Note: In this post, I consider the possibility, absent absolute evidence to the contrary, that a distant cousin I just learned about who was interned in Buchenwald might have survived his confinement in this notorious concentration camp.
Related Post:
I most assuredly consider my distant cousin Edward Hans Lindenberger’s life to have mattered. (Figure 1) Within this context, I review the limited evidence of his existence in terms of whether he might have survived his ordeal in the Konzentrationslager (KL), concentration camp, Buchenwald. His case serves as an illustration of a question relatives of internees likely asked themselves in the aftermath of WWII, namely, whether their loved ones might somehow have outlasted detention in Nazi internment camps. Too often this question is rhetorical because, as we know, the odds of survival once Jews were in the maws of the Nazis were infinitesimal. Yet, in the absence of irrefutable confirmation of Edward’s fate, I assess what I have been able to uncover about him and consider the remote possibility he might have lived.
Briefly, let me provide readers with an orientation on how I learned about Edward Lindenberger and how we are related. In Post 113, I discussed my great-granduncle Oskar Bruck (1831-1892) and his wife Mathilde Bruck née Preiss (1839-1922) who together had 14 or 15 children. As mentioned, Oskar Bruck had eight siblings, children of Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 2) and Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861) (Figure 3), whose fates I’ve been trying to determine. The vital information on the nine children is presented in a table at the end of this post. For reference, Edward Lindenberger would have been one of Samuel and Charlotte Bruck’s great-grandsons.
One of Oskar Bruck’s younger sisters, the eighth-born child of Samuel and Charlotte, was Helena Bruck (1845-1910). She was married to Edward Strauss (1842-1920) with whom she had three children. The youngest of these was Else Strauss (b. 1884) who married Moritz Lindenberger (b. 1877), and these were the parents of Edward Lindenberger, their only child and the subject of this post. I discovered these distant relatives on ancestry.
Ancestry.com includes documents for Moritz (Figure 4), Else (Figure 5), and Edward Lindenberger (Figure 6) entitled “Kraków, Poland, ID Card Applications for Jews During World War II, 1940-1941 (USHMM).” The page for Edward Lindenberger contains a link to another document, “Germany, Concentration Camp Records, 1937-1945” showing he was interned in a Konzentrationslager referred to as “KL Mittelbau,” a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp. (Figures 7a-b) Knowing that Edward’s parents had also filed for IDs as Jews living in Kraków, Poland at the same time as Edward established the fact they too had been there as late as 1941 and had probably been swept up in a deportation to a concentration camp like their son.
I checked in the Yad Vashem Shoah Victims’ Database and, sure enough, all three of their names show up. (Figure 8) The source of the data in Yad Vashem is the aforementioned database entitled “Card file of Jews in Krakow with German identity card (‘Kennkarte’) nos. 12301-12600, with personal details and photographs, 03/1941.” (Figure 9) Based on this, it would appear pictures of Edward and his parents possibly exist. Oddly, their fates are unspecified and the transport and concentration camp where they were shipped is not identified. I assume they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau since it was the internment camp closest to Krakow.
Suspecting the page of Edward Lindenberger’s internment in a Konzentrationslager might be from the Arolsen Archives, I also checked Edward’s name in this database. Surprisingly, here I discovered a complete 10-page file on him (Figure 10), including one page I had found in ancestry.com, that provides important clues. His date and place of birth are given as the 27th of July 1925 in Bielitz, Poland [today: Bielsko-Biała, Poland]. (Figure 11) The latest date in the file suggests he was still alive as late as the 27th of January 1945. His occupation was “mechaniker,” a mechanic. His parents’ names and father’s occupation are given, “Kaufmann. Mauricius L.” and “Alzbieta L. geb. Strausz.” The file confirms he was assigned to KL Mittelbau, which was established in late summer of 1943 as a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. (more on this below)
The file shows four documents attached: Häftlings-Personal-Karte (Detainee Personnel Card); Effektenkarte (Effects Card); Postkontr.-Karte (Post Control Card); and Häftlings-Personal-Bogen (Detainee Personnel Sheet) (Häftlings-Personal-Karte_AroA.pdf (arolsen-archives.org) Uncertain as to the significance of these documents, I started researching them. Briefly, here’s what I learned.
