After 1945 the name was applied to the displaced persons camp established nearby, but it is most commonly associated with the concentration camp. From 1941 to 1945, almost 20.000 Soviet prisoners of war and a further 50.000 inmates died there. Overcrowding, lack of food and poor sanitary conditions caused outbreaks of typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever and dysentery, leading to the deaths of more than 35.000 people in the first few months of 1945, shortly before and after the liberation.

In April 1943, a part of the Bergen-Belsen camp was taken over by the SS Economic Administration Main Office (SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt orWVHA). It thus became part of the concentration camp system, run by the SS Schutzstaffel but it was a special case. Having initially been designated a Zivilinterniertenlager (civilian internment camp), in June 1943 it was redesignated Aufenthaltslager (confinement camp), since the Geneva Conventions stipulated that the former type of facility must be open to inspection by international committees. This "holding camp" or "exchange camp" was for Jews who were intended to be exchanged for German civilians interned in other countries, or for hard currency. The SS divided this camp into subsections for individual groups (the 'Hungarian camp', the 'special camp' for Polish Jews, the 'neutrals camp' for citizens of neutral countries and the 'Star camp' for Dutch Jews). Between the summer of 1943 and December 1944 at least 14.600 Jews, including 2.750 children and minors were transported to the Bergen-Belsen "holding" or exchange camp. 160 Inmates were made to work, many of them in the "shoe commando" which salvaged usable pieces of leather from shoes collected and brought to the camp from all over Germany and occupied Europe. In general the prisoners of this part of the camp were treated less harshly than some other classes of Bergen-Belsen prisoner until fairly late in the war, due to their perceived potential exchange value. However, only around 2.560 Jewish prisoners were ever actually released from Bergen-Belsen and allowed to leave Germany.

In March 1944, part of the camp was redesignated as an Erholungslager (recovery camp), where prisoners too sick to work were brought from other concentration camps. They were in Belsen supposedly to recover and then return to their original camps and resume work, but many of them died in Belsen of disease, starvation, exhaustion and lack of medical attention.

In August 1944, a new section was created and this became the so-called "women's camp". By November 1944 this camp received around 9.000 women and young girls. Most of those who were able to work stayed only for a short while and were then sent on to other concentration camps or slave-labour camps. The first women interned there were Poles, arrested after the failed Warsaw Uprising. Others were Jewish women from Poland or Hungary, transferred from Auschwitz. Margot and Anne Frank died there of exhaustion and tyhpus in February or March 1945.

The camp was liberated on April 15, 1945, by the 63rd Anti-tank Regiment and the 11th Armoured Division. The soldiers discovered approximately 60.000 prisoners inside, most of them half-starved and seriously ill, and another 13.000 corpses lying around the camp unburied. The horrors of the camp, documented on film and in pictures, made the name "Belsen" emblematic of Nazi crimes in general for public opinion in many countries in the immediate post-1945 period. Today, there is a memorial with an exhibition hall at the site.

Prisoners came from all over Europe and the Soviet Union—Jews, Poles and other Slavs, the mentally ill and physically disabled, political prisoners, Romani people, Freemasons, and prisoners of war. There were also ordinary criminals and sexual "deviants". All prisoners worked primarily as forced labor in local armaments factories. The insufficient food and poor conditions, as well as deliberate executions, led to 56,545 deaths at Buchenwald of the 280,000 prisoners who passed through the camp and its 139 subcamps. The camp gained notoriety when it was liberated by the United States Army in April 1945; Allied commander Dwight D. Eisenhower visited one of its subcamps.

From August 1945 to March 1950, the camp was used by the Soviet occupation authorities as an internment camp, NKVD special camp Nr. 2, where 28,455 prisoners were held and 7,113 of whom died. Today the remains of Buchenwald serve as a memorial and permanent exhibition and museum.

The Schutzstaffel (SS) established Buchenwald concentration camp at the beginning of July 1937. The camp was to be named Ettersberg, after the hill in Thuringia upon whose north slope the camp was established. The proposed name was deemed inappropriate, because it carried associations with several important figures in German culture, especially Enlightenment writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Instead the camp was to be named Buchenwald, in reference to the beech forest in the area. However, Holocaust researcher James E. Young wrote that SS leader chose the site of the camp precisely to erase the cultural legacy of the area. After the area of the camp was cleared of trees, only one large oak remained, supposedly one of Goethe's Oaks.

On the main gate, the motto Jedem das Seine (English: "To each his own"), was inscribed. The SS interpreted this to mean the "master race" had a right to humiliate and destroy others. It was designed by Buchenwald prisoner and Bauhaus architect Franz Ehrlich, who used a Bauhaus typeface for it, eventhough Bauhaus was seen as degenerate art by the National Socialists and was prohibited. This defiance however went unnoticed by the SS.

The camp, designed to hold 8,000 prisoners, was intended to replace several smaller concentration camps nearby, including Bad Sulza [de], Sachsenburg, and Lichtenburg. Compared to these camps, Buchenwald had a greater potential to profit the SS because the nearby clay deposits could be made into bricks by the forced labor of prisoners. The first prisoners arrived on 15 July 1937, and had to clear the area of trees and build the camp's structures. By September, the population had risen to 2,400 following transfers from Bad Sulza, Sachsenburg, and Lichtenburg.

