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85-430: In 1939, Kamp Amersfoort was still a complex of barracks that supported army artillery exercises on the nearby Leusderheide. From 1941 onwards, it did not merely function as a transit camp, as the name suggests. The terms "penal camp" or "work camp" would also be fitting. During the existence of the camp, many prisoners were put to work in work units. In total, around 37,000 prisoners were registered at Amersfoort. To get to

170-457: A de facto basis in 1940. It operated from 21 May 1941 to September 1944, and was the only concentration camp established by the Germans in the territory of pre-war France. The camp was located in a heavily forested and isolated area at an elevation of 800 metres (2,600 ft). About 52,000 prisoners were estimated to be held there during its time of operation. The prisoners were mainly from

255-466: A Resistance fighter sent to Amersfoort recalled Kotalla's actions in the Christmas season of 1944: On 23 December, Kotalla announced a ban on parcels for three weeks, which meant no Red Cross presents for Christmas or New Year. He further canceled breakfast, lunch and dinner on Christmas Day itself, using the discovery of a smuggled letter as a pretext. And as an extra punishment on Christmas morning he kept

340-473: A camp where "rumour has it that one can hear the screams of people being beaten up there for miles over the heath. It is more than a rumour." The approximately 2,500 Jews and 100 Soviet-POWs were treated particularly violently. Jewish prisoners were also treated horribly by fellow prisoners. Edith and Rosa Stein, two ethnic Jewish Catholics arrested by the SS, described what it was like arriving at Amersfoort at 3:00 in

425-580: A cruciform ground plan. [REDACTED] Media related to Kamp Vught at Wikimedia Commons 51°39′57″N 5°15′32″E  /  51.66583°N 5.25889°E  / 51.66583; 5.25889 Natzweiler concentration camp Natzweiler-Struthof was a Nazi concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the villages of Natzweiler and Struthof in the Gau Baden-Alsace of Germany , on territory annexed from France on

510-399: A diary, which was smuggled out of the camp in parts; it is now complete and conserved. It records events from 11 February 1943 until 8 February 1944. Koker wrote poems in his diary and taught Jewish children in the camp. On 2 June 1944, he and his family were transported by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau . Koker got the chance to throw a letter from the train. The family was later transported to

595-523: A heavily forested and isolated area at an elevation of 800 metres (2,600 ft). The camp operated between 21 May 1941 and the beginning of September 1944, when the SS evacuated the surviving prisoners on a " death march " to Dachau , with only a small SS unit keeping the camp's operations. On 23 November 1944, this camp with its small staff was discovered and liberated by the French First Army as part of

680-749: A new structure at the site, opened in November 2005, and at the same time, "the museum was entirely redesigned to focus solely on the history of Natzweiler concentration camp and its subcamps." A dramatic monument (including a bronze figure supine and emaciated) stands in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris . A documentary film was shown in 2014 about the 86 people who were murdered in the camp and whose remains were later identified by name, as described above in The Jewish skull collection section. The film "The names of

765-499: A precaution against attempts to escape, which was next to impossible in any case. Their cold harsh voices filled the prisoners with anxiety about the future and, in these circumstances, it is anxiety which can turn a prison into a hell on earth. Violence by the guards was not the only thing that prisoners had to worry about. Weakened physical conditions from overwork, very little food and poor hygiene in camp made illness and disease another frightening and lonely way to die. Yehudit Harris,

850-410: A rear guard of SS personnel left to defend the nearly evacuated facility. There were around 500-600 prisoners left alive, who were due to be executed that afternoon, and whose lives were saved by the arrival of the liberating forces. About 500 inmates were also discovered dead in piles near the gates, having been executed the very morning of the day the camp was liberated. In the first years following

935-601: A web site set up by Lang. In 1951, the remains of the 86 victims were reinterred in one location in the Cronenbourg-Strasbourg Jewish Cemetery. On 11 December 2005, memorial stones engraved with the names of the 86 victims were placed at the cemetery. One is at the site of the mass grave, the other along the wall of the cemetery. Another plaque honoring the victims was placed outside the Anatomy Institute at Strasbourg's University Hospital. In 2022,