The Häftlings-Personal-Karte (Detainee Personnel Card) (Figures 12a-b) was created for all concentration camp prisoners. At first glance, the cards seem diverse, having been printed in different colors, having been filled out by prisoner scribes by hand, usually in pencil, or typewriter, and on some of them having a photograph of the prisoner attached. In certain instances, the cards are entirely filled in, while on others personal descriptions in the right-hand column are missing. Despite the diversity, all cards are the same document regardless of age, nationality, and category of detention, and were completed for both male and female prisoners.
The Effektenkarte (Effects Card) (Figures 13a-b) came in different colors, though all versions had the same meaning. These cards were used to manage the personal belongings prisoners had to turn over when they arrived at a concentration camp. According to the Arolsen Archives, the cards could be filled out very differently. On pre-war cards, more items were ticked or numbered than on cards from 1939 onwards. By 1944 and 1945, most cards were completely empty as the prisoners were transferred to camps with no personal belongings. It’s unknown exactly when Edward Lindenberger arrived in Buchenwald and/or whether he was transferred there from another camp, but his Effektenkarte shows no personal effects. Apparently, different stamps provided information on the disposition of the objects. As the war progressed, Nazi decrees and regulations increasingly allowed belongings to be confiscated and reused for other purposes.
The Postkontr.-Karte (Post Control Card) (Figures 14a-b) implausibly appears to record the incoming mail received and outgoing mail sent by concentration camp prisoners. I can find no specific information about this record, but in the case of Edward Lindenberger, predictably, there is no incoming or outgoing mail. Perhaps, like the Effektenkarte, this card was more relevant in the pre-war period?
The Häftlings-Personal-Bogen (Detainee Personnel Sheet) (Häftlings-Personal-Karte_AroA.pdf (arolsen-archives.org) (Figures 15a-b) is the most informative record. The form was designed in such a way that it could be printed inexpensively and in large numbers and be used in different concentration camps. The Detainee Personnel Sheets, also referred to as prisoner personnel sheets, were intended only for male prisoners, with no separate form for females; the names of spouses were almost always added by hand.
The prisoner personnel sheet was one of the central documents used to administer prisoners in the concentration camps. Upon arrival, all relevant information about a prisoner was recorded, including personal data, previous periods and reasons of imprisonment, and sentences or transfers to other camps. In the early years, registration was done by the Gestapo, which used the interrogations to harass and abuse the internees. Soon, so-called Funktionshäftlinge, prisoner functionaries or “kapos,” as Germans commonly called them, took over the interrogations.
Regarding this system, “. . .the prisoner functionary system minimized costs by allowing camps to function with fewer SS personnel. The system was designed to turn victim against victim, as the prisoner functionaries were pitted against their fellow prisoners to maintain the favor of their SS overseers. If they neglected their duties, they would be demoted to ordinary prisoners and be subject to other kapos. Many prisoner functionaries were recruited from the ranks of violent criminal gangs rather than from the more numerous political, religious, and racial prisoners; such criminal convicts were known for their brutality toward other prisoners. This brutality was tolerated by the SS and was an integral part of the camp system.” (Wikipedia)
On Edward’s personnel form, above the printed word Konzentrationslager, is handwritten “Pol. Jude,” signifying Polish Jew. Obviously, he was Polish and was interned because he was Jewish. The Nazis assigned each concentration camp inmate to a category, making it clear why he or she had been arrested. Assignment to a detention group, like nationality, led to a hierarchy in the camp, since the groups were subject to different rules, among these the amount of food or the hardship of the work. Therefore, prisoner category and nationality had an impact on one’s chances of survival.
All concentration camp prisoners were assigned a number upon arrival at a camp. Numbers were more important than names, and prisoners had to report to roll calls using them. Multiple numbers could be assigned within a camp, for example, after discharges, transfers, or death of prisoners. Prisoners transferring from another camp were almost always given new numbers.
As mentioned above, as the number of new arrivals in camps increased the Gestapo could no longer handle the registration. Consequently, the SS assigned prisoner functionaries to carry out administrative tasks or supervise forced labor. The prisoner clerk’s number recording the information was noted on the form.
