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World War II concentration camps -- individual camps
NAZI Concentration Camps: Individual Camps (A-L)
Figure 1.--Auchwitz is the best known of the NAZI concentration camps, because of its size and the number of people killed there. It was, however, just one of the huge number of camps set up by the SS to control the NAZI empire. It was not one of the death camps in the sence of a camp that was purely designed to kill. Killing of course did occur at Auschwitz. The Auschwitz killing facility was at Birkenau. Here are Hungarian Jews during summer 1944. They have been selected for murder and have been directed sector BII of the camp toward the gas chambers which were desguised as showers.
From the beginning, German concentration camps were administered by the SS. The first concentration camps set up in Germany were followed after the start of World War II by a myriad of camps throughout Western Euope run by the SS as a state within a state. The SS eventually opened over 9,000 camps across the NAZI-occupied Europe. [Berenbaum, p. 9.] They were filled with unfortunate people from every occupied country. The number of people in the camps rose steadily from 100,000 in 1942, to 524,000 in 1944, and 724,000 by January 1945 [Berenbaum, p. 122.] The camps were established for a variety of purposes and thus the regime, organization, and conditions varied from camp to camp. Not all the camps were even administered by the NAZIs. There were camps set up an run by NAZI allies such as Vichy France, Italain Fascists as well as the regimes in Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. The NAZIs also took camps over in France, the Netherlands, and other countries that had been set up for refugees. The initial purpose of the camps in Germany was the political repression of the anti-NAZI elements. The NAZIs also use them in the process of stripping Jews of their property. After World War II began, the camps became increasingly important to hold workers from occupied countries forced to labor for Germany. Unlike the Allies, the NAZIs were reluctant to use women in the economy, even to support the war. While many camps were work camps, there were also punishment and death camps. The camps of course played a major role in the Holocaust. There wre also numerous prisonor of war (POW) camps, but these were adminnistered by the military and not the SS and we have not included them in this list.
Auchwitz was the largest and most deadly of the NAZI concentration camps. Richard Gluecks, head of the SS Concentration Camp Inspectorate informed Himmler on February 21, 1940 that he had found a site for a punishment camp where Poles who had defied the NAZIs in any way could be put to work under especially harsh conditions. The site was Auschwitz/Birkenau ( Oswiecim-Brzezinka ). It was an old Austro-Hungarian calvary barracks. It was not at first intended for Jews. Rudolf Hoess, who was working at Dachau wa made the camp commandant. He sent for convicted criminals from Sachsenhausen to serve as Kapos (barracks chiefs). [Gilbet, p. 298.] Eventually Auschwitz became a vast facility for slave labor in addition to the death camp. There were 51 sub-camps (this number varies in different accounts) at Auchwitz. Prisoners were beaten, starved, shot, hung, and kilked in different ways. The largest numbers of deaths resulted from the murder by gas in an industrial fashion. Once the gas chambers were functional, large numbers of Jews in the Polish ghettos and from NAZI occupied Europe were TRANSPORTED to Auchwitz to be murdered. Trains delivered the Jews right to a station platform located by the gas chambers. Most of these victims were Jews, but there were also gentile Poles, Soviet POWs, gypseys, and homosexuals gassed. Of all the dreadful actions at Auchwitz, perhaps the most apauling was the medical experiments that Dr. Mengele carried out on Jewish children, in many cases twins selected for that purpose. The last large group was the Hungarian Jews. Jews stage a revolt and manage to blow up one of the crematoria (October 7, 1944). As the Red Army approached, the SS decided to destroy the remaining crematoria and gas chambers in an effort to hide their murderous crimes (October 26, 1944). The SS evacuates Auschwitz before the Red Army arrives (January 17, 1945). The surviving inmates who are in poor condition because of the starvation regime at the camp are force marched in freezing condition to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Many perished along the way. The Red Army liberated Auschwitz and found 7,000 starving prisoners that the NAZIs had been unable to kill (January 27, 1945).
