Camp and Civilian Outside World

The double barbed-wire fence that surrounded the camp not only cut the prisoners off from the outside world, but conversely also restricted the access of the civilian outside world to the camp. Even approaching the camp area was forbidden to the people of Trostberg. For this reason, even the access road to the camp was blocked by a barrier.

Despite this hermetic separation and the living conditions, which could hardly have been more different, there were numerous occasions and situations in which civilians and prisoners met. As the prisoners had to work largely outside the camp, it was inevitable that the population saw the prisoners, who stood out not only because of their clothing but also because of their state of health and nutrition.

Contact in public spaces

The prisoners had to march under SS guard to assignments outside the camp and the company grounds of the Süddeutsche Kalkstickstoffwerke (SKW). Some of the workplaces were located directly in the town. Due to the SS guards, closer contact between prisoners and the population was hardly possible. Nevertheless, food was occasionally slipped to the prisoners in such situations.

Contact on the SKW grounds

The SKW hall in which the prisoners had to work for BMW was in the middle of the SKW grounds. The hall in question was provisionally partitioned off and the prisoners were also strictly guarded by SS men here. In addition, a fraternisation ban applied between the German population and the prisoners. Nevertheless, closer contacts sometimes developed between the workers employed at the SKW and the prisoners of the sub-camp. This was possible above all because the workers were allowed, for example for repair work, to enter the hall used by BMW almost freely. For communication, workers and prisoners then used poorly visible areas in the hall, the toilet used equally by prisoners and workers, or simply inattentive moments of the guards.

Help from the civilian population

The contact with the prisoners was often used by the people of Trostberg to help the prisoners whose miserable living conditions were obvious. Both in the factory hall and in the public area, food in particular was pressed into the prisoners' hands. However, this help was not always purely altruistic. Some of the food was not given as a gift by the workers but exchanged for jewellery made by the prisoners.

A contemporary witness also describes that the manager of the agricultural enterprise "Gut Götzing", who cultivated the fields around the camp, sometimes laid some home-grown tobacco under the camp fence when there were no guards nearby. The tobacco was later picked up by prisoners. Tobacco was an important means of barter for the prisoners to obtain goods or a better position within the prisoner hierarchy within the sub-camp.

Contact with the civilian population often also offered the prisoners one of the few opportunities to contact family and friends outside the camp without censorship. The Slovenian prisoner Miroslav Križnar was able to circumvent the censorship of the camp post office through a worker at the SKW and write a postcard to an acquaintance.

That not all people of Trostberg were favourably disposed towards the concentration camp prisoners is shown by the example of the Trostberg NSKK leader who, during the partial evacuation of the sub-camp, stated: "The KZ guys are all such scoundrels and cut-throats, I have no pity for them."

The ambivalent behaviour of the citizens of Trostberg towards the concentration camp prisoners is not only due to the different political backgrounds and ideologies. In addition, each individual had a different willingness to take personal risks to improve the situation of a single prisoner.