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1020-520: A year before being killed in action in January 1945. The last commander of Herzogenbusch was the 50-year-old Hans Hüttig . He joined the SS in 1932 as an unpaid volunteer, and the Nazi party soon thereafter. In 1944, Huttig oversaw the evacuation and closure of the camp. After the war, Hüttig was detained, but did not go to trial for nearly a decade. He was sentenced to death in 1954, but was not executed. Hüttig

1105-461: A young boy in Amersfoort remembers screaming from the pain as his mother washed him with snow in the winter to rid them of lice and to protect against illness. Even the mattresses that prisoners slept on were often infested with lice, diphtheria , dysentery or T.B. Amersfoort was a brutal place to be a prisoner and is summed up by Elie Cohen, who said that "transfer from Amersfoort to Westerbork

1190-638: Is a visitors' center which includes exhibitions and a memorial remembering the camp and its victims. During World War II , Nazi Germany occupied the Netherlands from 1940 to 1945. In 1942, the Nazis transported Jewish and other prisoners from the Netherlands via Amersfoort and Westerbork transit camps to Auschwitz concentration camp , except for 850 prisoners sent to Mauthausen concentration camp . When Amersfoort and Westerbork proved to be too small to handle

1275-566: Is one of the most absolutely criminal of National Socialist ideology," adds the historian Yves Ternon . "The project itself, continues Professor Johann Chapoutot  [ fr ] , is an example of this investment of politics by science, or science by politics that is Nazism." In 1943, the inmates selected at Auschwitz were transported to Natzweiler-Struthof. They spent two weeks eating well in barracks there in Block 13, so they would be good specimens of normal size. The deaths of 86 inmates were, in

1360-559: Is perceived as a lack of sensitivity towards mourners. The first camp commandant, Hans Hüttig, was sentenced to life in prison on 2 July 1954 by a French military court in Metz . In 1956, he was released from detention after being imprisoned for eleven years. Josef Kramer, the former commandant of the camp during the time of the Jewish skull collection project, was arrested at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on 17 April 1945 and tried at Lüneburg in

1445-533: The Auschwitz camp, then brought to Natzweiler-Struthof both to eat well and then to be murdered by gas, and their corpses brought to the Anatomy Institute of at the Reich University of Strasbourg ( Reichsuniversität Straßburg ) in the annexed region of Alsace, a project of great scope. Some initial study of the corpses was performed, but the progress of the war stalled completion of the collection. The collection

1530-543: The Bunker Tragedy : twelve of the women packed into the cell died during the night. His superiors, unhappy that the tragedy was leaked to the press, brought him before an SS judge. Grünewald was initially sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for excessive cruelty, but was pardoned after serving a month. However, he was then stripped of his rank and ordered to fight on the Eastern front as a common soldier. Grünewald survived for nearly

1615-558: The Groß-Rosen camp ( Langenbielau ). Koker's mother and brother Max survived the war, but David died during a transport of sick people to Dachau in 1945. Helga Deen ( Stettin , Germany, 6 April 1925 – Sobibor , 16 July 1943) was the author of a diary, discovered in 2004, which describes her time in the Herzogenbusch concentration camp in Vught, where she was taken during World War II at

1700-467: The U.S. Sixth Army Group , on the same day that the city of Strasbourg was liberated by the Allies. Through 1945, Natzweiler-Struthof had a complex of about 70 subcamps or annex camps. (For the system of subcamps see List of subcamps of Natzweiler-Struthof .) The total number of prisoners reached 52,000 over the three years, of 32 nationalities. Inmates originated from various countries, including Poland,

1785-622: The Van Brederodekazerne military base, a neighbourhood for Indonesian refugees from Maluku , and the Nieuw Vosseveld high security prison . However, parts of the old camp still exist. Central to the prison, the bunker where the Bunker Tragedy occurred still stands. Large parts of the southern camp buildings are now used by the Dutch military, including the former SS barracks that have

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1870-462: The resistance movements in German-occupied territories . It was a labor camp, a transit camp and, as the war went on, a place of execution. Some died of exhaustion and starvation – there were an estimated 22,000 deaths at the camp and its network of subcamps. Many prisoners were moved to other camps; in particular, in 1944 the former head of Auschwitz concentration camp was brought in to evacuate

