| An American soldier and member of the French resistance inspect the crematorium in Natzweiler-Struthof. They are holding a pair of tongs that were used to handle the bodies. The Natzweiler-Struthof Konzentrationslager (“Concentration Camp;” French – “Le Struthof-Natzwiller”) is the only 1 to have been built by the Nazis on French territory. It was set up in Alsace, whose 2 départements had been annexed to the Reich in July 1940. The occupiers considered Alsace and Moselle to be German lands destined for radical Germanization. Alsace was joined with the Nazi Party province (Gau) of Baden, whose Nazi Party Gauleiter (“Provincial Chief”) was Robert Wagner, and Moselle was joined with that of the Palatinate, under the leadership of Gauleiter Josef Bürckel. A civilian administration was installed in Strasbourg, and an internment camp was created as early as July 2, 1940, just 2 weeks after the entry of German troops into Strasbourg. Doctor Gustav Adolf Scheel (November 22, 1907 – March 25, 1979), the 1st Kommandant of the Schutzstaffel SS and of the Sicherheitsdienst SD (“intelligence agency”) in Alsace, organized the construction of a small camp able to handle the internment of a 150 people. The construction order gave a list of people to be held in the camp: 1st, Germans who had fought in the international brigades; 2nd, Alsatian insubordinates; and 3rd, opponents of the Heer (“Nazi German Army”). The 1st camp was built next to a small town in the Vosges, Schirmeck, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Strasbourg, and received the name of Schirmeck-Vorbrück (French – “Schirmeck-La Broque”). Some 60 Alsatians who had led anti-German activities before the war or who had deserted the Heer during World War I were immediately interned. This camp functioned throughout the entire war but never became an officially recognized Konzentrationslager. It was labeled an Erziehungslager (“education camp”) or Sicherungslager (“detention camp”), more of a local work camp. During the entire annexation period, the Schirmeck camp was used for the internment of Alsatians who had attempted to cross the new border with France, Jehovah’s Witnesses, those accused of black market activity, and family members of the opposition. The camp was guarded by Nazi Germans of the Ordnungspolizei or Orpo (“Order Police”). The Schutzstaffel SS tried to obtain control of the camp but never managed to do so. Some Schirmeck inmates were transferred to Natzweiler. Some months after the creation of the Schirmeck camp, the SS created a 2nd camp, not far from the 1st. The official date for the establishment of a 2nd camp is May 1, 1941. The chosen site was Natzweiler, in the Bruche valley, because of the existence of a granite quarry there. The construction order for the camp came from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (October 7, 1900 – May 23, 1945) himself. The SS-Deutsche Erd und Steinwerke Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (“German Earth and Stone Works Limited Liability Company” – DESt) enterprise expropriated the site and organized the exploitation of the quarry. They founded an office in Rothau, a village in the valley, where the train station nearest to the camp was located. The Burgermeister (“Mayor”) of Schirmeck was SS-Standartenführer Karl Blumberg (October 30, 1889 – October 9, 1948). Before the war, Struthof was known throughout Alsace. A small ski and winter sports resort had been installed there (the site’s altitude is 720 meters [2,362 feet]). There was a hotel where the SS guards stayed, as well as a farm. Work on the construction of the camp began in April 1941. Some prisoners from the Schirmeck camp were used to build the 1st barracks. The 1st convoy of prisoners, around a 150 men, arrived on May 21, 1941, at the Rothau station. They came from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and were initially lodged in the farm’s pigsty. The 2nd convoy arrived 3 days later. On June 28, the 1st French prisoners arrived in the 3rd convoy. These men worked to complete the construction of the camp. The 1st 4 buildings were not finished until November 1941. The inmates soon worked in the quarry as well. Until the spring of 1942, the Natzweiler concentration camp remained small, only amounting to around 200 prisoners. They built the structures for the administration of the camp. The number of inmates then increased rapidly and considerably. At the end of 1942, 2,000 inmates had already been registered. The construction of the camp was not completed until the beginning of 1943. There were 17 blocks within its confines and 12 other buildings outside it. On March 12, 1942, a large convoy of German Communists arrived in Rothau. On June 15, 1943, a convoy of 71 Norwegians arrived. They were resisters who had been imprisoned in the Grini camp or in the Akershus fortress. They had been sent by boat as far as Aarhus in Denmark and, from there, sent by train to Strasbourg, via Hamburg. 