Mahmal KZ Columbia, Berlin, Columbiadamm

Columbia concentration camp (also known as Columbia-Haus) was a

Nazi concentration camp From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...

situated in the

Tempelhof Tempelhof () is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg. It is the location of the former Tempelhof Airport, one of the earliest commercial airports in the world. The former airport and surroundings are now a park called ...

area of

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. It was one of the first such institutions established by the regime.

Development

Originally called ''Strafgefängnis Tempelhofer Feld'' the building, which contained 134 cells, 10 interrogation rooms and a guardroom, had been built as a military police station but fell empty in 1929.David Pascoe, ''Airspaces'', Reaktion Books, 2001, p. 177 However as soon as the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

came to power the building, which by then was known as Columbia-Haus, was made into a prison, with 400 inmates held by September 1933. The prison, initially staffed by both

Schutzstaffel The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe d ...

and

Sturmabteilung The (; SA; literally "Storm Detachment") was the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. It played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Its primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi ral ...

members, was largely unregulated until 1934 when it was placed under the command of Walter Gerlach and his adjutant

Arthur Liebehenschel Arthur Liebehenschel (; 25 November 1901 – 24 January 1948) was a commandant at the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps during the Holocaust. After the war, he was convicted of war crimes by the Polish government and executed in 1948. ...

. Run as a prison by the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

, it was notorious in the city for the torture meted out to its detainees, most of whom were

Communists Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a so ...

Social Democrats Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote so ...

, or

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

s. Alongside these however the rightist

Max Naumann Max Naumann (12 January 1875 – 18 May 1939) was the founder of ''Verband nationaldeutscher Juden'' ( League of National German Jews), which called for the elimination of Jewish ethnic identity through Jewish assimilation. The league was outl ...

also spent time as an inmate. From 27 December 1934 the prison was administrated by the Concentration Camps Inspectorate. On 8 January 1935

Reinhard Heydrich Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...

announced that ''Konzentrationslager Columbia'' was to be adopted as the official name, in preference to Columbia-Haus.

Personnel

Many leading perpetrators of

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

saw service in Columbia early in their careers. Notable amongst these was

Karl Otto Koch Karl-Otto Koch (; 2 August 1897 – 5 April 1945) was a mid-ranking commander in the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) of Nazi Germany who was the first commandant of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. From September 1941 until ...

, who was appointed commandant in 1935. At lower levels camp guards included Richard Baer, Max Kögel and

Theodor Dannecker Theodor Denecke (also spelled Dannecker) (27 March 1913 – 10 December 1945) was a German SS-captain (), a key aide to Adolf Eichmann in the deportation of Jews during World War II. A trained lawyer Denecke first served at the Reich Security M ...

Closure and legacy

The camp was closed in 1936 to make way for the expansion of Berlin Tempelhof Airport. After its August closure the remaining prisoners were moved to the new facility established at

Sachsenhausen Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...

. A motion was passed by Tempelhof district city council to lay a plaque on the site of the camp.Jennifer A. Jordan, ''Structures of Memory: Understanding Urban Change in Berlin and Beyond'', Stanford University Press, 2006, p. 159 The memorial was installed in 1994.

References

{{Authority control Nazi concentration camps in Germany Buildings and structures in Berlin Gestapo