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Jan Woudstra * 1921

Wilhelm-Raabe-Weg 23 vor ehemaligem Lager (Hamburg-Nord, Fuhlsbüttel)

Zwangsarbeiter
ärztliche Hilfe verweigert
tot 23.10.1944

Jan Woudstra, born 19.8.1921 in Rotterdam, died 23.10.1944 in Hamburg-Langenhorn State Hospital

Wilhelm-Raabe-Weg 23

The Dutch forced laborer Jan Woudstra came involuntarily from his homeland to Hamburg at the end of 1943. Since spring 1942, all suitable men born between 1918 and 1924 in the occupied Netherlands were, in principle, obliged to work in Germany. As Woudstra's former forced laborer colleagues Johan de Groot and Theo Massuger reported, this obligation was rigidly enforced from the spring of 1943 against the resistance of those affected. Thus, the young Rotterdam native, about whose life story we know nothing beforehand, also had to make the "journey" to Hamburg and was assigned to the forced labor camp Wilhelm-Raabe-Weg 23.

At that time, 64 Dutchmen, about 40 Italian military internees, 20 Frenchmen and two Belgians were living in this camp for "Western workers". Like three other forced labor camps in Hamburg, it was operated and administered by the company Kowahl & Bruns. Theo Massuger reported that it was in this camp that he first met Jan Woudstra. Unlike most of his compatriots in the camp, he did not work at Röntgenmüller, but at the Otto Höhne locksmith's shop, which was located at Fuhlsbütteler Damm 103-107 along with two other Höhne companies. In the metal store, about 20 workers produced chain and connecting links for the Hanseatische Kettenwerk in Langenhorn. Deburring and welding work was also carried out for this armaments factory. Since the end of 1943, six to eight Russians worked at Otto Höhne, who were brought to the plant by SS men in the morning and picked up again by them in the evening. In addition, the locksmith's store employed five other Dutchmen besides Woudstra; however, they apparently did not live in the Wilhelm-Raabe-Weg 23 camp. No information is available about the working conditions of these men.

On the other hand, more information is available about the living conditions in the Wilhelm-Raabe-Weg camp, among other things on the basis of two detailed interviews with two camp colleagues of Jan Woudstra, Johan de Groot and Theo Massuger, and information from four other Dutch forced laborers who visited their former camp in September 2000: The barely insulated wooden barracks could only be poorly heated. Decentralized small cannon stoves in the individual segments of the barracks had far too little heating capacity. In addition, there was a lack of heating material and the forced laborers, in their distress, sometimes even had to burn boards of their double bunk beds. In autumn and winter, it was almost always very damp and cold in the cramped "parlors". In order to keep each other warm in the cold, the workers often slept in pairs in the narrow beds in street clothes. Straw sacks as a substitute for mattresses and old blankets that were not aired and disinfected favored vermin infestation and infectious diseases.

The situation was aggravated by the catastrophic food situation in the camp, which steadily worsened as the war progressed. Legally, forced laborers who came from Western Europe were entitled to the rations of a comparable German worker and to ration cards. In reality, however, the majority of Western workers in Hamburg did not receive these, but were fed on the basis of collective ration cards. This regulation also applied to the forced laborers in Wilhelm-Raabe-Weg. This resulted in an allocation practice that could hardly be controlled and was exploited by the canteen kitchens that supplied the camps with meals and food for manipulation on a large scale. They frequently misappropriated food that had been allocated to them for the supply of forced laborers. Apparently, this practice was also carried out by the canteen kitchen of the Hanseatische Kettenwerk in Langenhorn, which supplied the camp. There was only a hot meal in the evening after work, which usually consisted of a beet or cabbage soup, sometimes also of jacket potatoes. For breakfast and lunch, every four days each worker received a loaf of bread weighing about 800 grams and some spread. This allocation practice and the great hunger meant that the bread was often eaten up after two days and the workers then received no food at all for two days except for the "hot meal." While some large companies made efforts to ensure that "their" forced laborers were at least fed in accordance with the specifications or to provide additional rations, the Röntgenmüller company did not make any effort at all to improve the rations for its workers, but left the responsibility for this to the management of the labor camp. Jan Woudstra was lucky, however, because he received a regular meal at noon at Höhne. When the potato ration was cut by 50% in February 1944, the food situation worsened drastically, since potatoes were the main component of the rations. Towards the end of the war, survival was thus only possible through the solidarity of German colleagues, the support of relatives or forced laborer comrades, and the "organizing" of food.