Banjica (Yugoslavia/Serbia)
German military authorities used a Yugoslav Army barracks to set up the Banjica concentration camp. It was located in a leafy Belgrade suburb (June 1941). Note that this was not done by the SS, but the Wehrmacht coomand. Some authors do not accurately treat to what extent the Whrmacht as opposed to the SS was involved in the Holocaust. A month earlier, German military authorities established the legal basis for the campaign against Serbian Jews. The Germans defined just who Jews were and began issuing anti-Semetic decress. The initial purpose of Banjica was to hold hostages, many of whom were at first Jewish. This gave the Germans a ready population of people who could be executed in reprisal for Serb attacks. The first reprisal executions began almost immediately after the ca,p was established (late-June). Communists and Jews were selected. The first mass execution at Banjica occurred when 170 prisoners were shot (December 17, 1941). The people held at Banjica included Jews, communists, partisans and Gypseys. Camp registers document 23,637 prisoners. The German commandant was Willy Friedrich. He was a Gestapo officer, but we have no further information about him. He apparently spent most of the War at Banjica. Much of the killing of the Banjica prisioners was reportedly carried out at Jajinci, a village near Belgrade. Most of the Jewish prisoners were murdered, including small children. Banjica also served as a transit camp. Several thousands mostly Christian prisoners were transported to concentration and labor camps in the Reich and Poland, including Mauthausen-Gusen and Auschwitz. The camp operated until the Germans abandoned Belgrade (September 1944). The Partisans liberated the city (October 1944). Commandant Friedrich was tried by a Yugoslav military court at Belgrade after the War (1947). He was found guilty and sentenced to death. A HBC reader has prepared a report on his visit to the camp which has been preserved as a museum.
Belzec was one of the five death camps the Germans built in Poland. The Soviet winter offensive (December 1941) threatened the whole process of the Holocaust. The Wehrmacht had succeeded, however, in sabilizing the front (mid-April 1942). The NAZIs had been denied victory, but they still controlled Poland and work on Belzec and the other death camps were rushed to completion. Belzac was a small camp with one purpoise only--to kill. The NAZIs succeeded in killing about 74,000 Jews from Lublin and Galacia in one month. A total of 0.4-0.5 million Jews are believed to have been murdered at Belzec. Many of the Jews confined, starved, and eventually murdered at Belzac were from Eastern and Western Galicia. Mamy German Jews and Jews from areas of occupied countries incorporated into the Reich were also killed at Belzac. About 1,500 Poles accused of helping Jews, Gypsies, and thousands of Soviet prisonors of war were also killed at Belzec. [Gilbet, p. 421.] The bodies were buried in 33 massive pits. the NAZis attempted to hide what was done at Belzec by destroying the buildings and planting trees. They also built a small farm house there. A joint Isreali-Polish Belzec Memorial Project is now building a memorial at the site to remember the victims murdered there.
The NAZIs established the Bergen-Belsen Camp as a POW camp (1940). It was located just south of two small towns from which the name of the camp was derived. The larger town of Celle was 11 miles south. Many French and Belgian POWs were detained their after the German victories in the West. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Soviet POWs were transported to Bergen-Belsen. Many died because of the lack of food and shelter a deliberate NAZI action. The NAZIs then began setting up special camps within the Camp complex. The residence camp was opened (1943). The NAZIs held thousands of Jewish prisoners here. The were Jews not sent to the death camps because they were thought to be of value fo exchanges with the Allies for detained Germans. The NAZIs eventually redesignated Bergen-Belsen a concentration camp (DEcember 1944). Bergen-Belsen at the end of the War became a collection camp because of its location for thousands of Jewish prisoners evacuated from camps in the east as the Red Army pushed into Poland. The NAZI authorities were unprepared for the influx. Adequate food was not provided and the cowding and inadequate shelter resulted in a typhus epidemic. Thousands of inmates died. Anne Frank was one of te Jews who died at Bergen-Belsen. Dhe died in March 1945 of typhus in this camp, only a month before the Brirish reached the Camp. The British liberated the Camp (April 15, 1945). After the NAZI surrender, a DP camp was estanlished at a nearby Wehrmacht barracks.
