Lübbecke

Soviet forced laborers

Between 1941 and 1945, there was a barracks at the old Lübbecke hospital for forced laborers and those in quarantine. Those who died there were gathered at this very spot, some after their remains had been reburied. The Protestant and Catholic pastors oversaw this process.

Karl Haddewig of Lübbecke and his wife Anna tried to help the Russian and other forced laborers. For this, Karl was sent to a concentration camp and killed in August 1944.

Haddewig was wounded in World War I and taken prisoner by the Russians. He was sent to a camp in Siberia and soon learned Russian. After his release from captivity, he worked as a stoker at the worsted spinning mill in Lübbecke. There, he also helped as a translator for Russian forced laborers, which, however, simultaneously earned him the suspicion of the authorities. His wife Anna also helped the Russians and secretly provided them with food.

District Administrator von Borries ordered on March 8, 1943: “An arrest warrant will follow as soon as approval for admission to a concentration camp is received.” The arrest took place on June 19, 1944. The management of the worsted spinning mill advocated for Haddewig’s immediate release. To no avail. Haddewig was sent to the Lahde concentration camp (today a district of Petershagen). There, he was killed by lethal injection in August 1944.