page_title: Kaufering concentration camp complex
section_title: Commemoration
hierarchical_section_title: Kaufering concentration camp complex / Commemoration
caption_attribution_description: English: Welfenkaserne, Landsberg/Lech, Germany Deutsch: Welfenkaserne, Landsberg/Lech
context_page_description: Kaufering was a system of eleven subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp located around the town of Landsberg am Lech in Bavaria, which operated between 18 June 1944 and 27 April 1945. Previously, Nazi Germany had deported all Jews from the Reich, but having exhausted other sources of labor, Jews were deported to Kaufering to create three massive underground bunkers, Weingut II, Diana II, and Walnuss II, which would not be vulnerable to the Allied bombing which had devastated German aircraft factories. The bunkers were intended for the production of Messerschmitt Me 262 aircraft, but none were produced at the camps before the United States Army captured the area.
  Kaufering was the largest of the Dachau subcamps and also the one with the worst conditions; about half of the 30,000 prisoners died from hunger, disease, executions, or during the death marches. Most of the sites were not preserved and have been repurposed for other uses.
context_section_description: There are dozens of "KZ-Friedhöfe" (mass graves) with the remains of thousands of people who died at Kaufering. The largest of these are at Kaufering II and III, with about 2,000 and 1,500 victims respectively. Many of the grave markers are overgrown and difficult to find. By the railroad tracks outside the village of Schwabhausen, there are three mass graves next to the railway line, victims of Allied strafing, which are marked by plaques. At Sankt Ottilien there is a small cemetery with the remains of about 40 prisoners who died shortly after liberation.
  At the beginning of the 1980s, a private association called Landsberg im 20. Jahrhundert (Landsberg in the 20th Century) was formed to commemorate Kaufering. The site of Kaufering VII was purchased after a Jewish survivor donated the money on the condition that a memorial be erected, which has not been accomplished. In 2014, the federal government gave 700,000 euros to the Europäische Holocaustgedenkstätte in Landsberg (Landsberg Holocaust Memorial Association) and the city of Landsberg donated land with architectural remains. Restoration work was done between 2009 and 2016 on three intact and three ruined earthen huts and the housing of the SS guards, by the Europäische Holocaustgedenkstätte, winning the Bavarian Historic Conservation Prize in Gold. The site is fenced off and not accessible to visitors, but there are informational and commemorative plaques nearby. According to historian Edith Raim, the Landsberg im 20. Jahrhundert association and its director, Anton Posset, have refused access to the site to survivors and their families, the Israeli ambassador Shimon Stein, and inspectors of the Bavarian List of Monuments.
  Besides Kaufering VII, there are hardly any remnants of the Kaufering subcamps, whose locations were only definitively established due to Raim's work. Most of the sites are now used for gardens, forests, agriculture, or housing. Landsberg am Lech has a prominent plaque in the center of town commemorating the German soldiers who died in both World Wars, but no memorial to the Holocaust victims. There is a modest memorial at Kaufering III, while a student project to establish an information board was not maintained and fell into disrepair. Only grave markers remain at Kaufering II and VI. A tennis court operates on the former site of Kaufering I, while Kaufering VI has been built over and there is a McDonald's nearby. Traces of the fire set by the SS at Kaufering IV were destroyed by gravel-mining in the 1980s; a hunting tower resembling the guard towers at concentration camps was erected by a local resident, which one visitor found "rather disturbing".
  Only one of the bunkers built by slave laborers, Weingut II, survives. During the 1960s, it was repurposed for use by the Bundeswehr, as part of the Welfenkaserne facility, and is still in use as a repair facility by the German Air Force, as of 2018.
caption: Entrance of the Welfenkaserne [de], German Air Force repair depot located at the former Weingut II bunker
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