1955-463: The Ältesten (Elders), also called "prominents" or "foremen". These were prisoners, who in exchange for taking care of minor issues, usually theft among prisoners, received special privileges. Wachbataillon Nord-West (6 companies, around 1200 men total) was commanded by SS- Hauptsturmführer Paul Anton Helle . The first of these six companies was in charge of Kamp Amersfoort, under the command of SS- Obersturmführer Walter Heinrich . This company

2040-580: The 1st Canadian Division and later transferred to the 3rd Canadian Division , Canadian Army Occupation Force in June 1945. The fluctuating prisoner population consisted of an eclectic group of people from all over the Netherlands: Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses , Soviet prisoners of war , members of the resistance , communists , hostages , clergy , alleged black marketeers, clandestine butchers, and smugglers. Between 1941 and 1943, 8,800 people were imprisoned in

2125-401: The 86" ( French : Le nom des 86 ) was directed by Emmanuel Heyd and Raphael Toledano (Dora Films). Another documentary was made about the skull project in 2013, titled Au nom de la race et de la science, Strasbourg 1941–1944 (English: In the name of Race and Science, Strasbourg 1941–1945 ). Its goal was to explain what happened at Reich University of Strasbourg, at Natzweiler-Struthof, in

2210-514: The British-occupied sector for other crimes committed in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. He was sentenced on 16–17 November 1945 and was hanged at Hamelin prison on 13 December 1945. The commandant of Natzweiler at the time that four female resistance agents were executed, Fritz Hartjenstein and five others were tried by a British war crimes court at Wuppertal , from 9 April to 5 May 1946. All of

2295-790: The German Arbeitseinsatz (forced labour program), deserting Waffen SS soldiers, deserting German truck drivers of the Nationalsozialistische Kraftfahr-Korps, and lawbreaking members of the NSB (the Dutch National Socialist Movement ). This mixture of prisoners was not the only feature that determined the character of Kamp Amersfoort. The extreme cruelty of the camp command made life miserable for thousands of prisoners. Despite their relatively short stay, many prisoners died from deprivations and violence at

2380-620: The Gestapo after re-capture, were cremated at Natzweiler-Struthof. British bomber Sergeant Frederic ("Freddie") Habgood was hanged at this camp, after his Lancaster bomber crashed in Alsace on 27 July 1944 and he was betrayed to the Nazis by a local woman. Two died as a result of the crash, three survived as prisoners of war in a camp in Poland, one returned to England with the help of the resistance, and Mr Habgood

2465-564: The Natzweiler subcamps was an estimated 19,000 of whom between 7,000 and 8,000 were in the main camp at Natzweiler. The camp held a crematorium and a jury rigged gas chamber outside the main camp, which was not used for mass extermination but for selective extermination, as part of the human experimentation programs, in particular on the problems of fighting a war, like typhus among the troops. Doctors Otto Bickenbach and Helmut Rühl were accused of crimes committed at this camp. Hans Eisele

2550-501: The Soviet Union, the Netherlands, France, Nazi Germany , Slovene-speaking parts of Yugoslavia and Norway. The camp was specially set up for Nacht und Nebel prisoners, in most cases, people of the resistance movements. It was a labor camp and a transit camp, as many prisoners were sent to other Nazi concentration camps before the final evacuation. As the war continued, it became a death camp as well. Some people died of exhaustion from

2635-863: The Struthof Concentration Camp Museum. Bishop Gabriel Piguet , the Roman Catholic Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand , was interned at Natzweiler before being transferred to the Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp . He is honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem , Israel's Holocaust Memorial, for hiding Jewish children in Catholic boarding schools. Two British Royal Air Force airmen ( Flying Officer Dennis H. Cochran, and Flight Lieutenant Anthony "Tony" R. H. Hayter ) who were involved in "The Great Escape" and murdered by

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2720-509: The accused were found guilty; of these, three were sentenced to death and two hanged. Hartjenstein's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on 1 June 1946. However, he was tried a second time by the British for hanging a POW who was a member of the Royal Air Force. He died of a heart attack while awaiting execution on 20 October 1954. Those tried at Wuppertal were: Magnus Wochner

2805-467: The age of 18. After her last diary entry, in early July 1943, Helga Deen was deported to Sobibor extermination camp and murdered. She was 18 years old. Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) and her sister Betsie (1885–1944) were detained at the Herzogenbusch camp (after four months in Scheveningen ) for sheltering Jews and others at their Haarlem home from the occupation authorities. During that time she