After Operation Hummingbird (The Night of the Long Knives or Nacht der langen Messer, or Röhm Purge) from June 30 to July 2 1934, in which the leaders of the SA were liquidated, Henrich Himmler enlarged the concentration camp  by building a new prison, adjacent to the former munitions factory. The organization and spatial structure later served as an example for the construction of new concentration camps. The Nazi regime presented it as an exemplary camp and as a deterrent to political dissenters. Dachau was a training ground for SS guards and SS leaders who were later deployed in the extermination camps.

After the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich on March 12, 1938, from the summer of 1938 the Austrian Jews were deported to Dachau. On 1st October 1938 Hitler invaded Sudetenland; the border area between Germany and the Czech Republic. Here too the Jews, as well as resistance fighters and communists, were arrested and taken to Dachau. This would continue in every country that the Germans annexed, occupied or conquered in the following years. Many hundreds of Dutch people were imprisoned in Dachau, mostly from the Jewish community or the communist resistance. As effect of 5 October 1942, all Jewish prisoners were deported to Auschwitz in occupied Poland by order of Himmler.

More political prisoners were murdered in Dachau than in any other camp. Of the approximately 180.000 people who were imprisoned, at least 41.500 died. 1.935 non Jewish Dutch men and 200 non Jewish Dutch women were imprisoned. It isn't exactly know how many Jewish Dutch people spent time in Dachau as a transit camp, because of transports and death marches back to Dachau in March and April 1945.

Prisoner transports from other concentration camps arrived in Dachau in the days leading up to the liberation. Most people were in a dire state of exhaustion and malnutrition. On April 26 1945, a notorious death march started from Dachau. In groups of approximately 7.000 prisoners were taken from the main camp. On the way many were shot by the SS and countless prisoners died of malnutrition, cold or exhaustion.

The last Lagerälteste, Oskar Müller, a later minister in Hesse, feared a mass murder of the remaining prisoners. He sent two prisoners to contact the Americans, requesting that the camp be liberated. Troops from the US 45th Infantry Division reached the camp on April 29, 1945. They encountered a freight train from Buchenwald. Two thousand corpses lay in the open wagons. At the crematorium inside the camp the soldiers found another 3.000 bodies.

The soldiers were so appaled by what they found in Dachau that they disobeyed the laws of war and summary executed the camp guards who remained behind. The remaining 32.000 prisoners were freed by the Americans. 

Flossenbürg - Granite site

Before the establishment of the concentration camp, Flossenbürg was merely a small village in the Upper Palatinate forest. Beginning in the late 19th century, a number of quarries were opened in the area in order to exploit local granite deposits, and Flossenbürg developed into a workers’ village.

At the same time, the region was discovered as a holiday destination. After the National Socialist seizure of power, the granite deposits and castle became the site’s key locational factors. The quarry industry shaped social relations in the village and influenced the culture and self-perception of its inhabitants.

Flossenbürg remained a destination for day trippers. The border region increasingly drew nationalist and völkisch groups, which stylized the ruins as a bastion of resistance to the “Slavic peoples.” The National Socialist state construction program created a boom in the demand for granite. As a result, quarry owners and workers welcomed the National Socialist seizure of power.

Founding of the Flossenbürg Camp

The Flossenbürg camp was established in May 1938 during the SS reorganization of the entire concentration camp system. In the new system, the purpose of the camps was no longer only to imprison and terrorize political opponents of the Nazi regime. Rather, the SS now also aimed to profit from the exploitation of prisoner labor. Prisoners were put to work in SS-​owned economic enterprises for the production of building materials. To this end, the SS founded new camps, and deported ever larger numbers of people to the camps.

The construction of new camps began in 1936-37 with the founding of the Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald camps. SS economic interests played an increasing role in the selection of new camp sites. The large granite deposits around Flossenbürg attracted the attention of the SS. The decision on the Flossenbürg site was reached in March 1938. The first SS guards arrived in late April. On May 3, the first transport of 100 prisoners arrived at the construction site from the Dachau concentration camp. By the end of 1938, the initial intake of the camp had increased to 1,500 prisoners.

Arbeit macht frei

The Flossenbürg Camp also supported the slogan "Arbeit macht frei" like the camps: Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz, Gross Rosen and Theresienstadt in the Czech Republic. The expression comes from the title of an 1873 novel by German philologist Lorenz Diefenbach, Arbeit macht frei: Erzählung von Lorenz Diefenbach, in which gamblers and fraudsters find the path to virtue through labour. The phrase was also used in French (le travail rend libre!) by Auguste Forel, a Swiss entomologist, neuroanatomist and psychiatrist, in his Fourmis de la Suisse (English: "Ants of Switzerland") (1920). In 1922, the Deutsche Schulverein of Vienna, an ethnic nationalist "protective" organization of Germans within the Austrian Empire, printed membership stamps with the phrase Arbeit macht frei. The phrase is also evocative of the medieval German principle of Stadtluft macht frei ("urban air makes you free"), according to which serfs were liberated after being a city resident for one year and one day.

Camp Construction and Expansion

The number of prisoners in the Flossenbürg concentration camp continued to rise. The arrival of new categories of prisoners fundamentally altered the composition of the prisoners’ forced community. Two years after the camp’s founding, the main buildings of the camp were all complete. An SS company, the German Earth and Stone Works (DESt), mercilessly exploited the prisoners to excavate granite. Over 300 inmates had already perished since the founding of the camp.

