Salzgitter-Watenstedt/Leinde (Women)

Starting in July 1944, Female prisoners were housed in a separate section of the Watenstedt/Leinde satellite camp which was set up in May 1944 to hold concentration camp prisoners deployed to work in the Braunschweig steel works. Most of the 800 prisoners in the women’s section of the camp were forced to produce artillery shells. The prisoners arrived on various transports. In July and October 1944, two groups of prisoners were transferred to Watenstedt/Leinde from the Ravensbrück concentration camp. They were followed in February 1945 by several hundred sick Jewish women from the Braunschweig satellite camp (SS Riding School) of Neuengamme concentration camp.

The camp was under the authority of the Ravensbrück concentration camp until 31 August 1944. In the course of an administrative rearrangement, it became part of the Neuengamme camp system on 1 September 1944.

The SS evacuated the camp on 7 April 1945. The women were loaded into goods cars together with the male prisoners from the Watenstedt/Leinde camp and transported on two or three trains. The trains with the completely overcrowded goods cars, some of which were not enclosed, drove for days through north-eastern Germany before finally arriving at the Ravensbrück concentration camp on 14 April. Many prisoners did not survive the transport, while others were severely weakened by the time they reached Ravensbrück. Nonetheless, the prisoners who were “able to march” were forced to walk west a few days later. It is not known how many women died on this death march.

The name of the SS commander of the women’s camp is not known.