History & Overview
by Ben Weiss
Natzweiler-Struthof was located in eastern France in the Vosges mountains. After the Nazi occupation of France, Albert
Speer surveyed the area and mentioned the granite resources indigenous
to the region. The SS-owned
business, Deutsche Erd Und Steinwerke (German Earth and Stone Works
Ltd), began to move prisoners to the area in May 1941 to quarry the
granite.
A gas chamber was installed in August 1943, although the camp remained primarily a labor camp. Victims of the
gas chamber had their remains scattered in the surrounding area.. Records
indicate that the bill for the gas chamber was paid by the Strausberg
University Institute of Anatomy. Professor Hirt, director of the institute,
wanted a skeleton collection. One-hundred thirty people, mostly Jews,
were shipped out of Auschwitz into the gas chamber for this purpose. Explicit reference to the gas
chamber was made in this invoice. This was unusual because official
Reich policy did not encourage open reference to gas chambers in documents.
Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses,
socialists, and others were tortured and murdered at Natzweiler-Struthof.
Many of the prisoners in the camp were members of resistance
groups throughout Europe and were known as Nach
und Nebel (Night and Fog) prisoners. Members of the French Resistance
were killed immediately upon arrival. Remaining resistance group prisoners
were sent to work in the quarry or on road construction, where work
conditions were the worst.
In addition to the extreme working conditions, medical
experiments at Natzweiler-Struthof were common. Testimonies at the Nuremburg trial relate
the details of experiments using mustard
gas on patients and detailing their effects. Gas was applied directly
to the skin, inhaled, or injected and the effects were recorded. These
experiments caused tremendous pain as they slowly destroyed the subjects'
organs until their deaths days later . In a separate experiment, another
faculty member of Strausberg University wanted to run medical experiments
on prisoners with phosgene gas, a poisonous gas. Gypsy prisoners at
Natzweiler were used for this deadly experiment. Other experiments at
Natzweiler included studying the effects of typhus vaccines and epidemic
jaundice.
Natzweiler-Struthof had satellite camps located in
Baden-Wurttemberg, Neckarelz, Leonberg, and Schorzingen. By the end
of 1944 a total of 19,000 prisoners were in these satellite camps, while
the main camp had between seven and eight thousand. The main camp was
liberated by the French Army on November 23, 1944, while the satellite
camps were only evacuated in March of 1945. As the Allied forces approached,
prisoners were marched toward Dachau.
It is estimated that 40,000 prisoners passed through
the main camp during the time that it was in operation, and between
ten to twelve thousand died. In 1989, a written testament was hung on
the wall of the crematorium in memory of the Jews who died in the camp.
Sources: Gutman, Israel. ed. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Vols. 1-4. NY: Macmillan, 1995.
Judaica Philatelic Resources
Ohio State University. |