WHAT IS NATZWEILER-STRUTHOF? Begins on this page.
Photographs of the camp - outlineof illustrated lecture
Background of Presenter and endorsements of this project.
Testimonials by noted scholars
SURVIVORS REMEMBER
English translations unique on this website:
CALL ME ANDRE: Joseph Scheinmann, aka André Peulevey and his book:
Call Me André
Jean Schmit: A political prisoner writes letters home
Documents unique on this website
Eugène Marlot: Sac d'Os and L'Enfer d'Alsace
Henri Rosencher: Le Sel, La Cendre, La Flamme
Monsieur le Chanoine Hess, Catholic cleric a prisoner
His memoirs
General Delestraint,Free French Commander,
imprisoned at Natzweiler
More information and links:
Order to remove Jews from the concentration camps
The Gas Chamber-CAUTION GRAPHIC
The story of two Belgium Jewish women who were gassed
Judy Chicago and Donald Woodman's Holocaust Project
Christian Ottosen and other Norwegians at Natzweiler
Natzweiler's 70 Kommandos - slave labor dependencies (new page)
New book published about Kommando Bisingen
A new museum and links to European resources
No one can write an exhaustive book on a concentration camp, but one can certainly try to indicate all its aspects, resources for further study, and questions posed by its operational structure in the context of the other Konzentrationslagers, Nazi ideology, and Europe at war.
This I intend to do for the tragic and little-known concentration camp of Natzweiler-Struthof, (to the SS: KLNa) the only Nazi Konzentrationslager located in France, operating between 1941 and 1944 for the slave labor and brutal destruction of an (almost) exclusively non-Jewish population and the gassing and “medical” experimentation on Jews and Gypsies.
Besides these aspects which it shares with many other camps, KLNa has certain more remarkable aspects than just its physical location. It was, for example, the most important center for the punishment of the category of political prisoners known as "NN." Their "Nacht und Nebel" status was determined by specific decree and judicial procedures practically unknown in the US today, where "Nacht und Nebel" ("Night and Fog") is thought to represent the quality of existence in the camps rather than a specific sentence accorded some of those deemed most dangerous resistors and saboteurs of the Third Reich.
The camp was accorded “Category III” status, and like Matthausen, which detroyed Spanish Communists in its quarry under conditions of staggering overwork and cruelty, Natzweiler was used to destroy Russians under similar conditions at its quarry site, while two dozen other European nationalities suffered famine, untreated disease, physical and mental abuse, and medical experimentation in the central camp and its 70 exterior slave labor sites (Kommandos).
This is why all the nations of Europe, including the Sinti, are represented at the yearly commemoration ceremonies at the camp, a French national historic monument: survivor memoirs of the camp exist in their native languages of Slovene, Dutch, Norwegian, French and English.
By force of the years which now separate us from the tragic events, the survivor literature of the camp is nearly complete, barring certain memoirs which may yet come to light and be published posthumously. I have collected dozens of them and will present excerpts of them all, both to illustrate the coherence of their descriptions of the same brutal acts and the unique qualities of individual memory, and to pay tribute to the heroes who lived in our time. You are welcome to contact me and to add your documentation.
To be uploaded, available on request:
Bibliography
Videos and Films
Essay: "Life Was Not Beautiful"
Nuremburg Documents
Memorial page of names
“Liberation” of the camp
Dachau connection
Escape from NS