E588 Rauden

Rauden is now known by its Polish name of Rudy, which means red. It got its name because, historically, the area was known for iron-ore extraction, going back hundreds of years, and this ore apparently coloured the local river red. I don’t know if iron-ore extraction still exists, but certainly in the 20^th century there were forges in the area, and during the Second World War there was a nearby factory that originally made machine tools used in the manufacture of railway engines. The Germans converted this factory to the Schondorff Hegenscheidt-Werke producing aircraft engine parts, and maybe it was here that the POWs worked. There is still a factory there called Rafamet, that claims to be a leading global manufacturer of machine tools for machining railway wheels. Rudy and other small villages and towns around have been merged into a municipality called Kuźnia Raciborska.

I cannot find any mention of mining, other than for iron-ore, either historically or now, in the Rudy area. The Schondorff Hegenscheidt-Werke seems the most likely work place of E588 to me, but I can’t prove it.

Working parties were not always billeted in the same place where the POWs were working – though obviously not far away. Rudy is famous for its big and historic abbey, and maybe (this is just speculation) this could have been a place where the POWs were billeted.