The poor nutrition and the hard physical work during a 60-hour week led to exhaustion and susceptibility to illness in many forced laborers. Thus Jan Woudstra, who was very tall, also fell ill with tuberculosis in September 1944. On September 6, he was then admitted to the Alsterdorf hospital, presumably on the initiative of the camp director Fritz Kowahl. After some time, the exact date of his discharge cannot be determined without doubt, he returned to the camp. However, he was still so weakened that he could not get up and work. However, he was still so weakened that he could not get up and work. Since his health did not improve, Woudstra asked Fritz Kowahl to call in a doctor.

The camp leader then notified the company paramedic of the Röntgenmüller company, Martin Giese, who was also responsible for the medical care of the camp residents who did not work at Röntgenmüller. Giese came to the camp and claimed that Woudstra was "a lazy Dutchman," did not want to work, and consequently did not need a doctor. After the sick man's condition deteriorated dramatically, Fritz Kowahl, on his own initiative, called a doctor for help, who admitted the young forced laborer to the Langenhorn State Hospital on September 22, 1944. However, the help came too late.

Jan Woudstra died a month later, on October 23, 1944, of miliary tuberculosis [the most severe form of tuberculosis, in which the tuberculosis bacteria have spread through the blood or lymph pathway to entire organs or the entire body, M. L.].

He was buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery. Since the medical records no longer exist, nothing is known about the fate of the young Dutchman during the last weeks before the end of his life. Shortly after his death, a Dutch nurse who worked at the Langenhorn hospital brought Woudstra's personal effects to the locksmith's shop and gave them to the accountant Magda Gebhardt for safekeeping.

The young man's death deeply outraged his camp comrades. They also informed some anti-fascist German colleagues at Röntgenmüller, whom they could trust, about the sad event. Shortly after the liberation of Hamburg, the Dutch forced laborers filed a complaint against Martin Giese with the Hamburg police. A few weeks after the occupation of the city by the British, the works committee at Röntgenmüller pushed through the dismissal of Giese with the company management. As early as October 1945, the works committee had reliable information that Giese had sought employment as a nurse at the Friedrichsberg Hospital. However, this plan had been rejected by the staff.

Thereafter, he had unabashedly sought a position in the central care center for former concentration camp prisoners. This information also reached Holland and caused disappointment and indignation among Woudstra's former camp comrades. They addressed a statement to the company denazification committee at Röntgenmüller, which had been founded in the meantime. In the detailed statement of August 10, 1946, they listed all of the crimes committed by Giese against Dutch forced laborers and Russian forced laborers and demanded his dismissal from public service. This document impressively proves that Giese's behavior toward the seriously ill Jan Woudstra was not an isolated case, but rather an expression of his own will. Some of his misdeeds listed here, just as with Woudstra, could easily have resulted in the deaths of those affected. For example, he refused to issue a sick bill to the workers Theo Massuger and Willy van Oudenhouven, who had got open feet and blood poisoning from working in coarse wooden shoes, and thus the urgently needed medical help. Only when they were in a life-threatening condition did he have the two men admitted to the Langenhorn hospital.
The statement of the 64 forced laborers was forwarded by the Denazification Committee to the Works Council of the Hamburg Social Administration and the Committee of Former Political Prisoners. The sluggish action of the Hamburg authorities in the Giese case and his employment in the public service now caused Dutch authorities to become active as well. A Dutch liaison officer, who was also an employee of the Philips Group, appeared in Hamburg and informed the British occupation officer, Major Kingsleigh, about the Giese case. The reaction was not long in coming; shortly thereafter, the British military police arrested Martin Giese. During their reconnaissance work on the death of the young Dutchman, they also turned up at the Höhne locksmith's shop to obtain more detailed information and to collect Woudstra's personal estate and his last pay packet.

It is not only thanks to the dedicated and persistent work of the company denazification committee headed by Emil Heitmann (1912-1995) that people like Giese were able to be transferred, but also that the fate of Jan Woudstra, which is representative of many similar fates, was largely clarified. Unfortunately, no appropriate legal consequences followed from this. On the contrary, on June 25, 1948, Martin Giese was released from the internment camp with the classification "Politically completely unencumbered". One year later, any occupational restrictions for him also ceased to apply.

