BAHRS
PLATE

Many bicyclists enjoy Sunday trips in fair weather on the picturesque grounds of the Bahrsplate. The fact that there were 70 years ago three camps for forced labourers, one of them for so-called Ostarbeiter (workers from the East) from the Soviet Union, one for Soviet POWs, and, at the end of the war in 1944-45, a concentration camp, is almost forgotten.

The memorial place called “Roses for the victims” remembers the prisoners of the concentration camp. At the time of National Socialism, prisoners were living in barracks and toiling for the Nazi war economy. The deported men from all over Europe – among them Belgians, French, Russians, Ukrainians and Poles, but also Jews – were employed at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen-Gröpelingen and in buildings of the wool combing factory in Blumenthal. Some work commandos had to participate in the construction of the submarine bunker “Valentin”. In 2009, students from a vocational school in Bremen added the “Stone of Hope” to the memorial site, on which all known victims are listed by name.

The beautiful grounds are on fair summer days a meeting place for old and young. A space for football, an area for the still little-known kind of sport Disc Golf and a children’s playground offer the required appeal.

Text: Karsten Ellebrecht