritz: "Regensburg". In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (ed.): Der Ort des Terrors ("The Place of Terrors"), Vol. 4: Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück. C.H. Beck, Munich, 2006, p. 241. John Demjanjuk, who was convicted of aiding and abetting murder in 2011, is said to have been among the SS guards.Helmut Halter: Stadt unterm Hakenkreuz: Kommunalpolitik in Regensburg während der NS-Zeit ("City Under the Swastika: Local Politics in Regensburg During the Nazi Era"). Universitätsverlag, Regensburg, 1994, p. 378.
On the night of April 22–23, 1945, the camp prisoners were evacuated, except for 28 seriously ill and one dead. The prisoners were forced to endure a nine-day death march heading south in the direction of Landshut and Mühldorf (on the Inn). The march was conducted primarily at night, to avoid detection by Allied aircraft, and by day the prisoners slept in roadside barns. Many of the prisoners were shot along the roadside or in nearby forests because they were too exhausted to keep up the pace, or when caught trying to escape, sometimes by hiding in the haylofts of barns where they stopped to rest. It is estimated that only 50 of the prisoners survived this march. The march ended when the survivors were abandoned by their SS guards, and liberated by the U.S. Army, on May 1, 1945, in Laufen (on the Salzach, on the Austrian border, near Salzburg).
The exact number of fatalities among the Colosseum prisoners is not known. In the Regensburg registry office (Standesamt Regensburg), 35 deaths were recorded for the period between March 23 and April 10 alone, and a grave list of the city contains the names of 44 of the dead.Ulrich Fritz: "Regensburg". In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (ed.): Der Ort des Terrors ("The Place of Terrors"), Vol. 4: Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück. C.H. Beck, Munich, 2006, p. 242. A survivor of the Colosseum estimates the number of dead in the five weeks of its existence at 70 men. It is believed that some corpses were thrown into the Danube without registering them.
Neighboring subcamp
The Obertraubling satellite camp (today located in neighboring Neutraubling) was operated by the SS from February 20 to April 16, 1945, as a satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp in the municipality of Obertraubling, a southern suburb of Regensburg, on the premises of Messerschmitt AG. It was located next to a forced labor camp in the Messerschmitt factory. The completely emaciated concentration camp prisoners had to repair damage to the runway of a company airfield that had been bombed, at risk of death.Obertraubling Subcamp: February 20, 1945 – April 16, 1945. on gedenkstaette-flossenbuerg.de. After a regional reform and the incorporation of surrounding communities, the area of one of the former forced labor camps, the so-called Russenlager (Russian camp), now belongs to the city of Regensburg.
Investigations in the post-war period
The Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes (in Ludwigsburg) investigated the events of the Regensburg subcamp in the 1960s. The proceedings were later taken over by the Munich public prosecutor's office (Staatsanwaltschaft München), and discontinued in the 1970s.
After the end of the war, the Colosseum was used again as a bar with a dance hall and later as a performance location for a peasant theater (Bauerntheater). In the summer of 2006, a new owner had the building gutted and renovated, and built a restaurant and a residential complex in it.
Commemoration
In October 1950, the President of the Bavarian State Compensation Office, Philipp Auerbach, inaugurated a concentration camp memorial for an unknown number of foreign concentration camp prisoners buried in the Evangelical Central Cemetery in Regensburg. The Lord Mayor (Oberbürgermeister "Burgomaster") of Regensburg, Georg Zitzler, laid a wreath. When the graves of several of the dead were exhumed in the spring of 1955 (and the remains relocated to Flossenbürg), the concentration camp memorial and the associated small stone blocks with the engraved number of dead and their nationality were also removed. The details of the removal and the whereabouts of the memorial have not yet been clarified.Hans Simon-Pelanda: "Im Herzen der Stadt: Das Außenlager Colosseum in Regensburg" ("In the Heart of the City: The Colosseum Subcamp in Regensburg"). In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (ed.): Dachauer Hefte ("Dachau Booklets"), Vol. 12: Konzentrationslager: Lebenswelt und Umfeld ("Concentration Camp: Living World and Environment"). Verlag Dachauer Hefte, Dachau, 1996, p. 167.