The SS opened the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar (July 16, 1937). They could not have chosen a more incongrous location. Weimar was of course the capital of the Weimar Republic, but it was best known for its many contributions to German cultural life. It was home to Goethe, Schiller, Franz Liszt, and Bach. Goethe was famed for climbing the Ettersberg and writing under a beech tree. Buchenwald meant Beech Wood in German. After opening Dacchau, the NAZIs looked for other locations to expand their concentration camp system. SS General Eicke, Inspector of Concentration Camps, found a suitable site near the Ettersberg in Thuringia. He proposed transfering the Lichtenburg concentration camp to a more permanent location (June 3, 1936). Himmler approved the creation of Buchenwald (May 5, 1937). The SS trucked in the first 300 prisoners who were put to work building the camp (July 16, 1937). The initial name was Konzentrationslager Ettersberg. The name was changed to Konzentrationslager Buchenwald (August 6, 1937). Himmler chose SS officer Karl Otto Koch as the first commondant. He and his wife Ilse were notorious for their murderous regime. Ilse was known as the Witch of Buchenwald, the most despihable of prominent NAZI women. Besides murder, koch also did his best to steal from the prisoners. Himmler transferred him to the even more infamous Majdanek camp. His replacement was SS Colonel Hermann Pister. Koch who had even more opportunities for theft at Majdanek was arrested by the SS for fraud and thief. He was executed in Auschwitz. Buchewald was infamous for its quarry. The SS forced inmates to carry huge stones to the camp to be used in construction. Later prisoners were chained to huge four-wheel carts to pull huge loads to the Camp, The SS forced them to sing and called them the "Singing Horses". Buchenwald was also infamous for collecting the skins of tatooed prisoners. Some were still there hen the Americans liberated the Camp. The Camp was ready when Hitler began his program of expansion, beginning with the Austrian Anschluss (march 1938). The Camp population expanded rapidly: 1937 (July--1,000) and 1939 (September 1--5,400). The invasion of Poland brought and upsurge of prisoners and the number of inmates reached 8,600 by the end of September. The ensuing War brought a steady stream of inmates to Buchenwald. The SS significantly expanded Buchenwald during the War. At its peak there were 174 sub-camps and external kommandos. The camp population was: 1943 (December--37,319) and 1944 (December--63,100). The SS as they emptied camps in Poland brought many sick and sdesperate people to Buchenwald. Just before liberation, the camp population swelled in 1945 (March--80, 400). As a result of over crowding and the almost complete lack of food, daily death rates soared. There is no precise accounting of the number of people the NAZIs killed at Buchenwald. It is believed that more than 56,000 died there. This does not include the approximately 13,000 internees transferred to Auschwitz and other camps, most of whom went to the extermination camps and were killed there. Buchenwald was liberated by the U.S. Army (April 11, 1945).
Chelmo was one of the five death camps, camps created for the expressed purpose of killing Jews. Like most of the death camps, the NAZIs located it in Poland. Chelmno was named after te nearby town located about 50 miles from Lodz. The Germans who were in the process of Germanizing the area called it Kulmhof. The first gassing of Jews in large numbers occurred at Chelmo. Some of the work to "perfect" the killing process was done at Chelmo. The killing was overseen by Herbert Lange who commanded a Sonderkommando. The SS transferred Lange to Chelmno. He had worked in the T4 euthanasia program where he was involved with murdering Posen psychiatric patients using gas vans. Thus Lange was an experienced killer before arriving at Chelmo. The killing was initially done using vans. Many Reich Jews were killed here. Chelmo was the first of the death camps to begin operation (December 7, 1941). It was primarily used to kill Jews from the nearby large Lodz Ghetto. The first commandant at Chelmo was Herbert Lange. The camp consisted of two principal sections. The first was for the administration section, the barracks and the storage of valuables and goods taken from the victims. The second was for the burial and cremation of the victims. The killing was done by three gas vans. The Jews were locked into the van and then killed with carbon monoxide. Operations at Chelmo continued until most of the Lodz Jews had been killed (March 1943). It was briegly reopened to finish the killing of the Lodz Jews (June 23, 1944). The NAZIs finally ceased operations as the Red Army began moving into western Poland (January 17, 1945). There is no precise accounting of the number of Jews miurdered at Chelmo. Estimates range widely, about 150-300,000 Jews and other NAZI victims.
