The Dead of the AL Trostberg

The terror and arbitrariness to which the prisoners in the AL Trostberg were exposed meant not only extreme psychological but above all physical strain. Hunger, cold, exhaustion, virtually non-existent medical care, poor hygienic conditions, ill-treatment and disease meant for many prisoners an exhaustion which often led to death. Even though for the AL Trostberg there are no indications of murders of prisoners by hanging or shooting, the death of prisoners was indirectly brought about by the conditions prevailing in the camp.

"The prisoners worked in the factory and starved at the same time, so that diseases broke out which would not otherwise have occurred, or if so, only in relatively mild form. The prisoners suffered terribly from these diseases, the cause of which was inappropriate and insufficient food.

They began to die."

— Miroslav Križnar, Slovenian prisoner of the AL Trostberg

Seven prisoners of the AL Trostberg died during their detention in Trostberg. However, this only includes those prisoners who died directly in the Trostberg sub-camp. In reality the number of prisoners who died as a result of imprisonment in the AL Trostberg is higher. This is based above all on two facts:

On the one hand, prisoners who died after the liberation of the camp as a result of their weakened state are not counted among the seven fatalities. The death of the Soviet prisoner Ivan Kusmenko is known here. Kusmenko, who was born on 15 August 1920 in present-day Ukraine, died on 4 June 1945, exactly one month after his liberation from the AL Trostberg, as a result of his concentration camp imprisonment in the Trostberg district hospital.

On the other hand, prisoners who became infected with serious diseases such as tuberculosis or typhus in the AL Trostberg were transferred to the Dachau main camp. Often the prisoners died there, as they received practically no medical assistance. Between November 1944 and March 1945 at least 118 prisoners were brought from the AL Trostberg to Dachau concentration camp because of illness. Their further fate is uncertain.

If a prisoner died in the AL Trostberg, he had to be carried by other prisoners to the "Pechlerau" district. To do this, four prisoners carried two long poles, between which a tarpaulin held the body. Although the prisoners carrying the body walked so close together that the tarpaulin formed a pocket and the dead prisoner could not be seen, the inhabitants of the town of Trostberg, who were able to observe the transport, knew what was hidden under the tarpaulin. As the "Pechlerau" district lay in the north of the town, about 2 km from the sub-camp, the route of the procession also led through parts of the (old) town. To make escape attempts impossible, the transport of the bodies was accompanied by SS guards. The dead prisoners were buried outside the cemetery. This was presumably a place in the riverside forest in Pechlerau, to the left of the river Alz.

In July 1945, on the orders of American soldiers, the bodies of the prisoners were exhumed by former Trostberg NSDAP members and reburied in a mass grave inside the cemetery. Today no mortal remains of the prisoners are to be found in Trostberg. From November 1945 onwards the remains were successively transferred to the prisoners' homelands or to the cemetery of the Flossenbürg concentration camp memorial.