Emo Leichtmetallbau, Ernst Modl & Co

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During World War II the output of the musical instrument company F.X.Hüller & Co in Graslitz shifted from saxophones and trumpets to war equipment, more specifically aircraft parts. Already from the start of the war in September 1939 most of the production was diverted to war production and that took off so much that because of that in 1940 extensions of the main building were necessary. By the end of 1940 the amount of orders made additional factory space needed. On May 6th 1941 F.X.Hüller & Co bought an an old weaving mill in Grünberg that was disused since 11 years. This became the location of F.X. Hüller Werk II. On December 1st 1941 this Werk II was transferred to a separated company under the name Emo Leichtmetallbau, Ernst Modl & Co K.G. Grünberg bei Graslitz Sudetengau.



War economy

After the annexation in October 1938 Sudetenland was quickly incorporated in the German war economy. The territory of the Czech Republic was considered fairly safe from bombings during the Nazi regime. Especially in the final stages of World War II, this lead the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Flossenbürg (eastern Bavaria) und Groß-Rosen (Lower Silesia) to establish an extensive system of subcamps for armament production in the Sudetengau, the border areas which had been annexed by the German "Reich" in 1938, and in the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia. In the Sudetengau, there was neither war equipment nor ammunition production before the outbreak of war. Therefore new businesses had to be created. The most important new forges in the Sudeten area were state-owned companies built according to the "Montan scheme". The Montan scheme was based on trust agreements between the German Reich and the private sector. Private companies (parent companies) received an order from the Army Inspectorate (HWA) for the construction of an armaments company at government expense. A shell contract was concluded between a parent company and the HWA and a subsidiary was founded, which leased the plant from the army's own society for Montanindustrie GmbH (Montan GmbH). In this way, at least 119 companies were created by the end of the war, employing 190,000 people on November 1, 1944. According to this principle, six large arms factories were founded in the Sudetengau in 1939-1940, which were generally treated preferentially in the allocation of labor. Nevertheless, the newly founded ammunition factories in the Sudetengau suffered from labor shortages.

Emo Leichtmetallbau, Ernst Modl & Co. KG

On 29-01-1941 Ernst Modl becomes the only company representative for F.X.Hüller & Co. The 1941 edition of Compass, Kommerzielles Jahrbuch Sudetenland lists F.X. Hüller & Co, Graslitz and as of 1942 Ernst Modl appears in the Jahrbuch with a separate entry. The 1944 version still lists both F.X. Hüller & Co, Graslitz and Ernst Modl & Co Komm.-Ges. (Kommanditgesellschaft, Ltd ) Grunberg. The archive of the Bank der deutschen Luftfahrt AG 1933-1945 lists Emo Leichtmetallbau, Ernst Modl & Co. KG, Grünberg/Sudetenland (until Nov. 1941: F. X. Hüller & Co., Werk II). There's also an audit report ( Prüfungsbericht) from 1939, a Balance sheet, income statement (Bilanz, Gewinn- und Verlustrechnung) from 1940, a location map from Grunberg/Zelena Hora and a company history from 1942. As of 1941 Ernst Modl used Emo Leichtmetallbau, Ernst Modl & Co. KG as a separate company for the war efforts.

The archive of the Deutsche Revisions- und Treuhand AG, 1925-1945 (in the Bundesarchiv) contains the (audits of the) financial statements as of 31 Dec. 1941 and 1942 of Emo Leichtmetallbau, Ernst Modl & Co. KG, Grünberg bei Graslitz. The archive of Bank der deutschen Luftfahrt also contains a contract between the German Reich and the Modl company from 1942/1943 and an additional contract from 1945 (Vertrag zwischen dem Deutschen Reich und der Firma, 1942/43, und Zusatzvertrag, 1945). There is also a document about the employment of 142 Russian workers in 1942 and arrests in 1943. (Bundesarchiv: Verstöße gegen die Betriebsordnung.- Verhaftungen bei der Firma EMO-Leichtmetallbau, Grünberg begin 1943. ) There's an extract of the commercial register from Oktober 21st 1944 and a Dr. Rieffert is mentioned as the sole manager and operator in 1944.

