Roßlau Concentration Camp

The Roßlau concentration camp existed from September 12, 1933 to July 31, 1934. It was the only early state concentration camp in the state of Anhalt. It was located in the former People's House of the Trade Unions, Hauptstraße 51, in Roßlau, today Dessau-Roßlau, Saxony-Anhalt. Before the SPD set up a people's house there after the First World War, the inn "Zur Goldenen Krone" was located on the property. The Volkshaus had been confiscated and expropriated by the Anhalt tax authorities in 1933.
The primary purpose pursued by the Anhalt State Ministry with the establishment of the Roßlau concentration camp was to relieve the Anhalt prisons, which had been chronically overcrowded since March 1933, with protective custody prisoners. At the beginning of September 1933, the People's House was "prepared for a temporary concentration camp." The building formation that housed the concentration camp and consisted mainly of three interconnected parts has been preserved almost in its original form to this day. Directly on the street is the first building, a two-storey pointed roof house, in which the rooms of the camp commander and the guards were located. In front of the entrance to the house, a guard house was set up for the guard. To the right of the two-storey house began the wooden fence that surrounded the entire area. In addition to security, it also served as a privacy screen, because the site borders directly on the road. Barbed wire was installed on the crown of the wooden fence. To the rear, the house was connected to the former dance hall, in which the concentration camp prisoners were housed, by an approximately eight-meter-long connecting corridor. There were open spaces in front of, next to and behind the prisoners' dormitory and recreation room. The area behind the hall building – about 30 metres by 40 metres – served as a roll call area. The right and rear boundaries of the camp were formed by a small river, the Rossel, the left border the property of a farmer. This boundary was "secured" by the immediately adjoining residential building, a wall and the farmer's stables. Between this boundary and the two-storey house, the connecting corridor and the hall building was a small courtyard on which there were also buildings. At the rear border of the concentration camp grounds, above the river, were the farmer's vegetable lands. The concentration camp was located in the middle of a residential area.

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