Jan Woudstra was reburied in 1949 on the newly inaugurated field of honor of the Oorlogsgravenstichting (OGS) in Loenen. A plain grave slab on grave 307 commemorates him there. This cemetery for war victims is located between the cities of Apeldoorn and Arnhem.

In the 1980s, when the topic of forced labor, which had long been concealed and suppressed in Germany, was again increasingly addressed, Emil Heitmann took advantage of this opportunity. He became co-founder of the Willi Bredel Society, Geschichtswerkstatt e. V. in Fuhlsbüttel and motivated many younger members to deal with this issue. On his tours of the district he also repeatedly recalled the tragic fate of the young Dutchman. Shortly before his death, Emil Heitmann bequeathed to the Willi Bredel Society a part of the files of the company denazification committee, which contained, among other things, important information about Martin Giese and his victims. In this way, he made it possible for subsequent generations to continue their research and to ensure that the "unknown forced laborer" Jan Woudstra was not forgotten.

Since February 24, 2009, a stumbling block on the entrance to the former forced labor camp has commemorated the young Rotterdam native, from whom not only part of his youth, but his entire life was taken away in Hamburg. The barrack in which Jan Woudstra had to live in Hamburg no longer stands. However, in the last surviving residential barrack of the camp, a picture-text panel "Mistreatment, failure to render assistance and death" in the former office of the camp director provides information about him, among other things. Since February 2018, there is also an information and memorial plaque at the camp gate - in the immediate vicinity of the Stolperstein.

Translation Beate Meyer

Stand: March 2023
© Hans-Kai Möller

Quellen: Archiv Friedhofsverwaltung Ohlsdorf, Beerdigungsregister, 1944; Archiv Ursel Hochmuth, Sammlung: Fa C. H. F. Müller/Kriegsjahre; Archiv Willi-Bredel-Gesellschaft, Geschichtswerkstatt e. V. (WBG), Bestand C. H. F. Müller, Entnazifizierungsausschuss, 1945–1948; Archiv WBG, Gedächtnisprotokoll eines Interviews von Klaus Struck mit Magda Gebhardt, kfm. Angestellte bei der Firma Otto Höhne, am 1.3.2017; Archiv WBG, Interview von Heiko Humburg, Hans-Kai Möller und Holger Schultze mit dem ehemaligen Zwangsarbeiter Theo Massuger am 1.5.2004; Archiv WBG, Interview von Heiko Humburg und Holger Schultze mit dem ehemaligen Zwangsarbeiter Johan de Groot am 3.4.2005; VVN Hamburg, Archiv, Bestand Komitee ehemaliger politischer Gefangener G9/19; StaH, Architekt Konstanty Gutschow, B 90, Unterbringung ausländischer Arbeitskräfte, 1941–1943; StaH, 221-11, Staatskommissar für Entnazifizierung und Kategorisierung, F (P) 402, Giese, Martin, geb. 6.11.1892; StaH, 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn, 184 Band 2, S.88; ITS Archives, Bad Arolsen, Copy of Krankenhausliste Krankenhaus Alsterdorf 70646163#1 (2.1.2.1/0377-0568/0487/0044); Uwe Leps: Das vergessene Lager. Zwangsarbeit im Schatten des Hamburger Flughafens 1943–1945, hrsg. von der Willi-Bredel-Gesellschaft, Geschichtswerkstatt e. V., Hamburg 2018, S. 48–50; Friederike Littmann: Ausländische Zwangsarbeiter in der Hamburger Kriegswirtschaft 1939–1945 (Forum Zeitgeschichte, Bd. 16), Red.: Joachim Szodrzynski, Hamburg 2006, S. 174–182, 250, 427–477; Friederike Littmann: Zwangsarbeiter in der Kriegswirtschaft, in: Hamburg im "Dritten Reich", hrsg. von der Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg, Göttingen 2005, S. 241–244; Hans-Kai Möller: Ausgebeutet und vergessen: Ausländische Zwangsarbeiter in Fuhlsbüttel und Ohlsdorf, in: Willi-Bredel-Gesellschaft, Geschichtswerkstatt e. V. (Hrsg.): Fuhlsbüttel unterm Hakenkreuz, Hamburg 1996, S. 83–107; Martin Weinmann (Hrsg.): Das nationalsozialistische Lagersystem (CCP), 2. Aufl., Frankfurt am Main 1990, S. 87; Jan Woudstra 1921–1944, https://oorlogsgravenstichting.nl/persoon/174898/jan-woudstra, eingesehen am: 18.2.2022.