Forced labor

The work at the Emo factory was done by laborers from different sources, not only Russians. EMO owned a work camp were workers of various nationalities - the Czechs (19%), the Russians (61%), the French (12%), the Belgians (5%), the Dutch (3%) who were totally employed at EMO were interned. During the camp's existence - from February 1942 to April 1945 - there lived 450 people, including 4 women, wives of total workers, and 2 children born in the camp. (Tábory utrpení a smrti, Růžena Bubeníčková et al) , Jules van Egdom, from Belgium was such a forced laborer at EMO from 09.08.1944 tot 10.04.1945. According to Van Egdom the camp for Modl was in Schwaderbach (now Bublava), some 4 kilometers north. He knew that there were made musical instruments at that location before. Previously he worked in Fischamend and Schwadorf near Vienna (WNF Wiener Neustäter Flugzeugwerke), later in Kratzau (Spreewerk) until the liberation by the Russians.

Jules van Egdom, and his Ausweis and Gestellungsbefehl, declaring that he was working at EMO Leichtmetallbau.

The Emo/Hüller factory was at Grunberg (Zelená Hora), the workers camp at Schwaderbach (Bublava)
Theo Geijssen

Another forced laborer was Dutchman Theo Geijssen from Utrecht (1923-2013). He was in Graslitz before Van Egdom and his description makes me believe that he was at the EMO factory as well. "I was in Czechoslovakia too, it must have been in 1943. A group was selected and they went to Regensburg to work in the Messerschmidt factories, which were a little further away. But when we arrived in Regensburg, those factories were bombed and so we couldn't go to work there. So we split up again and went to Graslitz, a place in the mountains, where there was a village with a machine factory, and then we had to go to work there. We slept again in a Lager. We were there for about half a year, no longer. In Czechoslovakia we had no freedom at all, we didn't see much there either. You had to go all the way up the mountain, there you were sleeping. And then down, you were exhausted in the evening. I stood there all day behind a lathe, I had the day shift, you also had night shifts, which stood behind the same machine as where I was. Then I got comments that those from the night shift made 20 pieces of something and I only 10. So I had to work harder and when I said that I could not work harder, that machine had to be set faster. So I let that machine run faster and then it crashed, haha! It was not on purpose, of course not. If you didn't do what they said they threatened you to go to a concentration camp that was nearby, Theresiënstadt, a very tough camp. Of course you didn't feel like it at all."

The National Socialist war economy had an almost insatiable hunger for ever new workers. First the need for labor could be largely covered by the use of civilian foreign workers (like Van Egdom and Geijsen) and prisoners of war, but the labor market collapsed in the summer of 1944 due to the lack of influx. Forced labor was an essential pillar of the National Socialist economic system in both the Sudetengau and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The massive expansion of the network of KZ satellite camps in 1944 was a reaction to the drying up of the influx of previously used groups of forced laborers. Thus, in many cases, a barely comprehensible genealogy of various camps with different groups of forced laborers developed in the same place.

