Natzweiler-Struthof was a German concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the Alsatian village of Natzwiller (German Natzweiler) in France, and the town of Schirmeck, about 50 km south west from the city of Strasbourg.
Natzweiler-Struthof was the only concentration camp established by the Nazis on present-day French territory, though there were French-run temporary camps such as the one at Drancy. At the time, the Alsace-Lorraine area in which it was established was administered by Germany as an integral part of the German Reich.
The writer Boris Pahor was interned in Natzweiler-Struthof and wrote his novel Necropolis based on this experience.
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Natzweiler-Struthof was operational between May 21, 1941 until the beginning of September 1944 when the SS evacuated the camp into Dachau. Its construction was overseen by Hans Hüttig. The camp was evacuated and sent on a "Death march" on early September 1944 with only a small SS unit keeping the camp's operations,[1] and on November 23, 1944, discovered and liberated by American Allies as the first concentration camp in Western Europe.[2] Its system of subcamps is listed in List of subcamps of Natzweiler-Struthof.
The total number of prisoners reached an estimated 52,000 over the three years originating from various countries including Poland, the Soviet Union, the Netherlands, France, Germany and Norway. The camp was specially set up for Nacht und Nebel prisoners, in most cases people of the resistance movements. They were to be destroyed by labour and disappear without their relatives knowing their fate.
The camp holds also a crematorium and a jury rigged gas chamber outside the main camp, which was not used for mass extermination; 86 Jewish men and women were gassed in it, 80 of them personally by Josef Kramer to provide 'anatomical specimens' for the Jewish skeleton collection for August Hirt's anatomical laboratory of the Reich University of Strasbourg, France.
Strenuous work, medical experiments, poor nutrition and mistreatment by the SS guards resulted in an estimated 25,000 deaths. Among those who died here were four female SOE agents executed together on July 6, 1944: Diana Rowden, Vera Leigh, Andrée Borrel and Sonya Olschanezky. Since the female prisoner population in the camp was small, 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. Among the inmates were also the Norwegian resistant Per Jacobsen who died there and Charles Delestraint, leader of the Armée Secrète who died later in Dachau.
Fritz Hartjenstein died in prison before his sentence could be carried out. The remaining two death sentences were carried out by hanging, on October 11, 1946. Those tried were:
Magnus Wochner was also implicated in the Stalag Luft III murders and was listed among the accused.[3]
During the night of 12–13 May 1976, neo-Nazis burned the camp museum which was subsequently rebuilt, but with the loss of important artifacts.
Inmate accounts include:
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