The prisoner personnel sheet has a special meaning for many relatives today, especially of deceased prisoners. The signature is often the last personal sign they have of their relative. (see Figure 1) A “newcomer” to the camps had to confirm with his signature that the information he gave was true; false statements were threatened with the most severe penalties. This seems like an oxymoron since internment in a concentration camp was tantamount to a death sentence.
On the back of the prisoner personnel sheets, after the personal data and the history of imprisonment, are items that determined the lives of the concentration camp inmates: punishments and (re)transfers to other camps. However, in most cases, the prisoner personnel sheets were not updated which is why these fields are almost always empty.
Having given readers a general overview of the individual documents attached to Edward Lindenberger’s file, let me turn now to the Buchenwald subcamp to which he was assigned. This may provide clues as to whether Edward might have survived.
The Konzentrationslager where Edward Lindenberger was interned was KL Mittelbau, also referred to as Mittelbau-Dora, Dora-Mittelbau, and Nordhausen-Dora. (Figure 16) It was a Nazi concentration camp located in Nordhausen in the German state of Thuringia. (Figure 17) It was established in late summer 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald.
To better understand the role that Mittelbau-Dora came to play in the Nazis’ war effort, a brief discussion of some historic events is useful. In early summer of 1943, the Germans began mass production of the A4 ballistic rocket, later and better known as the V-2, the “V” standing for Vergeltung or retribution. Among other places, it was mass produced at the Heeresanstalt Peenemunde on the Baltic Island of Usedom. On the 18th of August 1943, a bombing raid by the Royal Air Force seriously damaged the facilities and effectively ended the construction of V-2s there.
On the 22nd of August 1943 with Hitler seeking to move facilities to areas less threatened by Allied bombers he ordered SS leader Heinrich Himmler to use concentration camo workers in the production of the A4/V-2 rocket. One of the sites selected was at the mountain known as Kohnstein, near Nordhausen in Thuringia, not far from Buchenwald. Since 1936, the Germans had been building an underground fuel depot there for the Wehrmacht, which was almost ready by late summer 1943.
By the 28th of August 1943, thus within ten days after the British raid on Peenemünde, inmates from Buchenwald began to arrive at the Kohnstein. Over the ensuing months, almost daily transports from Buchenwald brought thousands more prisoners. During the first months, most of the work done was heavy construction and transport.
Mittelbau-Dora exemplifies the history of the concentration camp forced labor and the subterranean relocation of armaments production during WWII. The inmates at Mittelbau-Dora, most of them from the Soviet Union, Poland, and France, were treated brutally and inhumanely, working 14-hour days, and being denied access to basic hygiene, beds, and adequate rations. There were no sanitary facilities except for barrels that served as latrines. Inmates, died from hunger, thirst, cold, and overwork. Since there were initially no huts, the prisoners were housed inside the tunnels in four-level beds. Only in January 1944, when production of the A4/V-2 began, were the first prisoners moved to the new above-ground camp on the south side of the Kohnstein though many continued to sleep in tunnels until May 1944.
Estimates are that one in three of the roughly 60,000 prisoners who were sent to Mittelbau-Dora between August 1943 and March 1945 died; the precise number of people killed is impossible to determine. By the end of 1943, the Dora work squads are known to have had the highest death rate in the entire concentration camp system.
Towards the end of 1944, as the Red Army approached Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen concentration camps (Figure 18), the SS began to evacuate the inmates from there, many winding up in Mittelbau. It seems reasonable to assume that Edward and his family were initially deported to Auschwitz since the distance there from Kraków, Poland, where the family lived, was only slightly more than 40 miles. Edward’s parents were already elderly by 1942 or whenever they were deported so likely were immediately killed. Edward, on the other hand, would only have been in his late teens so would have been considered useful to the Nazis as a slave laborer. It’s possible Edward was among those evacuated from Auschwitz to Mittelbau towards the beginning of 1945, as his Häftlings-Personal-Karte dates his arrival there as the 17th of January 1945. Likely any who survived the transit would have been weak or sick. References suggest that between January and March 1945, around 6,000 inmates died. We have no way of knowing whether Edward was among this number.
