April 21, 1945: Shortly after the Americans took Würzburg, a photo went around the world: Former forced laborers celebrate their liberation on the roof of the student house.
The shining sun illuminates people who are apparently happy. Couples dance together, an accordionist touches the keys, a violinist plays a happy melody. Men lean relaxed against the railing, in the background trees of the ring park and shadowy walls of the fortress can be seen. One of the dancing men embraced a sword. A few days before, this gesture would have cost him his life. Because: The man with the epee is a former forced laborer and the Würzburg Gestapo provided for the strictest punishments, even if one offered the least resistance. So the photo is deceptive: it shows men and women who have the worst behind them.
Photo: Alexander Kraus Collection
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The Americans ruled in Würzburg’s ruins before the end of the war
The picture was taken on April 21, 1945, a sunny Saturday, by the photographer of an American news agency that distributed it worldwide. The Second World War was scheduled to last for almost three weeks, but the Americans who had conquered the fanatically defended wasteland in three days of battle had ruled the ruins of Würzburg since April 6.
The agency photo from the inventory of the Würzburg collector Alexander Kraus was taken on the roof of the student house, the former “Dr.-Goebbels-Haus” on Sanderrasen. The caption, which went to the editorial offices together with the photo, speaks of a “liberation dance” of former “slave workers”.
Hitler had his last public appearance the day before
The end of the war was in sight on April 21, 1945 and was already a reality in Würzburg, but nobody knew how long it would take before the Nazi regime finally surrendered. The day before, Adolf Hitler, who had just come out of the “Führer bunker” under the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, had his last public appearance: he awarded Hitler’s boys the Iron Cross. The battle for Berlin began a little later.
On April 26, four days before his suicide, Hitler brought in Robert Greim, the former director of the Würzburg Aviation School on Galgenberg, whom he had known since the early 1920s. Hitler appointed Greim – leader of an air fleet during the war – to succeed Hermann Göring as commander-in-chief of the German Air Force, which no longer existed. Then Greim was flown out again.
Up to 9,000 forced laborers were employed in Würzburg
The men and women who danced on April 21 belonged to a group that was vital to the survival of the cathedral city during the war: at times up to 9,000 forced laborers, prisoners of war and “foreign workers” lured or deported to Germany had been employed in Würzburg, in various ways primitive barrack camps lived and were led to their workplaces, closely guarded, for example to the Star ball bearing factory in Sanderau, which was outsourced from Schweinfurt.
Photo: Würzburg City Archives
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The then eight-year-old Ado Schlier saw “men in striped prisoner suits” every evening near the house of his grandparents on Edelstrasse, guarded by soldiers. Schlier: “It was a terrible sight for me as a child, because you could instinctively notice that the people, mostly barefoot, were humiliated. The guards shouted and had wooden sticks or clubs to propel the group.”
In 1944, the 19-year-old high school graduate from Würzburg, Ortrun Koerber, learned about the circumstances of his life and those of his fellow sufferers from an Italian prisoner of war who, like Koenig & Bauer, worked in grenade production. “They receive so little food that I am surprised that they have not yet starved to death,” she wrote in her diary: “Just a cup of coffee and nothing else for breakfast. Then they work without food until a quarter past twelve. Vegetables and one or two small potatoes and half a slice of bread is all they get for lunch. Then nothing until dinner, which consists of a slice of bread and a small bowl of soup. “
In the event of violations of the rules, the “emergency prison”
If foreign workers, some of whom were only 16 years old, violated the particularly strict rules that applied to them, they were sent to the so-called “emergency prison” on Friesstrasse, which consisted of four barracks because of the overcrowding of the regular Prison on Ottostraße. The prisoners included Belgians, French, Dutch, Italians, Yugoslavs, Poles, Russians, Czechs and Ukrainians.
A documentation from the Würzburg history workshop on the emergency prison states that all prisoners from the areas east of Poland should “be destroyed and killed by work and malnutrition”.
There were two bunkers for the guards and camp personnel to protect against air raids. They were equipped with small loopholes in order to be able to shoot at fleeing prisoners for whom there were of course no bunkers. The brochure says on March 16, 1945 prisoners tried to get to safety from the burning camp and were shot while fleeing; a total of around 120 prisoners were burned or killed by bullets that night.
Looking for accommodation for the former forced laborers
A few days later, the spook was over and the American occupiers were faced with the almost unsolvable task of accommodating thousands of former forced laborers (DPs, “displaced persons”) in the almost completely destroyed city before returning home Find. The Americans’ eyes fell on the “Dr. Goebbels House” on Sanderrasen, which had survived the air raid unscathed.
Photo: Würzburg City Archives
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At first, after the American invasion, German residents of Würzburg were held here. But when they were allowed to go home after the three-day fight ended, the house served as one of many accommodations for DPs. In July 1945 it became the seat of the city administration with the mayor Gustav Pinkenburg appointed by the Americans.
There should be camps for “displaced persons” in Würzburg for a long time, because many had no intention of returning to their homeland, which had become communist, in the east. Their accommodation, as well as that of the bombed-out Würzburgs themselves and the thousands of displaced people who were assigned to Würzburg, presented the city with major problems for many years.
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