2890-698: The arms industry at various subcamps. Daimler-Benz moved its aircraft engine factory from Berlin to a gypsum mine near the Neckarelz annex camp. The disused autobahn Engelberg Tunnel in Leonberg , near Stuttgart, was used by the Messerschmitt Aircraft Company which eventually employed 3,000 prisoners in forced labor. Another annex camp at Schörzingen was established in February 1944 to extract crude oil from oil shale. The total number of prisoners at all of

2975-567: The auspices of the Red Cross until May 7, when Canadian soldiers of the First Canadian Army arrived to officially liberate the camp. Soldiers of I Canadian Corps fighting north from Arnhem were halted about a mile from Amersfoort before the end of the war, and liberation came on the day the German forces laid down their arms in the Netherlands. The camp and surrounding area was administered by

3060-556: The camp was small, and only seven SS women served in Natzweiler-Struthof camp (compared to more than 600 SS men) and 15 in the Natzweiler complex of subcamps. The main duty of the female supervisors in Natzweiler was to guard the few women who came to the camp for medical experiments or to be executed. The camp also trained several female guards who went to the Geisenheim and Geislingen subcamps in western Germany. Leo Alexander ,

3145-556: The camp, despite Kamp Vught becoming operational in January 1943, still appeared necessary to the Nazis . Following the invasion of the USSR in June 1941, the camp held Soviet prisoners of war . These included 101 Uzbek prisoners brought to display to the Dutch for propaganda purposes, all either dying in the winter of 1941 or executed in woods near the camp in April 1942. 865 Soviet prisoners are buried in nearby Rusthof cemetery . Amersfoort

3230-425: The camp, of whom 2,200 were deported to Germany. During the period 1943–1945, 26,500 people were imprisoned, of whom 18,000 were sent east to places such as Buchenwald and Natzweiler concentration camps . After the re-opening in 1943, 70 Jews from Kamp Vught and 600 Jews from Kamp Westerbork of British, American, and Hungarian nationality were briefly sent to Kamp Amersfoort. They were joined by contract breakers of

3315-401: The camp, prisoners had to walk from the railway sidings through the town and through residential neighborhoods: Visible in the windows, above and below, of most residences and behind closed lace curtains, were numerous silhouettes, especially those of children. Usually, the silhouettes did not move. Sometimes, feebly and furtively, they waved. Children who waved were very quickly pulled back. It

3400-766: The construction of the Struthof concentration camp, in the context of his forced labor tasks. Notable Norwegian prisoners at Natzweiler include newspaper editor and Labour Party politician Trygve Bratteli who later went on to become Prime Minister of Norway , and former footballer Asbjørn Halvorsen who had previously played in Germany for Hamburger SV . Both were imprisoned at Natzweiler for distribution of illegal newspapers in German-occupied Norway . In total, 504 Norwegians were imprisoned at Natzweiler. Only 266 of them returned home alive. The Slovene novelist Boris Pahor

3485-448: The execution site just outside the camp. As Allied forces approached Herzogenbusch, the camp was evacuated and the prisoners were transferred to concentration camps further east. By 4–5 September 1944, the women inmates had been sent to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp , and the men to Sachsenhausen concentration camp . On 26 October 1944, Scottish troops of the 7th Black Watch liberated the camp during Operation Pheasant after fighting

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3570-524: The executions of the four women in post-war trials. The two men were sent to Dachau, where they were liberated. Roger Boulanger writes of the four British SOE women executed under the supervision of Dr. Plaza and Dr. Rhode, in his section on Capital Punishment (Les exécutions capitales), as to the intent of the RSHA of Berlin, Reichssicherheitshauptamt, to have them disappear with no trace, as their names were not recorded as being at this camp. Stonehouse later sketched

3655-412: The expansion of Kamp Amersfoort was completed and prisoners could be held there again. In many ways, Kamp Amersfoort had changed relative to the first period. The most important changes were the much larger 'housing capacity', and the faster 'turnover'. What stayed the same, were the anarchy, the lack of hygiene, the lack of food, lack of medical attention, and the cruelty of the guards. A point of light for