Luftfahrtgerätewerke Hakenfelde

The first private enterprise, which established an external production camp in Sudetengau in December 1943, was the Siemens subsidiary Luftfahrtgerätewerke Hakenfelde GmbH (LGW), which operated another warehouse until the end of the war in Graslitz (Kraslice). These formed together with other satellite camps in neighboring Saxony and Bavaria, a separate sub-camp network. LGW relocated from Berlin to the territory of Sudeten, among others, to protect against air strikes. The headquarter for this branch became the textile firm (velvet production) J.L. De Ball, (now Sametex). (Untere Bahnhofstrasse/ Richard Wagnerstrasse 830 now Československé armády). The plants were housed in two facilities, 1 und II, in the factory buildings of Hupfer & Sohn (a woolen goods factory, at the Lehrerplatz/Dukelská, the former Hlawatsch & Isbary, since 1918 part of Vereinigten Schafwollwaren-Fabriken-A.G. until 1939, now housing the Amati factory), Julius Keilwerth (saxophone factory), Steubing & Co., (Maschinenfabrik, in 1941 listed as munition production, from 1939 in the former factory of Anton Richard Breinl, 229, 231,232 S munition production SudetenCompass 1941,1942, 1944) Hans Rölz (a musical toy company at Wolkerova 1269), and EMO Leichtmetallwerke in the Grunberg/Zelená Hora part of Graslitz.

The relocation of a part of the LGW production to Kraslice was based on the creation of Arbeitslager Graslitz (Kamp Graslitz) at the De Ball factory. Milena Kalčíková, a prisoner in the camp of Svatý Kateřina, went to the new Graslitz camp to assemble the beds. She remembers: "The Kraslice camp was such a red building at the station. Burnt bricks." The camp was a women's camp. The (female) prisoners were housed on the floor above the factory hall of De Ball. Another source states that the womens camp was located in the former Durst & Krey dyeing plant at the riverside of the De Ball-complex. At the beginning of August 1944, the first 150 women from KT Ravensbrück were relocated to Kraslice. The Kraslice district camp was originally governed by KT Ravensbrück, but since September 1, 1944, it was included under the Flossenbürg KT. In December there were already 483 prisoners. In March and April 1945 this number increased rapidly to the number of 900. The cause was evacuation transport of other camps, as it was in the case of Svatavy. Kalčíková: "Most of the women in the camp belonged to the German 'asocials', the rest a few 'political' Russians, a French woman, a few 'asocial' Polish. There were also 15 Czech political prisoners and 29 Czech and Slovak gypsies."

At the Hans Rölz factory the Messerschmidt 262 was build in 1944. In the J.L. de Ball factory parts for fighter planes of the German Air Force, possibly also parachutes, and hammocks for the Afrika Korps were made. At EMO Leichtmetallbau the tail pieces and parts of the landing gear for aircrafts were made.

There now is a textile company (Sametex S.A.) in the former camp. There is a commemorative plaque on the wall of the building with the inscription: "Arbeitslager Graslitz, branch of KZ Flossenbürg was located in this building in the 2nd World War".



File:Schwaderbach 1928.jpg


Graslitz: H. Rölz - Originally Musical Instruments - Hulls for Arado and Messerschmitt

V. Kolbert - components for aircraft AK Huettl manufactured aircraft engine piping.

Furthermore, between 1939 and 1945, at least 10,000 aircraft, mostly training and later fighter jets, were produced for the German army in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and in the Sudetenland. In the Czech Republic, Hitler produced from training biplanes to strategic bombers, from jet fighters to helicopters. In the other occupied European countries, only 3,881 German aircraft were produced between 1941 and 1944.

The back of the fuselage The list of relocated production from 11.4.1945 lists the companies E. Modl in Kraslice (" E.Modl, Graslitz ") for companies producing the rear part of the Me 262 rupee ("Rumpfhinterteil" - part of the fuselage from the end of the cockpit to the tail surfaces ). Its capacity at that time was supposed to be 220 sets per month, but again we must state that it was probably a theoretical capacity. The same plant is also mentioned in the post-war interrogation of an FWE employee , who described it as " Leichtmetall Emo, Graslitz“. The company used to produce parts of kites for Junkers and Heinkel aircraft, but in January 1945 it was already operating in the Me 262. However, the employee did not state what its production content was and we are not able to confirm the information of the German April document. We also did not manage to find out the approximate actual production of the company. (http://www.vrtulnik.cz/ww2/protektorat2.htm)http://www.vrtulnik.cz/ww2/k_karlovarsky.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arado_Ar_234 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_262