Porta-Westfalica-Lerbeck

On 1 October 1944, around 500 prisoners were taken from the Neuengamme concentration camp to Lerbeck, where they were forced to work in a so-called front-line workshop in the newly established satellite camp there. A subsidiary of the Klöckner group had set up a new workshop for repairing aircraft engines in the factory grounds of Weber, a concrete company. The men had to carry out construction and renovation work in the grounds, and they later worked in the repair workshop as well.

The prisoners were housed in huts in an unused Wehrmacht compound. A small farm road named Pfahlweg, which was lined with barbed wire, ran between the camp and the prisoners’ places of work. 100 to 120 prisoners who died in the camp were buried in the cemetery in Lerbeck.

The Lerbeck satellite camp was evacuated on 1 April 1945. The prisoners were taken on various transports via the Schandelah, Fallersleben and Helmstedt-Beendorf satellite camps and finally arrived at the “reception camp” in Wöbbelin in mid-April. They were liberated there by American troops on 2 May.

The camp commander was SS-Oberscharführer Emanuel Eichler.