3740-469: The fall of the nearby city of Strasbourg , an internment camp was set up near Schirmeck which existed throughout the war but was never part of the concentration camp system. The Natzweiler-Struthof main camp on 1 May 1941 was established nearby at Natzweiler in the Bruche valley , due to its proximity to a quarry. The construction of Natzweiler-Struthof was overseen by Hans Hüttig in the spring of 1941, in

3825-466: The first few months, the camp was poorly run. Prisoners received no meals, the sick were barely treated, and the quality of drinking water was very poor. He was removed from command in 1943 for stealing from the camp on a large scale. In 1961, he was tried in West Germany and sentenced to life imprisonment for his homicidal brutality towards the prisoners. Chmielewski was released from prison in 1979, on

3910-572: The four women which aided in their identification. Charles Delestraint , leader of the Armée Secrète , was detained at Natzweiler-Struthof, then was executed by the Gestapo in Dachau days before that camp was liberated and the war ended. Henri Gayot , a member of the French Resistance who was interned at Struthof between April and September 1944, documented his ordeal in drawings which are now in

3995-544: The gas chamber was reopened to the public, but the European Center for Deported Resistance Fighters (CERD), led by Guillaume d'Andlau , indicated that it did not want to: "celebrate the inauguration of this morbid place", having " nothing to do with those intended for mass murder", specifying that "it is a symbolic place for the camp and its activities in connection with the Reichsuniversität Straßburg" which

4080-400: The grounds of his deteriorating mental health. He died in a mental hospital in 1991. The second commander was 40-year-old Adam Grünewald , member of German Schutzstaffel since 1934. Immediately after assuming command over the camp, he imposed very strict rules. In January 1944, he ordered that a group of female prisoners was to be put into one cell. That resulted in what has become known as

4165-650: The guards of Amersfoort and their trials. The NIOD has dossiers on the following Amersfoort guards and personnel: Berg, Brahm, Dohmen, Fernau, Helle, Kotalla, May, van der Neut, Oberle, Stöver, Voight, Westerveld and Wolf. Newspaper clippings are available for Berg, Fernau, Stöver and Helle. Court records for the trial of these guards are also available, the following being an example of what is available: [REDACTED] Media related to Kamp Amersfoort at Wikimedia Commons Herzogenbusch concentration camp Herzogenbusch ( German: [ˌhɛʁtsoːɡn̩ˈbʊʃ] ; Dutch : Kamp Vught [kɑmp ˈfʏxt] )

4250-689: The introduction to the book to English, at the web site where the whole book, including the biographies of the 86 people, is posted in German. Lang recounts in detail the story of how he determined the identities of the 86 victims gassed for Hirt's project of the Jewish skull collection. Forty-six of these individuals were originally from Thessaloniki , Greece. The 86 were from eight countries in German-occupied Europe: Austria, Netherlands, France, Germany, Greece, Norway, Belgium and Poland. The biographies of all 86 people are described in English on

4335-902: The large number of prisoners, the Schutzstaffel (SS) decided to build a concentration camp in Vught , near the city of 's-Hertogenbosch . Construction of the camp at Herzogenbusch, the German name for 's-Hertogenbosch, started in 1942. The camp was modelled on concentration camps in Germany. The first prisoners, who arrived in 1943, had to finish the construction of the camp, which was in use between January 1943 and September 1944. During that period, it held nearly 31,000 prisoners: Jews , political prisoners , resistance fighters , Gypsies , Jehovah’s Witnesses , homosexuals , homeless people , black market traders , criminals , and hostages . At least 749 men, women and children died in Herzogenbusch due to hunger, sickness and abuse. Of those, 329 were murdered at

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4420-419: The main lager by a barbed-wire fence. Altogether, the lager held at that moment, about three hundred men, women and children. The beds were iron frames arranged in a double tier, without mattresses of any kind. Our prisoners threw themselves on the bare springs trying to snatch a few minutes sleep; but few slept that night, if only because the guards kept switching the lights off and on, from time to time, as

4505-571: The man who devised the project of the Jewish skull collection . Beger was found guilty, although he was credited for pre-trial imprisonment and served no time. Also named as associated with this project are doctor Karl Wimmer  [ de ] and the anatomist Anton Kiesselbach  [ de ] . August Hirt, who conceived the project, was sentenced to death in absentia at the Military War Crimes Trial at Metz on 23 December 1953. It