Dachau was the first KZ established by the NAZIs and served as a model for the vast network of KZs that the NAZIs were to establish first in Germany and later in the occupied countries. The fire in the German "Reichstag" on February 27, 1933 was the perfect pretext for the NAZIs to strike at their political opponents. Some even believe that the NAZIs were responsible for setting the fire. Hermann Göring immediately acussed the Communists of setting the fire. Göring as Prussian Secretary of the Interior (Police) ordered the SA and SS to arrest first Communists and then Social Democrats (Socialists) and union members. SS leader Heinrich Himmler sought political opponents in other German Landen. Soon German prisons were filled to over flowing with "protective detainees", as the NAZIs called their prisoners. State Commissary of the Interior, Adolf Wagner adviced his colleague Hans Frank of further options such as concentration camps (May 13, 1933). Himmler announced the establishment of a 'concentration camp' (March 20). Dachau was not opened secretly. Himmler made the announcement at a press conference indicating that it would have a capacity of 5,000 prisiners. The site chosen was a former ammunition factory near Dachau. Two days after Himmler announced the opening of the camp, the first group of prisoners were Communists and Social Democrats arrived (March 22). At first the guards were Bavarian State Police. When Himmler was made Political Police Commander of Bavaria (April 1, 1933), he immediately moved to take control of Dachau.
SS guards replaced thecpolice (April 11). Himmler appointed Theodor Eicke as commandant. Eicke set about creating detailed regulations for Dacau's operation. They covered the most minute details of camp life. Himmler obviusly impresed with Eicke's work at Dacau, subsequently appointed him Inspector General for NAZI concentration camps, the regulations he drew up for Dacau were widely followed at other NAZI camps, although there were a variety of local variations. One reason why Dacau was not a secret is that Hitler and Himmler not only wanted to deal with individuals, but they wanted to ensure that the many Germans who had not voted for the NAZIs or even opposed them would comply with the New Order. Abd unlike many camps, large numbers of Dachau inmates were eventually released. Many people were killed or allowed to die at Dacau as a result of abuse and mistreatment. Dachau was, however, operated as labor camp and the SS exploited their work. Inmates who were unable to work were sytematically killed. Dachau was not, however, a death camp. The industrial killing as done elsewhere at the purpose built death camps. Over 0.2 million people were officially registered s Dachau internees. This may not include those who arrived in the chsotic last months of the War. Some 80-90 percent were eventually released. Dachau did have a role in the early phase of the Holocaust. Many Jews were interned there and forced to turn over their property. Terrible medical experiments were carried out at Dachau during the War. In the final months of the War as the SS began closing camps to the East, large numbers of inmates including many Jrwws were brought to Dachau and conditions steadily deteriorated. SS polucy was to pervent cmp inmate from falling into Allied hnds. As the Americans approached Dachau, the SS began marching prisoners out (April 26). They did not have tome, howevr, to empty it. The American 7th Army liberated Dachu (April 29). NAZI records indicated that nearly 32,000 people died at Dachau. We re not sure how accurate the records are. Theu do not include over 4,000 inmates were so dehhibilated by encarceration that they were removed and killed elewhere. Over 4,000 sick inmates were killed by poison gas at Hartheim Castle near Linz.
