Hainewalde concentration camp

On March 27, 1933, the SA established a protective custody camp at Hainewalde Castle in Saxony. Initially SA-Sturm III (Dresden) under SA-Sturmführer Ernst Jirka guarded the camp, but in May this responsibility fell to SA-Standarte 102 (Zittau) under SA-Standartenführer Paul Unterstab. Altogether there were about 150 guards. The camp's commandant was SA-Sturmbannführer Müller and the adjutant was SA- Sturmbannführer Mittag. On April 12, 1933, the camp held 259 prisoners, but that number subsequently increased to almost four hundred. In total, approximately one thousand prisoners passed through the camp.

An itemization for Hainewalde revealed that protective custody cost the Saxon government over 130,000 Marks. When the camp was dissolved on August 10, 1933, the remaining prisoners were transferred to larger early concentration camps at Hohnstein Castle and Sachsenburg.

Hainewalde's prisoners consisted mainly of leftists and Jews. About 150 were crammed into one barrack, where the prisoners slept on multi-tiered bunks with straw mattresses. The prisoners were required to attend Protestant religious services, as well as nightly Nazi indoctrination. For the latter purpose, younger and older prisoners were housed separately, on the theory that the young prisoners would be more susceptible to Nazification if isolated from their elders.

The SA forced the prisoners to perform penal exercises, conducted torture under the pretext of interrogation, and directed all but the most serious cases of injury or illness to a cellar for warehousing without medical treatment. The SA used an administrative office and a special bunker for interrogations. Prisoners were also compelled to work in woodcutting and latrine details. Jews and intellectuals were singled out for humiliation and brutal treatment.

The outlawed German Social Democratic Party continued to assist Hainewalde's prisoners. For example, the Prague-based, socialist newspaper Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung reproduced the photograph of a Hainewalde detainee. A sympathetic SA guard had smuggled the image out of camp, which revealed a prisoner in terrible condition. Zittau's underground Communist organization also smuggled propaganda into the camp that let the prisoners know their suffering had not been forgotten: "We know that you have remained loyal to the cause of the working classes with unfaltering courage, in spite of all the terror and despite the harassment to which you have been exposed. ...We know very well-and also the working classes know-what you have suffered. If we send you this greeting despite all difficulties of illegality inside the concentration camp, take it as an avowal of our undivided solidarity with you."

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