4590-587: The medical advisor at the Nuremberg trials , stated that some children were murdered at Natzweiler-Struthof for the sole purpose of testing poisons for inconspicuous executions of Nazi officials and prisoners. Such executions of took place at Bullenhuser Damm . The camp became a war zone in late summer 1944, and was evacuated in early September 1944. Prior to the evacuation of the camp, 141 prisoners were shot dead on 31 August – 1 September 1944. The 70th anniversary of this execution of those who resisted Nazi occupation

4675-470: The men standing on the parade ground, which was covered with thick snow, from their roll-call at seven till half past midday. A few days before, the geese for the guards' Christmas dinner had been on show, hanging on the barbed wire. Also notorious were Blockführer Franzka, SS-Arbeitsdienstführer Max Ritter, SS-er Hugo Hermann Wolf, among many others. In 1948 the camp commandant and guards of Amersfoort were tried and convicted for their crimes. Karl Peter Berg

4760-405: The morning on August 3, 1942: When the vans reached the camp, they emptied their passengers who were taken over by the S.S. guards. These began to drive them, cursing and swearing, beating them on their backs with their truncheons, into a hut where they were to pass the night without having had a meal. The hut was divided into two sections, one for men, one for women. It was separated from

4845-459: The prisoners of Natzweiler-Struthof to Dachau as the Allied armies approached. Only a small staff of Nazi SS personnel remained when the camp was liberated by the French First Army under the command of the U.S. Sixth Army Group on 23 November 1944. The anatomist August Hirt made a Jewish skull collection , whose purpose was to portray Jews as racially inferior, at the camp. A documentary movie

4930-526: The prisoners was the presence of the Dutch Red Cross . The second period ended on April 19, 1945, when control of the camp was transferred to Loes van Overeem of the Red Cross following the sudden flight of the German camp staff, who took 70 odd prisoners with them to the " Oranje Hotel ", a jail in Scheveningen used by the Germans to house opponents to their regime. The facility remained in operation under

5015-428: The rows of men and catch someone in some violation, such as talking or not following orders properly. With a big grin, he would torment his victim." Another camp leader was SS-Unter-Schutzhaftlagerführer Josef Johann Kotalla , a notorious sadist who often replaced Stöver during his absence. This former sales representative and repeat psychiatric patient was one of the most infamous SS guards in Amersfoort. B.W. Stomps,

5100-451: The site. The present museum was restored in 1980 after damage by neo-Nazis in 1976. Among notable prisoners, the writer Boris Pahor was interned in Natzweiler-Struthof and wrote his novel Necropolis based on his experience. In 1940, Germany invaded and occupied France , including Alsace . That region, adjacent to the German border, was chosen for full Germanization and was annexed to Gau Baden-Alsace . On 2 July 1940, two weeks after

5185-487: The totality of the strange project quite real. The next step after making the casts was to have been reducing them to skeletons. Neither of those steps, making the casts nor reducing the corpses to skeletons, was carried out. In 1944, with the approach of the Allies, there was concern over the possibility that the corpses could be discovered. In September 1944, Sievers telegrammed Brandt: "The collection can be defleshed and rendered unrecognizable. This, however, would mean that

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5270-582: The victims, by comparing a list of inmate numbers of the 86 corpses at the Reichs University in Strasbourg, surreptitiously recorded by Hirt's French assistant Henri Henrypierre, with a list of numbers of inmates vaccinated at Auschwitz. The names and biographical information of the victims were published in the book Die Namen der Nummern ( The Names of the Numbers ). Rachel Gordon and Joachim Zepelin translated

5355-473: The war, the camp was used for the detention of Germans, Dutch SS men, alleged collaborators and their children, and war criminals. At first, they were guarded by Allied soldiers, but shortly after by the Dutch. A Jewish student, David Koker (1921–1945), lived with his family in Amsterdam until he was captured on the night of 11 February 1943 and transported to Herzogenbusch camp. During his internment, he wrote

5440-623: The whole work had been done for nothing – at least in part – and that this singular collection would be lost to science, since it would be impossible to make plaster casts afterwards." And so it was left, as the camp was evacuated in September 1944, and the human remains were left at a room in the Reichs University of Strasbourg. Two anthropologists, who were both members of the SS, Hans Fleischhacker and Bruno Beger , along with Wolf-Dietrich Wolff , were accused of making selections at Auschwitz of Jewish prisoners for Hirt's collection of 'racial types',

