“We were taken to a hotel. Very quickly, the initial positive impression faded into fear as I read an engraving etched in charcoal along the blank wall in the courtyard. HIC MORTUI VIVUNT was inscribed in block capital letters. We could only just grasp the connotations of the words HERE LIVE THE DECEASED, and it was only in the months that followed that their true meaning was revealed in all of its horror."
It was the 18th of March 1944 when the first 300 men from the Buchenwald concentration camp arrived at Porta Westfalica on a transport made for prisoners. As they reached their destination, they were registered as new arrivals at the Neuengamme concentration camp (Hamburg). They each received a new prisoner number on arrival. Before the transport had even arrived, the former ballroom of the Hotel Kaiserhof in Barkhausen had already been stripped and emptied, fenced off with barbed wire and converted into barracks. For the first couple of weeks, the men slept on straw sacks and then gradually built their own bunk beds. Despite the initial intended plans for the Kaiserhof camp to hold 500 prisoners, survivors estimate that from the late summer of 1944, there were at least between 1,200 and 1,500 men imprisoned in the ballroom.
In September 1944, the construction of the second satellite camp at Porta Westfalica commenced on the former military site in Neesen. The approximately 500 prisoners from this camp were forced into construction work for a factory that repaired aircraft engines in Lerbeck. This camp is only ever mentioned in records and documents as the Lerbeck satellite camp, despite being actually located in Neesen.
The third satellite camp in Porta Westfalica was built in the winter of 1944/1945 on Frettholzweg in Hausberge as a camp for female prisoners. From February 1945, the prisoners mainly consisted of Jewish women who were forced to work at a Philips underground factory that produced radio valves. Shortly before the satellite camps were evacuated, a transportation from Ravensbrück concentration camp arrived at Porta Westfalica. The approximately 250 women were then imprisoned in Vennebeck in the ballroom of the Kohlmeyer Hotel until they were set free.
The camps at Porta Westfalica were part of the network of satellite camps operated by the Neuengamme concentration camp. In March 1945, around 29,000 men and women had been imprisoned in the more than 85 satellite camps. By this time, the main camp had had around 13,000 prisoners.