With the advance of US troops towards the Harz in early April 1945, just under nine miles north of Kohnstein, the SS decided to evacuate most of the Mittelbau camps. Thousands of inmates were forced to board box cars in great haste and with considerable brutality, while others were forced to walk; they were being headed northeast towards Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück concentration camps. (Figure 19) Those unable to keep up with the death marches were summarily shot. The worst atrocity, known as the Gardelegen massacre, resulted in more than 1,000 prisoners being murdered in a barn that was set on fire; those who were not burned to death were shot by the SS as they tried to escape. Again, no reliable statistics exist on the number of deaths on these transports, but estimates put the number of prisoners killed at around 8,000. On the 11th of April 1945, US troops freed the remaining prisoners who’d been left behind at Mittelbau-Dora.
The British Army liberated Bergen-Belsen on the 15th of April. Many of the “kapos” there had accompanied the internees from Mittelbau, and after liberation the inmates turned on their former overseers and killed about 170 of them on that day.
So, returning to the question I asked at the outset of whether Edward Lindenberger could have survived the brutal and inhumane conditions in Buchenwald, the answer is we don’t know given the absence of accurate record-keeping in the final days of the war. However, given the chaotic conditions that prevailed towards the end of WWII, the callous and barbaric manner in which prisoners were treated, the weakened and sickened state surviving internees would have been in, and the final paroxysm of atrocities the Nazis perpetrated as they were cornered, the answer is that he likely did not reach his 20th birthday.
VITAL STATISTICS FOR SAMUEL & CHARLOTTE BRUCK AND THEIR CHILDREN
| NAME
(relationship) |
VITAL EVENT | DATE | PLACE | SOURCE OF DATA |
| Samuel Bruck (self) | Birth | 11 March 1808 | Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Samuel Bruck & Charlotte Marle) | |
| Marriage (to Charlotte Marle) | 18 January 1831 | Pless, Upper Silesia, Germany [today: Pszczyna, Poland] | ||
| Death | 3 July 1863 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Samuel Bruck & Charlotte Marle) | |
| Charlotte Marle (wife) | Birth | 2 October 1809 | Pless, Upper Silesia, Germany [today: Pszczyna, Poland] | Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Samuel Bruck & Charlotte Marle) |
| Marriage (to Samuel Bruck) | 18 January 1831 | Pless, Upper Silesia, Germany [today: Pszczyna, Poland] | ||
| Death | 17 August 1861 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Samuel Bruck & Charlotte Marle) | |
| Oskar Bruck (son) | Birth | 9 October 1831 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births) |
| Death | 6 April 1892 | Berlin, Germany | Berlin, Germany death certificate | |
| Rosel Bruck (daughter) | Birth | 9 June 1833 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births) |
| Death | Unknown | |||
| Fedor Bruck (son) | Birth | 8 October 1834 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births) |
| Death | 3 October 1892 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland | Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Samuel Bruck & Charlotte Marle) | |
| Jenny Bruck (daughter) | Birth | 12 December 1835 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births) |
| Death | 25 April 1902 | Paris, France | Paris, France death register listing | |
| Emilie Bruck (daughter) | Birth | 10 September 1837 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births) |
| Death | 1908 | Bielitz, Poland [today: Bielsko-Biała, Poland] | Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Samuel Bruck & Charlotte Marle) | |
| Julius Bruck (son) | Birth | 9 August 1841 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births) |
| Death | 28 February 1919 | Berlin, Germany | Berlin, Germany death certificate | |
| Hermine Bruck (daughter) | Birth | 16 February 1843 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births) |
| Death | Unknown | |||
| Helena Rosalie Bruck (daughter) | Birth | 11 August 1845 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births) |
| Death | 20 June 1910 | Bielitz, Poland [today: Bielsko-Biała, Poland] | Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Samuel Bruck & Charlotte Marle) | |
| Wilhelm Bruck (son) | Birth | 23 February 1849 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births) |
| Death | 15 February 1907 | Berlin, Germany | Berlin, Germany death certificate |