Dora-Mittelbau (Germany)
The V-2s in particular were built by slave laborers working in horrific conditions in underground facilities at Mittelwerk near Nordhausen. Prioners from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp were used as workers. Dora-Mittelbau was a labor camp set up on the outskirts of Nordhausen. The Dora-Mittelbau camp was one of the last important concentration camps openedby the SS. It was here after the Allied air attack on Peenamunde that the SS set up fabrication facilities for the Mittelwerk V-2 rocket factory in the Kohnstein tunnels. It appears to have been opened as an subcamp of Buchenwald (around August 1943). A year later it was operating as a major concentration camp with 23 subcamps, most of them close to Nordhausen. The SS made this a restricted military area. The work was done in tunnels impervious to Allied bombing. Conditions at the camp might be likened to Dante's Inferno. The prisoners were worked to death. There was little food and no medical care. Prisoners thought not working hard enough were hung from the ceeilings and left there as an example to the other prisoners. The town of Nordhausen was virtually obliterated by the RAF (April 3 and 4, 1945). About 8,800 people were killed, including 1.500 sick inmates at the Norhausen sub-camp (Boelcke Kaserne barracks). The Americans occupied the town (April 11). Norhausen waa located in the Soviet occupation zone. The Red Army moved in (July 2). The Soviets set up the Institute Rabe to advance Soviet rocket technology using the German work on the advanced V2s (May 1946). Rabe was incorporated into a new Institute Nordhausen, under a greatly enlarged research program within the Soviet occupation zone. This included a a new Institute Berlin. The Soviets then carried out aurprise operaton--Operation Osoaviakhim October 22, 1946). The NKVD arrested some 10,000-15,000 German scientists, engineers and their families and deported them to secure research facilities deep in the Soviet Union. Included in the group were about 300 people from Nordhausen. Theu were deported with their equipment. Many remained there until aftyer Stalin died (1950s). Individuals who complined and demanded to return to Germany were shot.
Drancy (France
Drancy was originally a French police barracks outside Paris. The NAZIs turned it into a transit camp for Jews being deported. Unlike the earliest French camps which had been created for refugees from the Spanish Civil War, Drancy was created by the Vichy regime and was overseen by the French police. The first raids rounding up Jews were conducted by the French police (1941). They targeted foreign Jews. Those arested were interned at Drancy. Evidence suggests that the French police mistreated thise arested and interned at Drancy. Vonditions were poor. The camp was overcroded. Sanitation was poor and food inadequate. Vichy authorities and the NAZIs deported about 77,000 mostly foreign Jews through Drancy (1941-44). One family of German Jews interned at Drancy were the Karliners. Most were deported to Auschwitz with the full knowledge and complicity of Vichy officals. Most of the Jews deported were killed in Auschwitz. Very few survived.
Dzieyzazn (Poland)
Large numbers of children in Poland and other occupied countries were kidnapped by the NAZIs for possible Germinization under the Lebensborn program. The initial collection process was cursory. Once in NAI hands, however, the children were subjected to much more exhaustive racial examinations. Many were ultimnately rejected, but few were returned to their parents. This was not only because the NAZIs did not want to go to the expense and bother of finding the parents, if they were still alive. Another factor here was that Himmler and other NAZIs conidered these children to be dangerous because they were partially Aryan. NAZI theoirists were convinced that their Aryan blood would make then future leaders of Poland who could organize resistance to NAI rule. Some of these rejected children were interned in the Dzieyzazn concentration camp in Poland. Dzierzazna and Litzmannstadt were "Jugenverwahrlage", children camps. Children and teenagers considered found as not good enough to be "Germanized" under the Lebensborn program were transfered to these camps and later sent to the extermination canters. We have few details about the camp. It appears to have been a children's camp. The mortality rate was reportedly very high. One example as to how these camps operated was in 1942, as part of reprisals for the assassination of SS governor Heydrich in Prague, a SS unit shot the entire adult (I'm not sure of the age limit here) male population of the small village of Lidice. The women and children were taken to the gymnasium of Kladno grammar school. The NAZIs 3 days later took the children from their mothers. One account indicates that except for the children selected for adoption by German families and babies under one year of age, were poisoned by exhaust gas in specially adapted vehicles in the Polish extermination camp at Chelm. The women were sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp which usually meant quick or lingering death for the inmates. Another account is slightly different. During this "operation", the SS made a selection of the children. There were 91 that were considered good enough to be "Germanized". These were sent to Germany. The other children were sent to special children camps (i.e. Dzierzazna and Litzmannstadti) and later to the extermination centers.