The first inmates of the camp were Germans, victims of the arrests of so called “criminals” and “antisocials.” In late 1938, the first political prisoners arrived. After the start of the war, Flossenbürg housed prisoners from across occupied Europe. The first Jewish prisoners arrived at the camp in 1940. By this time the first phase of camp construction had been largely completed and the quarry was in full operation. The camp housed over 2,600 prisoners, and the death rate began to rise. To dispose of the bodies of the dead, the SS ordered the construction of a crematorium in the camp.

Survival and Death in the Camp

Daily life in the concentration camp was dangerous and often deadly for the prisoners. Conditions were cruel and inhumane. Subjugated, humiliated, and exploited as forced labor, many prisoners died from mistreatment. The SS established a system of violence and terror in the camp and attempted to exploit the political, national, social and cultural differences among prisoners. Between 1938 and 1945, approximately 84.000 men and 16.000 women from over thirty countries were imprisoned in the Flossenbürg camp and its subcamps. All inmates were forced to wear prisoners’ garb bearing a number and colored triangle.

Living conditions deteriorated drastically over the course of the war. There was a steady rise in the number of accidents, illnesses and deaths. The ability to work increasingly determined a prisoner’s chance of survival. In late 1943, large transports began to arrive at Flossenbürg, overcrowding the main camp. Many prisoners were subsequently transported to subcamps. For most inmates, the decisive question became “How will I survive one more day?”

The Quarry

Thousands of concentration camp inmates were forced to work in the quarry, owned by the German Earth and Stone Works (DESt). Badly clothed and lacking all safety precautions, the prisoners were forced, no matter the weather, to remove soil, blast granite blocks, push trolley wagons, and haul rocks. Accidents were daily and routine. Backbreaking labor, freezing cold, severe malnourishment, and random SS and Kapo violence led to the death of many prisoners.

A work day in the quarry lasted twelve hours, interrupted only by a single break when a thin soup was served. The SS forced prisoners to walk in circles for hours, hauling rocks. Only a few prisoners survived these penal detachments. At the end of the work day, the prisoners carried the bodies of the dead back to the camp.

The camp quarry was the largest industrial operation at Flossenbürg. By mid 1939, approximately 850 camp inmates labored in the quarry daily; by 1942, the number had increased to nearly 2.000. DESt employed up to 60 civilian staff, administrators, stoneworkers, drivers and apprentices. Many of them had regular contact with the inmates.

SS rule in Flossenbürg

The administration and surveillance of concentration camps was one of the central duties of the SS (Schutzstaffel). SS members employed in the camps were all members of the Death’s Head Divisions (Totenkopfverbände). The SS conceived of itself as an ideological order and racial elite. Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer and head of the SS, developed the SS into a complex organization, involved in matters ranging from settlement policies to “combating enemies” and systematically killing members of so-called “inferior races.” In addition, the SS ran its own business enterprises.

In the concentration camps, the Death’s Head Divisions were organized into the command staff and the guard units. Each camp was headed by a Kommandant. Along with his subordinate departments, the Kommandant determined the prisoners’ fates. The SS staff were responsible for guarding the prisoners.

Approximately ninety SS members worked in the command staff at Flossenbürg. By spring 1940, the guard units had grown to a force of nearly 300. By 1945, with the construction of subcamps, the guard units expanded to approximately 2.500 men and 500 women. After the start of the war, many younger SS men were sent to the front. The SS leadership then engaged older men, air force soldiers, women, and foreign nationals for duty in the camps. After the war, the majority of SS members received only light punishment for the crimes they committed at Flossenbürg.

Death marches and liberation

The termination of the Flossenbürg concentration camp and subcamps began in early April 1945. Shortly before the end of the war, the prisoners the Germans deemed "fit to work elsewhere" where forced to evacuate to other camps in Germany. Thousands of prisoners died of exhaustion on the death marches, or were shot or beaten to death.

At approximately 10:30 hours on April 23, 1945, the first U.S. troops of the 90th Infantry Division arrived at Flossenburg KZ. They were horrified at the sight of some 2.000 weak and extremely ill prisoners remaining in the camp and of the SS still forcibly evacuating those fit to endure the trek south. Before the SS evacuated the camp, it erased the traces of its murderous activities and forced some 14.000 inmates to march southward. The 90th Infantry Division discovered around 5.000 bodies of inmates, who had died from exhaustion or starvation or had been killed by the SS guards because they failed to keep up with the pace of the march. When the 90th Infantry Division troops spotted the columns of prisoners and their SS guards, the guards panicked and opened fire on many of the prisoners, killing about 200, in a desperate attempt to effect a human shield and road blocks of human bodies. The 90th Infantry Division and the 97th Infantry Division found some 6.000 of these prisoners alive. American tanks opened fire on the Germans as they fled into the woods, reportedly killing over 100 SS troops.

Additionally, elements of the 97th Infantry Division participated in the liberation. As the 97th prepared to enter Czechoslovakia, Flossenburg concentration camp was discovered in the division's sector of the Bavarian Forest. Brigadier General Milton B. Halsey, the commanding general of the 97th Division, inspected the camp on April 30, as did his divisional artillery commander, Brigadier General Sherman V. Hasbrouck. Hasbrouck, who spoke fluent German, directed a local German official to have all able-bodied German men and boys from that area help bury the dead. The 97th Division performed many duties at the camp upon its liberation. They assisted the sick and dying, buried the dead, interviewed former prisoners and helped gather evidence against former camp officers and guards for the upcoming war crimes trials.

