The Most Cruel Nazi Concentration Camp: Verga En Der Elster

Arguably, one of the most memorable aspects of the Second World War was the use of the brutal work and extermination camps by the German Nazis. For the purpose of this assignment the focus will be on the Nazi work camp that was located in Berga in the district of Greiz in Germany, which was developed from its original Nazi youth camp barracks to a sub camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. It was transformed into a concentration camp that was centred around labour and work and it had two main purposes, extermination through labour and exploiting free labour. Due to the conscription crisis in Germany at the time all suitable German workers were conscripted into the armed forces which then resulted in prisoners of war being ‘deployed in virtually every kind of productive concern’. There was ‘nothing new about belligerent countries in the Second World War putting prisoners of war to work’. The camp at Berga was first put to use as a concentration camp following the battle of the Bulge which occurred between December 1944 and January 1945.

During this battle the Americans took the brunt of the impact due to the allies being over confident and underestimating the planning that the Nazis organised. As a result of the successful attack by the Germans during the battle the Americans suffered significantly and it led to their defeat and subsequent surrender. Following their surrender the American soldiers were captured by the Germans and brought to a Prisoner of War camp in Bad Orb called Stalag IX-B. It was on 18 January 1945 when the American G.I’s in Stalag IX-B were told that it was decided that all Jewish prisoners would be required to identify themselves the next day for the purpose of being moved to a segregated barracks’.

This was obviously met with confusion by the Americans as they were under the impression that the extermination of European Jews would not extend to Americans, however they were warned by the Officers in Bad Orb that failing to identify themselves was equal to signing their own death warrant. The morning of February 9, one hundred and eighty American Soldiers along with one hundred and seventy Jewish prisoners from Buchenwald were loaded into trains which only had a bucket in the corner as a toilet, and sent on their five day journey to Berga. Upon arrival at Berga, it became evidently clear to the POWs what their purpose was, they were slave labourers, with a job of digging seventeen tunnels into the stone mountain nearby their camp.

The purpose of the tunnels was so that the Germans could build underground ammunition factories, but also to retrieve coal from the tunnels so they could, through hydrogenation, create fuel for Nazi cars, tanks and trucks. Working conditions were understandably awful, with men working in tunnels up to a hundred feet underground, tunnels which were polluted with dust, a safety hazard and a health hazard, that coupled with the already brutal conditions that Nazi camps were known for meant that the number of deaths within the confines of Berga was high. Overall conditions only worsened for the soldiers due to the appointment of a new ‘Arbeitskommando Führer’ (Labour Command Leader) Erwin Metz who was described by camp survivors as a ‘brutal, sadistic World War one veteran’. One example of his cruel ways was that if a soldier was seen as being disobedient or not working during their ‘shift’ in the tunnels, Metz would have them stripped down and forced to stand outside the barracks in the cold and wet weather.

Not only was the death toll high due to men perishing from malnutrition, exhaustion and respiratory illnesses from working in the tunnels, but also Metz himself can be held accountable for many of the deaths directly, as he routinely refused medical care for ill workers, shot soldiers on sight if he suspected they were attempting to escape and overall he was a man who done ‘as he pleased without any sense of humanity’. All men who were still surviving in Berga an der Elster were incredibly weak, however when the liberation of Stalag IX-B occurred, the weakened men were forced to evacuate Berga, two hundred and eighty of the original three hundred and fifty began the march, but as like in the camp, the march conditions were equally as awful and it could clearly be seen as men started to die one after the other during the march.

The march continued for twenty days in total and ‘During the march, Metz, ever eager to prolong the suffering of the prisoners, forbade compassionate German civilians from giving food to them’, men continued to die and one survivor recalls that they just had to leave them where they dropped, the Nazi officers did not allow them to stop. At the end of the twenty days when the remining Berga prisoners were liberated by the American 11th Armoured Division on April 22 1945, and only sixty three of the original two hundred and eighty men survived to be liberated. To conclude, the concentration work camp Berga en der Elster, located in Berga, was a camp that the Nazi soldiers were able to use to continue their anti-Semitic policy through extension to the Jewish American Soldiers due to the fact the POWs were abused and maltreated which broke the Geneva Convention.

Berga remains to be one of the most shocking work camps to be in use during Hitlers reign due to the high number of deaths, with an estimated two hundred and eighty seven deaths between 13 February and 22 April. Also the number of American POWs that were mistreated there was a significant factor to Berga being so well known. Some survivors mentioned that the conditions in other POW camps were a happy memory compared to the conditions they suffered in at Berga, in the words of Anthony Acevedo, no matter where he goes after life it will have to be heaven because he has already been to, and survived, hell.