For all to see

Concentration camp in the neighbourhood

"We travel across wastelands that look like moon craters. Everywhere there are people working in prisoner suits. The whole of Germany is a concentration camp."

Concentration camp in the neighbourhood

The satellite camps at Porta Westfalica were built into villages or small towns. In Barkhausen, Neesen and Lerbeck in particular, the camps and their inmates were visible to all residents in the local area each and every day. Although even the women’s camp on Frettholzweg in Hausberge was built away from the centre of the village, there were still some houses and farms within sight of the camp fence and the barracks. The sites where the prisoners were subjected to forced labour, when not underground, were often visible from the outside world. Following the bomb attacks of Minden in December 1944, prisoners from the satellite camps were ordered to clear the rubble on Bäckerstraße.

Witnesses and survivors tell of different reactions of the local residents. Although outright assaults such as stones being thrown at passing groups of prisoners were the exception, accounts often describe a sense of indifference as well as a certain familiarisation with people being imprisoned in the Nazi forced labour camps.

The closest contact with the local residents would take place on the construction sites where the prisoners were forced to do labour. Here, it was mostly civilian supervisors who prodded the groups of prisoners to work.

There are only a few documented cases where the civilian population showed any compassion. Occasionally, people would hide food on the prisoners’ route to work or share their own meals on the construction sites when not being observed.