One eyewitness U.S. Soldier, Sgt. Harold C. Brandt, a veteran of the 11th Armored Division, who was on hand for the liberation of not just one but three of the camps, Flossenburg, Mauthausen, and Gusen, when queried many years after the war on his part in liberating them, stated that:

"It was just as bad or worse than depicted in the movies and stories about the Holocaust. . . . I can not describe it adequately. It was sickening. How can other men treat other men like this'"

The subcamp we know today as Langenstein-Zwiebere is located in Zwieberge, 3 km east of Langenstein and 6 km from Halberstadt in the Langenstein (Harzvorland) Saksen-Anhalt, Germany.

The first group of prisoners arrived from Buchenwald on 21 April 1944, and consisted of 18 prisoners. Among them the oldest Hans Neupert and Dr. Raine, were told to prepare the camp for first transport. They were first housed in an inn on the outskirts of Langenstein, then the convoys followed one another, pending the completion of the construction of the camp, in a still existing barn, located at the exit of the village. The 1st transport of 200 prisoners arrived on 27 April 1944, 30 from the east, 68 Russians and 102 Poles.

Construction of the camp was completed in August 1944 and the perimeter fence was electrified; seven blocks plus the outbuildings (Infirmary, kitchen, etc.) replaced the inn and barn. When the number of inmates reached ± 5.000 inmates in February 1945, the total of barrackes was eighteen. The workforce then dwindled down to 4.000 people in early April 1945, causing the number of deaths to far exceed the number of new arrivals. In the week of March 19 to 25, 1945, Langenstein-Zwieberge had 1308 dead and reached the sad privilege of having the highest mortatilty rate of the Buchenwald subcamps.

Working in the tunnel system

From the first days of their arrival, the deportees began to dig a tunnel system names "Hermann Goering" in the Thekenberge Hills. In ten months, at the cost of terrible suffering, nearly 10 kilometers of galleries covering 60.000 square meters were built and partially completed. Some were big enough to hold trains of about twenty wagons.

Roll call was early everyday at 3:30 a.m. After the call for departure "to the tunnel" we where herded like cattle to the underground factory. Supervised by the SS and their dogs, . We had learned to sleep while walking. Life expectancy for those unlucky prisoners to work there was only six weeks.

About 60% of the 8.000 to 10.000 prisoners who were imprisoned in Langenstein-Zwieberge in the period it was operational, died. Prisoners were sent to the camp from all regions invaded by the Nazis. Inmates included Jews, political prisoners, prisoners of war and 'anti-socials', such as criminals, homosexuals, Roma, and Vagrants. Living conditions were primitive, food scarce, and disease rampant. The SS camp commandant Paul Tscheu, was notorious for his cruelty, beatings, lengthy torture sessions, and hangings. The murder of prisoners was a common occurrence.

The work was done in two shifts of twelve hours in appalling conditions due to lack of air, in the dust, under the blows of the kapos and Vorarbeiter (team leaders, prisoners). Many of the prisoners returned to the camp exhausted, suffocated and drained, not even having the strength to eat their soup.

Junkers

The idea of an underground tunnel system (the same as Mittelbau Dora) was to conceal the production plant of the Junkers company, from Allied bombing runs. The purpose of the tunnel system was to implement an undeground facilty where prisoners could build new types of jets and the V2 rocket and other items the Luftwaffe needed. In addition to realise this goal, the Junkers company had set up a 'Small Camp' of three barracks in the large camp on the edge of the square for specialized deportees, 869 men, from the Kommandos of Halberstadt, Aschersleben, Langensalza and Niederorschel . In the 'Small Camp', where there were no beds or straw mattresses since the prisoners were used to digging the tunnel. The SS deemed them tough enough to sleep on the floor.

The dead and how they were disposed

The dead prisoners were sent by horse drawn carriage and then by truck to the Quedlinburg Crematorium. There is a list of the 912 victims, including 131 French inmates, whose ashes lie in the cemetery of this city. In March the camp was unable to continue its work due to lack of fuel and the bodies that piled up in the barracks that served as a morgue and were rotting and decomposing. Some dead were buried outside the camp in four large pits and inside the camp at 'Le Revier' (abbreviation of the German Krankenrevier, a barracks intended for sick prisoners of the camps).

The corpses were transported in pairs in wooden boxes carried by four deportees after work. The coffin was emptied into the pits and the descending line went in search of a new charge until the mass grave was nearly exhausted. The last bodies, in complete decomposition, not transportable, remained in the hut. The SS in charge of loading closed the hut again because the theft of the thighs of corpses had taken place.

Death of Andrei Iwanowitsch

Outside the camp, just behind the camp fences, stood the "Hang tree" which was used to hang escaped and recaptured prisoners. The torture and executions took place in front of all the prisoners in the camp. Sometimes the internees in the camp were forced to hang their comrades themselves. The other inmates in the camp would witness the murder.

On September 7, 1944, six refugees were hanged after a failed escape attempt. The group was organized under the leadership of Russian deportee Andrei Iwanowitsch, former colonel of the Red Army. Iwanowitsch asked Nevrouz Tzareghian, a French prisoner who worked in the camp guards' bakery, to steal enough bread to supply the six refugees. The escape attempt failed. Three men were arrested by the SS two weeks later and tortured for several days. Among them was a 17-year-old detainee who gave the name Andrej Iwanowitsch under torture.