5525-522: The words of Hirt, "induced" at a jury rigged gassing facility at Natzweiler-Struthof on several days in August and their corpses, 57 men and 29 women, were sent to Strasbourg for study. Natzweiler-Struthof was considered the better place for gassing the selected victims (better than at Auschwitz), as they would die one by one, with no damage to the corpses, and Natzweiler-Struthof was at Hirt's disposal. Josef Kramer , acting commandant of Natzweiler-Struthof (who

5610-563: The work they had to do while starving. Deaths have been estimated at 22,000 at the main camp and the subcamps. Interned prisoners provided forced labor for the Wehrmacht war industry, through contracts with private industry. The work was done mainly at the numerous annex camps, some of them located in mines or tunnels to protect them from Allied air raids. Work, hunger, darkness and lack of health care caused many epidemics; mortality rates could reach 80%. Some worked in quarries, but many worked in

5695-439: Was sentenced to death and subsequently shot by a firing squad near Baden-Baden on 20 March 1947. During the night of 12–13 May 1976, neo-Nazis burned the camp museum, with the loss of important artifacts. Structures were rebuilt, placing the artifacts that survived the fire as they were found originally. The reconstructed camp museum was officially opened on 29 June 1980. The European Centre of Deported Resistance Members,

5780-464: Was a Nazi concentration camp located in Vught near the city of 's-Hertogenbosch , Netherlands . The camp was opened in 1943 and held 31,000 prisoners. 749 prisoners died in the camp, and the others were transferred to other camps shortly before Herzogenbusch was liberated by the Allied Forces in 1944. After the war, the camp was used as a prison for Germans and for Dutch collaborators. Today there

5865-413: Was a Lagerführer at Auschwitz and the last commandant of Bergen Belsen ) personally carried out the gassing of 80 of the 86 victims at Natzweiler-Struthof. The next part of the process for this "collection" was to bring the corpses to the Reichs University, where Hirt's plan was to make anatomical casts of the bodies. Photos of the corpses as found by the Allies who saw them in the Reichs University make

5950-480: Was a farewell from the inhabited world – now a realm of shades. The history of the camp can be separated into two periods. The first period began on August 18, 1941, and ended in March 1943. In March 1943 all but eight of the surviving first prisoners in Amersfoort were transferred to Kamp Vught concentration camp. The prisoner transfer to Kamp Vught allowed for the completion of an expansion of Kamp Amersfoort. Maintaining

6035-426: Was a transit camp, whence prisoners were sent to places like Buchenwald , Mauthausen and Neuengamme concentration camps . It was on July 15, 1942, that the Germans began deporting Dutch Jews from Amersfoort, Vught, and Westerbork to concentration camps and death camps such as Auschwitz , Sobibor and Theresienstadt . The remaining watchtower, as can be seen on the memorial, was built around April/May 1943, when

6120-559: Was also implicated in the Stalag Luft III murders and was listed among the accused. Heinrich Ganninger , adjutant and deputy of commander Fritz Hartjenstein, committed suicide in Wuppertal prison in April 1946 before his trial. He was accused of having murdered four British female spies. Heinrich Schwarz was tried separately at Rastatt in connection with atrocities committed during his tenure as commandant of Natzweiler-Struthof. He

6205-506: Was also stationed in this camp for a time. August Hirt committed suicide in June 1945; his suicide was unknown for many years, and he was tried in absentia in 1953 at Metz for his war crimes, including the Jewish skull collection, begun at Auschwitz, continued at Natzweiler-Struthof, and at the Reichsuniversität Straßburg . Some prisoners were executed directly, by hanging, by gunshot or by gas. The female prisoner-population in

6290-484: Was an attempt by the Nazis to create an anthropological display to showcase the alleged racial inferiority of the "Jewish race" and to emphasize the status of Jews as Untermenschen ("sub-humans"), in contrast to the Germanic Übermenschen ("super-humans") Aryan race which the Nazis considered to be the " Herrenvolk " (master race). The people who were to serve as best examples of the "Jewish race" were selected from people at

