Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

A sign outside of the town of Nammering marks the site of a mass shooting by the SS. It reads: "In eternal memory. Here lie 800 martyrs who were murdered by Nazi executioners in April 1945. May they rest in peace."

Photograph | Digitized | Photograph Number: 37211

Search this record's additional resources, such as finding aids, documents, or transcripts.

No results match this search term.
Check spelling and try again.

results are loading

0 results found for “keyward

    A sign outside of the town of Nammering marks the site of a mass shooting by the SS. It reads: "In eternal memory. Here lie 800 martyrs who were murdered by Nazi executioners in April 1945. May they rest in peace."
    A sign outside of the town of Nammering marks the site of a mass shooting by the SS.  It reads:  "In eternal memory.  Here lie 800 martyrs who were murdered by Nazi executioners in April 1945.  May they rest in peace."

    Overview

    Caption
    A sign outside of the town of Nammering marks the site of a mass shooting by the SS. It reads: "In eternal memory. Here lie 800 martyrs who were murdered by Nazi executioners in April 1945. May they rest in peace."
    Date
    May 1941
    Locale
    Nammering, [Bavaria] Germany
    Photo Credit
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Pam Feil
    Event History
    On April 19, 1945, a freight train with nearly 4,500 prisoners from Buchenwald pulled onto the railroad siding at Nammering. The train had been destined for Dachau, but at Plattling it was diverted towards Nammering because of damage to the railroad caused by Allied bombing. Once in Nammering, some of the local inhabitants attempted to give the prisoners food and water, but these provisions were stolen by the 150 SS and police officers guarding the train. The commanding officer in charge, Lieutenant Hans Meerbach, ordered during the halt that the bodies of the dead be removed from the train and cremated. This work proceeded too slowly for him, however, and prisoners were forced to carry the bodies of the dead to a nearby mass grave in a ravine roughly 500 yards from the train. There the prisoners carrying the corpses were shot by the guards and they were also buried in the grave. Altogether 524 prisoners were shot and nearly 800 were interred in the mass grave. The bodies were then covered with lime and the grave was flooded to speed up decomposition. Those 3,100 prisoners who had remained on the train were sent on to Dachau, where they were liberated. After the discovery of the site by U.S. troops on April 28, the ranking American officer in the area forced SS men collected from a nearby POW camp to exhume the corpses and lay them out on either side of the ravine above the mass grave. The inhabitants of Nammering were then ordered to walk through the gravesite, and the bodies were buried in the surrounding towns of Eging am See, Aicha vom Wald, Nammering, and Fuerstenstein.

    See https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005198.
    See Also "Buchenwald Main Camp" in Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos Volume 1, Part A.

    Rights & Restrictions

    Photo Source
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    Provenance: Pam Feil

    Keywords & Subjects

    Record last modified:
    2014-03-27 00:00:00
    This page:
    http:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/pa1179437

    Download & Licensing

    In-Person Research

    Contact Us