Iwanowitsch was then ordered to overturn the barrels under the feet of the men who had the ropes around their necks. However, Iwanowitsch replied to the SS: “You are a monster. Hang them yourself". This refusal caused Iwanowitsch to be hanged by the SS guard. He was probably alive when he was unhooked from the suspended tree before being buried alive in a hole filled with concrete. However, the discovery of unpublished documents in French and American archives in recent years casts doubt on Andrej Iwanowitsch's way of 'funeral'. The "Hang tree" is seen as a symbol of suffering and horror, as well as a sign of courage and defiance.

The last days of the subcamp

On April 8, 1945, nearby Halberstadt was heavily bombed and on April 9, the camp was evacuated and the prisoners were sent on a death march via Quedlinburg, Aschersleben, Köthen, Bitterfeld, Prettin, Wittenburg to Coswig. This inhumane foot march of 330 kilometers was hard on the exhausted prisoners. The toll was heavy: most of the 3.000 prisoners from Langenstein-Zwieberge did not return.

Liberation

When on April 13 1945, US 8th Armored Division and the 83rd Infantry Division liberated the camp which was abandoned the day before, they found the prisoners who were dying at the rate of 20 a day. On April 18, all these patients were taken in military ambulances to a barracks in Halberstadt transformed into a hospital. Another 144 deportees died there, most of them now rest in a common grave in the city cemetery.

The establishment of Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp was preceded by the development of the A4 rocket as a weapon of terror - later known by the propaganda designation "V2" (or Vergeltungswaffen) at the Peenemünde army research centre on the island of Usedom. It was there, as well as at the Rax Works in Wiener Neustadt and at Zeppelin in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, that the serial production of this rocket began in the early summer of 1943.

A heavy air attack by the Royal Air Force on the night of 18 August 1943 brought A4 manufacture in Peenemünde to an abrupt halt. At the other two sites, production had also been at least adversely affected by Allied air raids the same summer. The bombing of Peenemünde gave the authorities no other choice but to move the undertaking to regions less exposed to the air. A decision was made in favour of the tunnel system belonging to the Wirtschaftliche Forschungsgesellschaft (Wifo; economic research society) in Kohnstein Mountain near Nordhausen in Thuringia. Beginning in 1936, the Wifo had been having an underground fuel storage facility built there for the Wehrmacht; by the late summer of 1943 the construction measures were near completion.

On August 28, 1943, i.e. a mere ten days after the air attack on Peenemünde, the first 107 concentration camp inmates arrived at the Kohnstein near Nordhausen with their SS guards. A new subcamp of Buchenwald Concentration Camp was thus founded: the Arbeitslager Dora (Dora labour camp), as it was officially designated by the SS. In the weeks and months that followed, further inmate transports arrived from Buchenwald almost daily.

By the end of September 1943, there were already more than 3,000 concentration camp inmates in the Kohnstein, by the end of October more than 6,800, and by Christmas 1943 more than 10,500. Yet Dora was not a camp in the strict sense of the word. Because of the fact that no barracks or permanent living quarters had yet been made available for the inmates, the SS housed them in the tunnels of the planned Mittelwerk, as one section of the underground factory was called. For this purpose, Chambers 43 to 46 (four transverse chambers of the ladder-shaped tunnel system) were furnished with four-tiered wooden bunks.

There were no sanitary facilities apart from oil barrels which had been sawed in half for use as latrines. The inmates suffered and died of hunger, thirst, cold and the heavy labour itself. In the initial months, a large percentage of them were put to work doing heavy construction and transport labour for the completion of the underground rocket plant. This task had priority over the construction of the aboveground barrack camp on the south side of the Kohnstein. It was not until January 1944, when the production of the A4 rockets got underway in the Mittelwerk, that the first inmate groups were moved to the barrack camp. Many remained in the crowded conditions of the underground sleeping chambers until May 1944.

A large number of inmates, the majority of them Russians, Poles and French, did not survive the wretched months of the tunnel construction phase. Between October 1943 and March 1944, nearly 2,900 inmates died in Dora. A further 3,000 dying inmates were transferred to Lublin-Majdanek and Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camps in the spring of 1944. Hardly any of them survived. For the SS, which had directed the construction work, the tunnel system of the Mittelwerk was a prestige object. Particularly SS Gruppenführer Hans Kammler, chief of Bureau C of the SS Department of Economic Administration, was intent on distinguishing himself with a view towards further construction projects in the armament sector.

By January 1944 the construction process had advanced to the point where the assembly of A4 rockets could begin. The commencement of A4 production in the Mittelwerk was accompanied by the restructuring of Camp Dora. The inmates who had survived the enervating construction labour of the fall and winter of 1943/44 were considered no longer exploitable for rocket production, as they either were too debilitated physically or lacked the professional qualifications for work on the assembly lines. New inmates were therefore brought to Dora, having been specifically selected in other concentration camps for the production of the A4 rockets. From March 1944 on, their exhausted predecessors were sent to the subcamps being established in the vicinity of Nordhausen, where they were required to work on tunnel-driving or aboveground construction sites. By the spring of 1944, Dora had thus developed into a turntable for the transfer of inmates and taken on the function of a parent camp.

