Qualla: Lichtenburg Concentration Camp

Lichtenburg Concentration Camp: Introduction

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Cethegus, Public domain. Before Auschwitz, before the gas chambers, before the trains from western Europe, the Nazi state had to figure out how to imprison its own citizens. In the spring of 1933, weeks after Hitler became chancellor, the SS began converting buildings across Germany into camps for political opponents - communists, social democrats, trade unionists, journalists, lawyers, anyone whose existence the new regime could not tolerate. Lichtenburg, a Renaissance castle in the small town of Prettin near Wittenberg, was one of the first. It opened in June 1933 and operated for six years. Up to 2,000 men passed through it as political prisoners between 1933 and 1937. From late 1937 to May 1939 it became a women's camp, holding around 1,000 prisoners at a time - most of them transferred onward in 1939 when the SS opened Ravensbruck specifically as a women's camp. The buildings remain. So does a regional museum that documents what happened here. The architecture is beautiful in the way old German castles are beautiful, and the history is exactly as ugly as the Nazi era was - which is to say it does not soften with the centuries that have passed since the castle was built or the decades that have passed since it stopped being a camp.

Image: User:Cethegus | Public domain

Lichtenburg Concentration Camp: The Test Camp

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scanned by Radzuweit, Public domain. The early Nazi camps were not built primarily to murder - mass extermination of Jews would come later, after 1941 - they were built to imprison and to terrorize. Theodor Eicke became commandant at Lichtenburg in May 1934 after running Dachau, and he treated Lichtenburg as a conti...

Image: Scanned by Radzuweit | Public domain

Lichtenburg Concentration Camp: Who Was Held

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thomas 1966, CC BY-SA 4.0. The men imprisoned at Lichtenburg were Germans who refused to accept what their country was becoming. Friedrich Ebert junior, the son of the first president of the Weimar Republic, was held here for being a Social Democrat. Ernst Reuter, who would later become the post-war mayor ...

Image: Thomas 1966 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lichtenburg Concentration Camp: The Women's Camp

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Breva850, CC BY-SA 4.0. From December 1937 to May 1939 Lichtenburg held women prisoners exclusively - one of the first Nazi camps to do so. The director was Gunther Tamaschke, with Alexander Piorkowski and Max Koegel as deputies. The 900 to 1,000 women held at any given time included Olga Benario-Preste...

Image: Breva850 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lichtenburg Concentration Camp: The Memorial Today

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rathaus_Wittenberg_2011.jpg: Felix König derivative work: Regi51 (talk), CC BY 3.0. Lichtenburg closed in May 1939. During the war the SS used it for various secondary purposes. After 1945 it became a regional museum and memorial site, with permanent exhibitions about the Nazi camp's operation and the prisoners who passed through. Detailed documentation became a...

Image: Rathaus_Wittenberg_2011.jpg: Felix König derivative work: Regi51 (talk) | CC BY 3.0