Amateur filmmaker
This film was used in 2004 documentary, HEIM INS REICH.
The Hinzert camp (about thirty kilometers south-east of Trier) was initially made up of barracks where, from 1938, workers who were working on the motorway network and 'Westwall' lived. This camp burned on August 16, 1939 and was replaced by a new camp which served as an education camp for the workers who had been noted for insubordination. After the invasion of Benelux and France, Hinzert was integrated into the administration of the concentration camps. The prisoners were still recalcitrant workers, but from 1941 political prisoners came to join them. As a general rule, for many prisoners, Hinzert was the first step before being sent to other camps such as Natzweiler, Dachau, and Buchenwald. Few prisoners were released from Hinzert. The prisoners came mainly from Luxembourg, France, Belgium, Poland, the Netherlands. More than 70 Soviet prisoners of war were murdered at Hinzert, as well as Jews and Gypsies. Many of Hinzert's prisoners were sent to factories to work as slaves. Between 1600 and 1800 Luxembourgers passed by Hinzert; 82 died, including 20 shot in September 1942 following the strike and 23 on February 25, 1944 as leaders of the Luxembourg Resistance. The Nazis abandoned the camp on March 3, 1945, taking the prisoners to the interior of Germany.
Includes original French intertitles. Musical accompaniment and end titles added by Centre national de l'audiovisual Luxembourg in 2003. On March 9, 1946, the bodies of Luxembourgers who died at SS-Sonderlager Hinzert in 1942 were repatriated to Luxembourg city. Amateur filmmaker Alphonse Wirion accompanied the convoy to Hinzert and filmed the camp at length (what was left of it), including barracks, barbed wire fences, watchtowers, debris. Then he searched the woods around the camp, exhumed the bones and the bodies that were lined up in an empty shack. The filmmaker then follows the trucks of the Army who bring the mortal remains to Luxembourg. The French Army pays the honors for the crossing at Hermeskeil. At Wasserbillig, the crowd waits for convoys. Some wear the striped uniform of the concentration camps. A crowd gathers at the edge of the road. In the city of Luxembourg, the convoy is received by Luxembourg personalities at the Place d'Armes where a chapel has been installed. The bodies are buried in the cemetery of Notre-Dame during an official ceremony.
Hinzert camp in 1946; repatriation of victims' bodies to Luxembourg city