Today Mittelbau-Dora is a place of learning and commemoration. Relics on the former camp grounds and in the tunnels testify to the crimes, but also to the differing treatment of the site’s history over the decades. Changing exhibitions inspire critical examination of the past. The permanent exhibition opened in 2006 presents Mittelbau-Dora not just as a model case of forced labour and the relocation of armament production to underground locations, but also as an example of the strong integration of the concentration camps in German society.

Liberation

The majority of the Mittelbau camps were completely vacated. Only a few small camps with populations consisting solely of Italian prisoners of war were not “evacuated”. The SS moreover left several hundred sick and dying inmates behind in the Dora camp and the Boelcke casern. They were liberated on 11 April 1945 when American troops marched into Nordhausen.

On the days that followed, American war correspondents took photos and films of the enfeebled and starving inmates in Dora and the Boelcke casern – images that soon went around the world and are today among the most well-known testimonies to the Nazi crimes.

For the most part, the survivors of the clearance transports and death marches were liberated in the casern camp of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and in other camps in mid April 1945. However, a number of survivors remained in the hands of their tormentors, not to be liberated until early May 1945 in Mecklenburg and Austria.

Text courtesy of the Dora Mittelbau website used with permission.

In Neuengamme concentration camp and its more than 85 satellite camps, which were established all over northern Germany for construction projects and armaments production, prisoners had to do hard labour for the war economy. Most were imprisoned because they had resisted German occupation, because refused to perform slave labour, or because they were victims of racial persecution. Living and working conditions were murderous. Altogether, at least 42.900 people died in the Neuengamme main camp and satellite camps, or they died on the death marches when the camps were evacuated or when the prisoner ships were bombed. Another several thousand prisoners died after they were transported from Neuengamme to other concentration camps, or they perished after the war from the results of incarceration.

The company Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH, which was owned by the SS, purchased an abandoned brick factory and the land surrounding it on the outskirts of the suburb of Neuengamme in the autumn of 1938. On 12 December 1938, the first 100 prisoners arrived in Neuengamme from Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Their job was to bring the brick factory back to working order. Guards were brought in from Buchenwald concentration camp. In the beginning, the conditions of imprisonment were very different from the circumstances in the Neuengamme camp in later years. At the time, rations were still somewhat sufficient, for the most part.

Three months after the war began, it was decided that Neuengamme would be expanded into a large concentration camp. The city wanted to redevelop the shores of the Elbe River in Hamburg by lining the river with “Führer buildings” made of clinker bricks. In April 1940, the Hanseatic City of Hamburg signed an agreement with the Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke company, granting it a loan of more than one million Reichsmarks to construct a larger brick factory. The city also promised to build a railway connection to the camp as well as regulate the Dove-Elbe (a tributary of the Elbe River) and construct a branch canal with a dock. In return, the SS promised to provide “prisoners for working on this project, as well as guard forces, free of charge”.

In the spring of 1940, Neuengamme thus became an independent concentration camp. The prisoners were forced to build the barracks, watchtowers and fences. Mistreatment, exhaustion, hunger and work accidents soon caused the first deaths among the prisoners. By the end of 1940, there were already 2.900 prisoners being held in Neuengamme. Their work included expanding the camp, broadening the Dove-Elbe, constructing the branch canal and dock, building the new brick factory and digging clay in the pits.

Death

Prisoners were confronted with death on a daily basis. They saw their fellow prisoners dying or dead, and they lived in constant fear of dying themselves. Prisoners in Neuengamme concentration camp were beaten to death, drowned, hung, shot or poisoned with gas. They starved or died because of the insufficient clothing, sleeping quarters and sanitary conditions. They died from a lack of medicine or because they were denied medical assistance, from physical overexertion while working, or from mistreatment.

In 1942, the SS began carrying out public hangings as a punishment and deterrent. The police and the judiciary also used the concentration camp for carrying out executions. After any gold teeth had been removed, the bodies were usually burned. In the beginning, this was done at the municipal crematorium in the Ohlsdorf cemetery, then Neuengamme concentration camp began using its own crematorium in 1942. Relatives of the deceased could request an urn supposedly with the ashes of their loved ones in return for a fee.

Prisoner treatment

Concentration camps were originally established by the Nazi regime to detain their political opponents. In 1937, they began to imprison other victims of persecution in growing numbers as well: Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, and alleged “anti-socials” and “criminals”. On entering the camp, the SS confiscated all personal belongings and issued prisoner numbers in place of names. Different coloured triangles were attached to prisoners' clothing, indicating the reason for their imprisonment. In the beginning, German nationals were the largest group of prisoners in Neuengamme concentration camp. In total, 9.500 Germans were imprisoned in the camp over the years, including roughly 400 women who were deployed in the satellite camps, and not in the main camp.

From 1941 onwards, the majority of prisoners in Neuengamme concentration camp came from countries occupied by Germany. Between 1941 and 1942, Polish prisoners were the largest group in the camp; from 1942 and 1943 on, Soviet prisoners were the majority. In total, 90 percent of the prisoners in Neuengamme concentration camp were foreigners. More than half came from Eastern and Central Europe, but there were also large groups of prisoners from France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark. They were imprisoned because they resisted German occupation, because they were slave labourers serving punishment or because they had been abducted as hostages and victims of “acts of retaliation”. In 1941, Soviet POWs began arriving at Neuengamme, and in 1944 and 1945 larger groups of Jews from different European countries were sent to the camp.

