Burkhardtsgrün (Zschorlau)
The perpetrators
SS-Untersturmführer Georg Degner was the camp commandant in Mülsen and the commanding officer of the death march. He was charged twice but never convicted because he was not present when the prisoners were murdered, and it could not be proven that he had been ordered to shoot them. He lived undisturbed with his wife in Wolfsburg.
His deputy, SS-Oberscharführer Dammast, has been missing since the end of the war.
Their command included three non-commissioned officers and twenty former Luftwaffe soldiers who served as guard.
Some of them went into hiding en route for fear of being tried by the Allies. None of those involved in the mass shootings were prosecuted.
In contrast, some of the civilian perpetrators in Niederschlema were imprisoned and executed by the Soviet occupying forces. (Titzmann 2024)
During the second overnight stay in Burkhardtsgrün, a prisoner was shot while attempting to escape. He barely survived the night. According to Degner's euphemistic account, the man was "shot for mercy" the next morning. (NARA, S. 52). The body was buried in a field and exhumed on May 19, 1945, after which it was reburied in Zschorlau Cemetery. No perpetrator was prosecuted for this murder, either.(1945 - Bestattungsbuch - page 556, Nr. 46 , see below).
More information about the perpetrators
Georg Walter Degner was born on September 24, 1909, in Klein Mirkhof (Mirkowiczki, Province of Posen) and grew up bilingual. After completing four years of primary school, he became a farmer like his parents. In November 1939, he was drafted into the Waffen-SS as a Volksdeutscher. Starting in October 1940, he worked at the Flossenbürg concentration camp. From June to July 1944, he was the head of the Hersbruck subcamp. Then, he became the new camp commander of the Mülsen St. Micheln subcamp. He left Leitmeritz Subcamp, the destination of the death march, with the remaining guards and headed west, ultimately becoming a prisoner of war in the United States.
After the war, he worked as a guard at Volkswagen. He died in Wolfsburg in 2008.
- Other well-known names of guards at the Mülsen St. Micheln subcamp include:
- Erich Gerhard von Berg (camp commandant from january 1944 until may 1944)
- Dammast (Degner's deputy) [prename unkown] - was present during the murder in Schlema
- Rudolph Mahnke (guard leader) - was present during the murder in Schlema, died 1977 undisturbed in Eldena
- Friedrich (Scharführer) - war bei der Erschießung in Schlema dabei und gilt als verschollen
- Stefan Schober
- Johann Volk
- Johann Baptist Kübler
- Karl Naumann
- Pilz [prename unknown]
More information about Burkhardtsgrün
The excerpt from the Zschorlau municipality's burial register shows: "On May 19, 1945, the body of a concentration camp prisoner was exhumed and brought to the mortuary." The place where the body was found is also mentioned: Zschorlau-Burkhardtsgrün Woodland. The cause of death is listed as "shot" and "buried." Everything else is unknown, including the prisoner's age and place of birth.
As far as is known, the death march from Mülsen St. Micheln was the only one to pass through Burkhardtsgrün. The column's second overnight stay took place there. During court testimony against Georg Degner, Wladyslaw Klak and other witnesses explicitly stated that a shooting occurred at the site of the second overnight stay. One witness described how a Russian prisoner had tried to escape the previous evening and had been shot. Seriously injured with a wounded lung, the man barely survived the night. Klak, a prisoner doctor, was called to treat the man and therefore remembers his condition particularly well. However, he lacked bandages. The next morning, the wounded man was still alive but unable to march any further. He was shot on the spot. (NARA, S. 96-101; S. 56-59).
However, we have no solid evidence that the concentration camp prisoner mentioned in the Zschorlau parish burial register is the same person whose suffering Klak describes. It is likely, though, that no other death march passed through Burkhardtsgrün, at least as far as we currently know.