The SS opened a new concentration camp at Flossenbürg, close to the then Czech border (May 1938). It was in the Oberpfalz region of Bavaria. The SS initially intended to use the camp for male criminals, 'asocial' persons, and Jews. After the War began, it came to be used for political prisoners. These groups were all Germans. With the stunning military successes of the early years, German acquired large numbers of POWs, some of which were interned in Flossenberh The largest numbers were Soviets. Hitler had enormous building plans that required huge quantities of building material, including granite. The Flossenbürg site was chosen by the SS because of the granite in adjacent hills. The prisoners were used as a slave labor force in a large quarry. It was one of the many camps which became part of a growing SS economic opertation, run for a profit. The quarries belonged to the SS German Earth and Stone Works (DEST) company. This was only the beginning. Eventually over 100 sub-camps were built to support many SS production facilities supplying the German military, all run at a profit. The SS because of manpower shortages began using more female guards at the end of the War. A training facility for women guards was established (September 1944). Some 30,000 inmates are believed to have died in Flossenbürg and its subcamps. Early estimates were as high as 75,000 people. Most died from overwork and inadequate food and medical care. A smaller number were political prisoners who were executed. An estimated 1,500 executions were carried out at Flossenbürg in the final year of the War. Most were individuals involved in the July Bomb Plot aimed at killing Hitler (July 1944). Among the most notable executions were Abwehr chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Christian resistor Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and General Hans Oster. The plotters were arrested when the plot failed and the Gestapo launched a massive investigtion. They were held in various prisons and camps until being sent to Flossenbürg, in part because it was deep within the Reich at a time that Allied armies were liberating other camps. They were stripped naked and hung with piano wire on meat hookd (April 9, 1945). The grisely executions were filmed and sent to Hitler in the Berlin Führer Bunker for his viewing. The U,S. Army reached the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp a few weeks later (April 23).
Fort Breendonk (Belgium)
The SS in 1940 opened a punishment camp at Fort Breendonk near Antwerp.
Gunskirchen Lager was one of the hundreds of concentration camps set up by the SS and German allies throughout NAZI-occupied Europe. Some are very well known because of the enormities of the attrocities committed there. Other were small camps set up for only short periods. This appears to have been the case of Gunskirchen Lager. It was located near the towns of towns of Lambach and Wels. WEe have been unable to find much information about the camp. It was not equipped to kill Jews. Rather it was just a cluster of crude shacksvsurronded by barbed wure. The shacks were made of 19" slats with the outer bark showing--meaning the cheapest lumber was used. We are not sure when the camp was opened, probably in 1944 as the Third Reich was collapsing. As the Allied armies advanced, the SS shot many still cling to life in the camps. The healthiest prisoners were forced marched back to the Reich in appauling conditions with little or no food. Gunskirchen seems to be one of the camps that these survivors were intened for apparently no other purpose than to starve. The SS wanted as few live Jewish prisoners to fall into Allied hands as possible. Here they died in large numbers as a result of starvation. The inmates were all Jews from Yugoslavia, Chezkoslovakia, Bulgaria and elesewhere in the Balkans. The American 71st Infantry Division liberated the camp (May 4, 1945). They found dead bodies littering the camp along with 15,000-20,000 starving inmates.
