Natzweiler-Struthof 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 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 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 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 was made

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