9 convoys of Norwegians, with a total of 504 men, arrived in Natzweiler, the last day in August 1944. All of these were classified under the prisoner category Nacht-und-Nebel (“Night-and-Fog”). In June 1943, a total of 4,430 prisoners had been registered at Natzweiler. In 1944, their numbers fluctuated between 13,000. In total, 52,000 prisoners were registered in the camp or in the exterior subcamps. The mortality rate at Natzweiler was quite high, and it is estimated that around 20,000 prisoners died there of exhaustion, hunger, illness, and maltreatment. The inmates came from many different countries. There were many Alsatians and Mosellans imprisoned for insubordinate conduct or acts of resistance. Others were Alsatians or Mosellans who were Malgrénous (“resistors to forced enlistment in the Heer”), starting in 1942. Also, numerous were French, Dutch, Luxembourgers, Germans, and Eastern Europeans. There were Sinti and Roma (Gypsy) prisoners. Not 1 inmate was recorded as Jewish in the main camp; Jews who were sent to the Natzweiler complex went directly to the subcamps. There were no women prisoners in Natzweiler. In the interior of the camp itself, there was a Nacht-und-Nebel section, as well as a political branch of the Gestapo. The majority of inmates were political opponents or resisters. The camp system had several commandants. The 1st Schirmeck Kommandant was SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Hüttig (April 5, 1894 – February 23, 1980) from April 17, 1941, to March 1942; he was replaced 1st by SS-Sturmbannführer Egon Zill (March 28, 1906 – October 23, 1974) for a few months in 1942 as the 1st Kommandant of Natzweiler. SS-Obersturmführer Josef Kramer (November 10, 1906 – December 13, 1945) stayed in the post for the longest time, from June 1942 to April 1944. He had previously been posted to Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen, and Auschwitz. He had worked in the concentration camps since 1934. In April 1944, he was named commandant of the camp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. It was under his command that Natzweiler became a large concentration camp. His replacement, Fritz Hartjenstein (July 3, 1905 – October 20, 1954), had previously worked in Birkenau when he commanded Natzweiler-Struthof from May 1944 to January 1945. Heinrich Schwarz (June 14, 1906 – March 20, 1947) was appointed Kommandant when he evacuated Auschwitz in January 1945, but by that time the Natzweiler-Struthof camp was liberated by the Americans, and he administrated most of the satellite camps that were continued until April 1945. The camp’s surveillance was provided by 200 SS, of which a 150 were wardens and 50 handled administrative tasks. The Kommandants lived in a requisitioned villa, which was located in the mountains above the camp. The Natzweiler camp had at least 42 subcamps at any given moment (and up to 92 in total, according to some sources), located in Alsace, Moselle, and southwest Germany. Certain subcamps were not created until the autumn of 1944, in Germany, when the main camp had been evacuated. In Natzweiler, the majority of inmates worked in the quarry. They also built a road between Rothau and the camp. In the autumn of 1943, the quarry was enlarged toward the east, and a wide esplanade was cleared. It was on this plot that 2 buildings and 13 barracks were built to serve as workshops for the Junkers airplane manufacturing firm of Dessau, which had previously taken over workshops in Alsace. In Natzweiler, inmates worked to strip down and repair airplane motors. There were also civilian employees in these workshops. Inmates’ corpses were burned 1st in a mobile crematorium, until a permanent structure was built outside the camp, in October 1943, next to the hotel. All of the deaths, except those of the Nacht-und-Nebel inmates, were recorded at the city hall of the village. The inmates could only establish contact with the valley’s residents with difficulty. During the marches to the work sites, some residents would try to give a little food to the inmates, sometimes by leaving it along the roadside. The Rothau station was also a place where fleeting contacts could be made. It appears that during the last period of the camp, in 1944, discipline was somewhat less severe, and contacts were easier. The large number of inmates also prevented the possibility of constant surveillance. The locals may have even bribed certain SS guards to be able to feed the inmates. There were medical experiments performed at the Natzweiler camp, on the effects of mustard gas, typhus, and hereditary diseases. A gas chamber was built for this purpose, outside the camp, in an outbuilding of the hotel where the camp administration was based. It was used from the summer of 1943. The experiments took place at the research center of the Versuchabteilung der Reichsuniversität Strassburg (“University of Strasbourg”). The director of this center was Doctor August Hirt (April 28, 1898 – June 2, 1945), Professor of Anatomy at the Reichsuniversität. Another scientist, virologist Eugen Haagen (1898 – 1972), Head Physician of the Luftwaffe and Professor of Hygiene at the University of Strasbourg, was responsible for research for a vaccine against typhus. Doctor Otto Bickenbach (March 11, 1901 – November 26, 1971) led studies on urotropine, used as an antidote for phosgene gas, and SS-Hauptsturmführer Doctor Hans Kurt Eisele (March 13, 1913 – May 3, 1967) practiced vivisection. Gypsies were sent particularly from Auschwitz to Natzweiler to serve as guinea pigs in these experiments. However, the only murders in the gas chambers that can be regarded as certain are described in testimony at 1 of the trials of Nazi doctors at Nürnberg: 86 Jews, including 30 women, arrived from Auschwitz in August 1943; they were gassed on August 11, 13, 17, and 19, with potassium cyanide. It took them 30 to 60 seconds to die. Their bodies were sent to the anatomy institute at the Medical University of Strasbourg, where they were reduced to a skeletal state. At the liberation of Strasbourg, in November 1944, 17 bodies, 3 of which were women, were discovered. The dissection work had barely been started. This became known as the “Jewish Skull Collection” and was a project directed by Professor Hirt. In 2003, Hans-Joachim Lang (born August 6, 1951), a German professor at the University of Tübingen, succeeded