Gross-Rosen (Poland)
Gross-Rosen at Rogoznica had 77 sub-camps.
Gurs (France)
German Jews in Western Landen (Baden, the Saar, and the Palatinate), including some of the oldest German Jewish families, were deported in October 1940 to camps in the French Pyrenees (Gurs, Noé, Récébédou, and Rivesaltes). Gurs was the largest. The death rate was very high because there were not even the most basic facilities. The camps were run by Vichy authorities.
Jasenovac (Yugoslavia/Croatia)
The Jasenovac concentration camp (Logor Jasenovac / Логор Јасеновац) was the largest concentration camp in Croatia. It was a deadly camp, but it was not established by the NAZIs. After the NAZI invasion (April 1941), the Croatian Ustaše (Ustasha) led by Ante Pavelić declared independence from Yugoslavia and established a pro-Axis regime--the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). This was essentially a NAZI puppet regime. The Ustasha establish the camp (August 1941). The primary purpose was to murder people the Ustasha classified as enemies which like the NAZIs was a highly racial assessment. Many groups were murdered at Jasenovac, including Jews, Gypseys, Muslims, and Croats who opposed the Ustasha. The largest number of victims, however, were ethnic Serbs. Here there was also a relgious element. The Cratins were mostly Catholic while the Serbs were Orthodox. Jasenovac was not single camo, an extensive complex of five subcamps and three small camps. Thecomplex covered more than 240 square kilometers. The different camps were located close to each other along the Sava River. Most of the camp was at Jasenovac itself which ws 100 km southeast of Zagreb. The Jasenovac complex included the extensive Donja Gradina camp on the opposite bank of the Sava river. There was also children's camp at Sisak to the northwest of Jasenovac. There was also a women's camp at Stara Gradiška to the southeast. Jasenovac operated contiuosly until Croatia was overrun by the Partisas at the end of the War (April 1945).
Kalish (Poland)
One reort said that the Polish children who resisted Germinization under the Lebensborn program were often beaten and other wise coersed. If they continued to resist they were sent to concentration camps. Many of the Polish children were sent to Kalish where they were murdered.
Litzmannstadt (Poland)
Dzierzazna and Litzmannstadt in Poland were "Jugenverwahrlage", children camps. Children and teenagers considered found as not good enough to be "Germanized" under the Lebensborn program were transfered to these camps and later sent to the extermination canters.
Longwy-Thiel (France--annexed to the Reich)
"Very few people ever heard of the Thiel-Longwy concentration camp in north-eastern France, Alsace, close to Luxembourg, and the ex-Maginot line. Four kilometers inside the Chantier de Fer in Thiel was a V2 rocket factory. The camp was four kilometers outside the city, close the ex-German border. Five hundred Hungarian machinists brought in from Auschwitz-Birkenau worked in the factory. The camp was functional between May-October 1944. After 16 kilometers of marching, eight hours of work, the prisoners had to carry heavy rocks for about a half mile, with the only purpose to further deplete their 'elan de vivre'. The insufficient calories provided for that amount of work killed many prisoners. In October 1944, a few minutes before the US army liberated the camp, the prisoners were transfered from Thiel to Kochendorf, Germany. While the train passed above, US Sherman tanks entered the camp below, only a few kilometers away. At the same time, the US Army also liberated the Strutthoff." [Liebermann]
Sources
Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know (Ed. Arnold Kramer. Boston: Little, Brown, & Company, 1993).
Browning, Christopher R. Remenbering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp (Norton, 2009), 375p.
Gilbert, Martin. A History of the Twentieth Century Vol. 2 1933-54 (William Morrow and Company, Inc.: New York, 1998), 1050p.
Hoyt, Carolyn. "Stolen Childhood. How One Woman Survived the Holocaust." McCallÌs August 1994. pp. 100-101.
132, 134.
Liebermann, George. Mannheim
Padfield, Peter. Himmler: Reichsführer-SS (Henry Holt: New York, 1991), 656p.