Overall 80.000 men and more than 13.000 women were registered and issued a prisoner number at Neuengamme concentration camp. Another 5.900 people were either not listed in the camp registry, or they were filed separately. It has been verified that at least 42.900 people lost their lives due to deliberately poor living and working conditions. Another several thousand prisoners died after they were sent to other concentration camps, or they perished from the results of incarceration after their liberation. We must therefore assume that more than half of the approximate 100.400 prisoners in the Neuengamme concentration camp did not survive Nazi persecution.

Slave labour

Concentration camp prisoners were forced to work for business ventures owned by the SS, which then profited financially from their labour. Neuengamme concentration camp was initially established as a “work camp” for the production of clinker bricks. The prisoners had to perform hard labour, beginning with building the prisoners’ barracks, the SS barracks and the new brick factory. One of the work details with the most horrible working conditions was making the Dove-Elbe navigable and digging a branch canal with a dock. After the new brick factory began operating in 1942, prisoners were increasingly sent to work in the clay pits to extract clay.

Work was characterised by violence and harassment from the guards who were always ready to beat the prisoners. The prisoners worked from morning to night, regardless of whether it was raining, hot, or cold enough to get frostbite. They were forced to work 10 to 12 hours a day, without enough food and with clothing that offered no protection from the elements.

In the second half of the war, armaments production became the main focus of work in the concentration camp. The prisoners were employed in the armaments factories of the Jastram and Messap companies, the Neuengamme metal works (Walther-Werke) and the factory of the SS-owned company Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke (DAW).

Life in Neuengamme

Hunger

Daily life was characterised by arbitrary punishments, violence and submission. Prisoners struggled not to give up in their ongoing fight for survival. The smallest violation of a guard’s orders could be punished severely. Provisions were so grossly insufficient that many prisoners died within a few months. The food was of very poor quality and often inedible. Hunger was all prisoners could think about, and it determined their behaviour throughout the entire day. Many prisoners tried to acquire food illegally, while others managed only to survive because they received food packages from their relatives or from the Red Cross.

Clothing

Prisoners’ clothing initially consisted of blue-and-white striped uniforms made of low-quality material. Shoes were primitive constructions mainly consisting of wooden soles with pieces of fabric or leather. Each prisoner’s number and a coloured triangle indicating the reason for their imprisonment was sewn to their jacket and trousers. In 1943, civilian clothing, some of which came from the extermination camps, began to be handed out to the prisoners. These items of clothing were marked on the back with strips of sewn fabric or large Xs in yellow paint to identify the wearers as prisoners, in case they escaped.

Housing

In the beginning, the prisoners slept on the floor in crowded wooden barracks, each consisting of two blocks. In 1941, three-tier bunk beds, lockers, tables and benches were installed in the blocks. More than 300, and sometimes even as many as 600 prisoners were usually crammed together in each of these blocks, which were 50 metres long and 8 metres wide. In 1943 and 1944, two brick buildings with four blocks for housing 500 to 700 prisoners each were erected. From 1944 to the end of the war, bunks were shared by two, and even three prisoners as a rule. This overcrowded situation made it impossible to get a good night’s rest. The sleeping quarters also smelled of sweat and faeces, because sanitary facilities were limited and many prisoners suffered from gastrointestinal disorders. There was no privacy. Stronger prisoners often managed to get the best places to sleep.

SS Guards at Neuengamme

The SS commandant was in charge of the main camp and the satellite camps. During its existence, Neuengamme concentration camp had three commandants: Walter Eisfeld (1940), Martin Weiß (1940–1942) and Max Pauly (1942–1945). Over the years, a total of 4.500 SS men served in Neuengamme concentration camp and its satellite camps, with as many as 500 SS men serving at any given time. Most of the SS men had direct contact with the prisoners, and their harassment and mistreatment of their wards was part of the daily routine in the camp.

The commanders of the guard forces (Wachmannschaften) reported to the leader of the SS Death’s Head units (Totenkopfverbände) in Oranienburg. In Neuengamme concentration camp, there were three, sometimes four guard forces that formed a battalion (Sturmbann). These guarded the camp and the work details outside of the camp. The prisoners’ barracks were additionally surrounded by a barbed wire fence that was electrically charged at night. In 1944 and 1945, Wehrmacht and navy personnel, customs officers, police officers and railway employees – all not members of the SS – were enlisted to serve as guards for the satellite camps.

The guard forces were instructed to protect the Reich from “the enemies within”. They were told that the prisoners were ordinary criminals and should be treated with ruthlessness. The SS guards (who were also women in the women’s satellite camps) were instructed to systematically use inhumane methods in their treatment of concentration camp prisoners. Particularly brutal SS guards were rewarded with promotions. After the war, very few guards were brought to justice for their deeds.

The end of concentration camp Neuengamme

The White Buses Campaign

In March 1945, all Danish and Norwegian prisoners in Germany were collected in Neuengamme concentration camp. This was a concession from Heinrich Himmler, SS Reichsführer of to the vice-president of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Folke Bernadotte. More than 4.000 prisoners were sent to Sweden and thus liberated on 20 April 1945 on the so-called White Buses.