in identifying all the victims by comparing a list of inmate numbers of the 86 corpses at the Reichsuniversität in Strasbourg, surreptitiously recorded by Hirt’s French assistant Henri Henripierre (August 23, 1905 – May 15, 1982), 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”). There were escapes from the camp, with the goal of reaching the border that separated Alsace from the rest of occupied France, which was not far away. In March 1942, some Czech and Polish inmates organized a resistance network, led by Communist leaders. They succeeded in establishing a liaison with Communist militants in the Bruche river valley. The 3 leaders of the group were Pole Josef Cichosz (Sepetember 18, 1896 -), who had fought in the Spanish Civil War; German Edwald Motzkat, a Communist from Wiesbaden; and a Czech officer, Josef Mautner-Brixi (June 17, 1897 – 1965). Only 1 escape succeeded, organized by Alsatian inmate Martin Wintenberger (December 19, 1917 – October 5, 1993). He had arrived at Natzweiler on November 12, 1941, from the Schirmeck camp. He was put to work in the garage of the SS guards, then in a detention commando, and then in the SS laundry. With a German inmate, Alfons Christmann (April 3, 1900 – November 5, 1942), he set about preparing his escape. He obtained the help of an inmate named Karl Haas (August 27, 1910 – August 5, 1942), who worked in the SS garage and reserved some gasoline for an escape by car. Since they worked in the laundry, Wintenberg and Christmann got hold of 2 uniforms left to be washed. On July 4, 1942, they were both able to leave the camp, in a car, dressed in the uniforms. There were 3 other inmates hidden in the vehicle. The 5 men succeeded in reaching France, then the unoccupied zone. They left Christmann, quite weakened after his imprisonment in the camp, at the home of some of his family members who lived in the south of France. The Gestapo found him there in October, arrested him again, and sent him back to Natzweiler, where he was hanged in front of the other inmates. The 4 other escapees succeeded in reaching Spain. Another resistance group, French Communists led by the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP), organized ties with the valley. A massive escape was planned, but the German guards found the plan in a satchel where 1 inmate had hidden it. The members of this network were executed. Some were hanged, others shot. A similar escape attempt by Russian prisoners was harshly suppressed in June 1943: 15 men were killed after a long public punishment. The main Natzweiler camp was evacuated on August 31, 1944, before the advance of the Allied armies. There were still 7,000 men at Natzweiler at that time. Some trucks took the weakest inmates to the Rothau train station, but the largest number made the journey on foot. At the station, freight trains took them into the interior of the Reich. The evacuation operation was completed on September 4. Only a few SS men remained at Natzweiler. Convoys of inmates from Natzweiler arrived at Dachau, where they were redistributed to different commandos in southwest Germany, either attached to Natzweiler or not. On September 7, the 1,127 patients from the infirmary (Revier) arrived there. The camp administration was reinstalled at Guttenbach, in Germany, on the Neckar. The administration of Natzweiler continued its work of managing prisoners who were spread out in many subcamps, several of which had just been created, and it even continued to register new inmates. In April 1945, all the prisoners were transferred to the control of the administration of the Dachau concentration camp. Those principally responsible for the Natzweiler camp were judged at Wuppertal by a British military tribunal, from May 29 to June 1, 1946. The main charge was only the execution of 4 women who were identified as members of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE): Andrée Raymonde Borrel (November 18, 1919 – July 6, 1944), nom de guerre “Denise Borrell,” who was French, Diana H. Rowden (January 31, 1915 – July 6, 1944) nom de guerre “Marcelle” and Vera Leigh (March 17, 1903 – July 6, 1944), nom de guerre “Suzanne Chavanne” and Sonia Olschanezky (December 25, 1923 – July 6,1944) nom de guerre “Suzanne Ouvrard.” They were killed in the camp by phenol injection on July 6, 1944, and cremated. The last woman to be cremated came to as she was being put into the crematoria feet 1st and scratched SS Executioner Peter Straub (December 12, 1887 – October 11, 1946). Among the 9 accused were SS.Oberscharführer Magnus Wochner (August 29, 1898 – 1957), head of the Politische Abteilung (“Political Department”), and the head of the camp, Fritz Hartjenstein. The latter was sentenced to life in prison. SS.Untersturmführer Doctor Werner Rohde (June 11, 1904 – October 11, 1946), the camp physician who administered at least 1 of the fatal injections, was sentenced to be hanged. SS-Oberscharführer Eugen Büttner (September 8, 1907 – March 6, 1975), who directed the quarry commando, was sentenced to death by a French military tribunal and to forced labor for life by a Soviet tribunal. He was pardoned in 1956. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0613.jpg |
| Image Size | 774.94 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 1920 x 2464 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | December 2, 1944 |
| Location | Konzentrationslager Natzweiler-Struthof |
| City | Bas-Rhin |
| State or Province | Grand Est |
| Country | France |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | 111-SC-196988 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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