6375-455: Was commemorated at the museum in 2014. Four female British SOE agents were executed together on 6 July 1944: Diana Rowden , Vera Leigh , Andrée Borrel and Sonya Olschanezky . Brian Stonehouse of the British SOE and Albert Guérisse , a Belgian escape line leader, witnessed the arrival of the four women and the events leading up to their execution and cremation; both men testified to

6460-536: Was detailed to work at building radios in a nearby aircraft factory under a kind prisoner-foreman. Just before the camp's liberation, the sisters were sent onto Ravensbruck where Betsie died. Corrie survived captivity and the war to describe her experiences in her autobiography The Hiding Place (1971). The first commander of Herzogenbusch was 39-year-old Karl Chmielewski , member of German SS since 1932. He served before at Gusen concentration camp in Austria. During

6545-509: Was hanged on 31 July 1944. His death was acknowledged as a war crime in 1947 and his family was informed, but the most personal evidence of his presence there, a silver bracelet with his name on it, emerged from the soil in July 2018, as an area with flowers was being watered by a volunteer. In his memoirs titled Moi, Pierre Seel, déporté homosexuel , Pierre Seel , who served a sentence at the neighboring camp of Schirmeck , tells that he took part in

6630-554: Was imprisoned at the camp in 1944. Pahor was later transported to Dachau camp and other camps until finally liberated in Bergen-Belsen . After the war he wrote the novel Necropolis about his experiences in the camp. The novel was later translated into numerous other European languages. The camp had five commandants and numerous doctors in its history. The following private firms used Natzweiler-Struthof camp's inmates for labor in their factories: The Jewish skull collection

6715-560: Was like going from hell to heaven". Highest responsible authority went to the Lagerkommandant (camp commander). Below him was the Lagerführer (camp leader), who actually ran the camp. His assistants were the Blockführer (barrack leaders). Virtually all prisoners were divided into work units or Kommandos. These kommandos were led by an Arbeitsführer . The lowest leadership level were

6800-400: Was made about the 86 named men and women who were killed there for that project. Some of the people responsible for atrocities in this camp were brought to trial after the war ended. The camp is preserved as a museum in memory of those held or killed there. The European Centre of Deported Resistance Members is located at this museum, focusing on those held. A monument to the departed stands at

6885-482: Was released in 1956, and died a free man in 1980. The execution site near the camp is now a national monument, with a wall bearing the names of all those who died there. The wall has suffered numerous acts of vandalism. In one case, black smears were drawn on the wall, using tar, which seeped into the stone and proved impossible to remove. The camp was partially demolished after the war. The grounds now house an educational museum known as Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught ,

6970-643: Was sanctioned by Reichsführer of the SS Heinrich Himmler , and under the direction of August Hirt with Rudolf Brandt and Wolfram Sievers who was responsible for procuring and preparing the corpses as part of his management of the Ahnenerbe (the National Socialist scientific institute that researched the archaeological and cultural history of the hypothesized Aryan race ). In a 2013 documentary by Sonia Rolley and others, two historians remark that "Hirt

7055-508: Was sentenced to death and was executed in 1949. Josef Johann Kotalla was also sentenced to death but later commuted to life in prison. Along with three other prisoners he became involved in what was known as the " Breda Four ", a group of prisoners whose possible release stirred up very strong feelings amongst Dutchmen. Kotalla was the only who was not eventually released from prison. He died in prison in 1979. The NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies has many resources concerning

7140-427: Was split into Kamp-SS (20 men selected by Heinrich) and Guard-SS (100 men). The first camp leader was SS- Schutzhaftlagerführer I Johann Friedrich Stöver . From January 1, 1943, the camp leader was SS-Schutzhaftlagerführer II Karl Peter Berg . Berg was a very cruel man, who was described as a "predator who derived great pleasure from the agony of others". During roll call he loved to sneak about unnoticed behind

7225-590: Was unknown at the time that Hirt had shot himself in the head on 2 June 1945 while in hiding in the Black Forest . For many years only a single victim, Menachem Taffel (prisoner no. 107969), a Polish-born Jew who had been living in Berlin , was positively identified through the efforts of Serge and Beate Klarsfeld . In 2003, Hans-Joachim Lang , a German professor at the University of Tübingen succeeded in identifying all

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