Neungamme death marches

At the same time, the evacuation of the main camp also began. The prisoners were sent on so-called death marches. Thousands of prisoners from Neuengamme concentration camp were ordered to travel by foot or on freight trains with terrible conditions to collection camps like Wöbbelin (5.000 prisoners), Sandbostel (9.000 prisoners) and Bergen-Belsen (8.000 prisoners), where they were left to die. Prisoners were deposited in these camps without food or medical care and were left to their own devices under catastrophic sanitary conditions. During this time, the SS destroyed all traces of their crimes at Neuengamme.

What happened on the ship the Cap Arcona

When the collection camps became overcrowded, the Nazi party district leader (Gauleiter) in Hamburg, Karl Kaufmann, seized three ships, including the Cap Arcona, and loaded more than 9.000 prisoners onto them. Crammed in the ships’ holds, many died of hunger, thirst and disease. During a British air raid on 3 May 1945, meant to prevent German troops from retreating across the Baltic Sea, the ships Cap Arcona and Thielbek were hit and caught fire. 6.600 prisoners died in the fire, drowned or were shot while trying to reach safety. Only around 450 people survived. The British government is keeping records of this attack on the ships classified until 2046. This may indicate that something was very seriously wrong with this attack.

Liberation by the British 53rd Reconnaissance Regiment

After the war

Internment Camp

The last of the prisoners and SS guards left Neuengamme on 2 May 1945. When British troops arrived at the camp shortly after, they found a large area with several barracks. However, there were no traces of what had actually happened there. In June 1945, the British military government began using the former concentration camp as Civil Internment Camp No. 6 for former SS members, civilian officials of the Nazi state and suspected war criminals. The internment camp was closed on 13 August 1948.

Prison

The city of Hamburg took over the grounds of the former concentration camp in 1948 and began using the site as a prison. The wooden prisoners’ barracks were torn down and replaced by a large new building in 1950. Almost all of the brick buildings from when the site was a concentration camp were preserved and used as prison and administration buildings or as workshops. Several of the SS barracks and the commandant’s house served as housing for prison employees. At the end of the 1960s, the judicial authorities built a second prison facility on the former grounds of the concentration camp, where the clay pits had been.

The Memorial

Due to growing pressure from survivors’ associations and after a lengthy public debate, the Senate of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg decided to relocate the prisons in 1989. However, the first prison was not closed until June 2003, the second prison in February 2006. After the demolition of the prisons and the transfer of property ownership in May 2007, the Memorial encompassed almost the entire area of the former concentration camp. Reminders of the site’s post-war use include a remnant of the first prison on the grounds of the former prisoners’ compound and a section of a wall attached to a guard tower from the second prison where the clay pits were once located.

The memorial today

Today the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial one of the largest memorials in Germany. It is a site for remembering and learning that preserves the memory of the victims of SS terror, while also providing opportunities to explore the causes and consequences of the Nazi regime.

Above text is from the memorial website and is used with permission. A big thank you to the Neuengamme Memorial for their help!

This footage was shot in the city of Nuernberg, probably by the end of April 1945, maybe only a few days after Nuremberg was taken by units of the U.S. Army. The battle for Nuernberg lasted five days. The capture of Nuernberg by units of the 7th U.S. Army was of high symbolic value; strategically, the largely destroyed Nuernberg was not of particular importance in this phase of the war. The military defense of Nuernberg was hopeless due to the overall situation and the superiority of the US Army. The execution of the Nero command was not possible any more, so that important infrastructure was preserved.

The women’s concentration camp was continually expanded until 1945. The SS had more and more huts erected to house prisoners, and in the autumn of 1944, a large tent was added. Within the camp’s perimeter wall, an industrial complex comprising several production facilities was established, where female prisoners were forced to carry out tasks traditionally considered women’s work such as sewing, weaving or knotting. The company Siemens & Halske had 20 workshops constructed outside the camp’s perimeter, where prisoners were forced to work from the late summer of 1942. As the war progressed, over 40 satellite camps in which Ravensbrück prisoners were forced into slave labour were set up all over the German Reich.

Around 120,000 women and children, 20,000 men and 1,200 adolescent girls and young women (imprisoned in the Uckermark “juvenile protective custody camp”) were registered as Ravensbrück prisoners between 1939 and 1945. These prisoners came from over 30 nations and included Jewish, Sinti and Roma people. Tens of thousands of them were murdered, died of hunger and disease or were killed in medical experiments. In the course of “Operation 14 f 13”, prisoners considered infirm or unfit for work were selected and murdered. Along with the victims of “14 f 13”, a number of Jewish prisoners were taken to the Bernburg “sanatorium and nursing home” and were murdered in the facility’s gas chamber. From 1941 onward, Ravensbrück was used as a place of execution. Countless women — the exact number is not known — were shot to death. In early 1945, the SS set up a provisional gas chamber at Ravensbrück in a hut next to the crematorium, where between 5,000 and 6,000 prisoners were gassed between late January and April 1945. Among them were approximately 100 prisoners from the men’s camp.

Shortly before the end of the war, the International, Danish and Swedish Red Cross evacuated around 7,500 prisoners to Sweden, Switzerland and France. Following an evacuation order from Himmler, Ravensbrück’s commandant Fritz Suhren had the remaining 20,000 prisoners marched towards the north-west in several columns. On 30 April 1945, the Red Army liberated the camp and around 2,000 sick prisoners who had been left behind. But for most of the women, men and children imprisoned in Ravensbrück, the suffering did not end with their liberation. Many of them died in the following weeks, months or years, and many of the survivors suffered from the consequences of their imprisonment even decades after their liberation.