Arbeitsdorf concentration camp

Arbeitsdorf ('work village') was a Nazi concentration camp in Stadt des KdF-Wagens bei Fallersleben (today Wolfsburg) from 8 April 1942 until 11 October 1942.

History and the purpose of the camp

In 1936, an Austrian-born German engineer by the name of Ferdinand Porsche designed a prototype of a car that would be affordable enough for all Germans to buy. He then showed his idea to Adolf Hitler who liked his idea and ordered its manufacture. The car, known as the KdF-Wagen, became the Volkswagen Beetle after World War II.

With Hitler's approval, Porsche and his business partner Albert Speer set up a factory in Fallersleben, a town 48 kilometres (30 mi) northeast of the city of Braunschweig, and because of the war, all production from this camp was to be used for military purposes only. In 1939 the Nazi looked for inmates to put in the camp. In 1942, Porsche and Speer started a project to see how they could use concentration camp inmates for cheaper, and large-scale production of their cars, in order to benefit their industry. The prisoners of Arbeitsdorf were a skilled workforce used for construction tasks, building a casting plant and other facilities, and received better captivity conditions in return.

So on 8 April 1942 a new concentration camp, Arbeitsdorf, was opened with 800 inmates from the Neuengamme concentration camp. The camp commands of Neuengamme and Arbeitsdorf were united in the person of Martin Weiss, the camp commander of Neuengamme at this time. On 26 April 1942 inmates from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and on 23 June inmates from Buchenwald arrived. In mid-July 1942 the camp commander became Wilhelm Schitli, former Schutzhaft-camp commander in Neuengamme.^[1]

Closing and the death toll of the camp

On 11 October 1942, six months after the camp was first established, production of the vehicles was stopped and the camp was closed. A minimum of six prisoners perished at Arbeitsdorf. These six deaths are officially listed as suicide, heart attack or accident.^[1]

Memorial

The museum Stadtmuseum Schloss Wolfsburg has a documentation about the Nazi victims with its own exhibition about the slave workers at the Volkswagen factory.