Home is Wherever My Crazies Are: KL-Natzweiler Struthof

In May 1940 SS Engineer Blumberg finds a thread of red granite rock coursing through the mountainside of Mt Louise, 60 km from Strasbourg in the French Alsace region.
Blumberg determines that this red granite would be beneficial for use in the Third Reich, and with approval, construction is begun on a Nazi concentration camp called KL Natzweiler-Struthof.
It is one of a 70 Natzweiler camps in the war, and history will show that Struthof was one of its deadliest. In its 4 years of existence, Struthof is responsible for the death of nearly 22,000 deportees mostly French and Czech in origin. Struthof is a camp targeting those who fought against the Nazi occupation in the French Resistance, and as such a majority of the 52,000 people who were interned came from those regions. Along with French and Czech, Struthof also imprisoned people from 29 other nationalities. The men are identified only by numbers, and Jews and Gypsies are pulled aside from the general population to be used for medical experimentation.

Road to Struthof 1.5 hrs away from Milhouse, France.

In my rusty French I think this says something to the affect of letting the grandeur and simplicity of the surroundings reflect the cemetery, and to not add flowers on the graves.

Cemetery for French Resistance soldiers who died in combat.

Rest in Peace

Remember those who died for France and for Liberty

Struthof Museum. This was destroyed by neo-Nazis in 1976 and subsequently rebuilt.

Visitors Log

Camp entrance

Signs asking for Respect and Silence on the grounds.

Museum of artifacts out of one of the surviving barracks.

The tower behind the barbed wire is a monument to the dead.

Barbed wire. The camp was evacuated in late Fall of 1945 with the remaining survivors shipped off to Dachau and Allach. In the previous September of 1945 142 members of the Alsace Resistance and Allied Resistance were executed. In all 52000 prisoners were housed at Struthof.

The barren plots of land were where prisoner barracks stood.

View from inside the camp at the gates.

Guard towers

One of the remaining hangman's nooses.

Prison barracks

Crematorium

view from the bottom. Each terrace housed a barrack for prisoners, which at its peak held 650-750 prisoners in each building. The population at its highest was 7000 deportees, three times the limit for each housing.

French Remembering those executed for the Nazi Cause

Ossa Humiliata: The bones will Rejoice.
This was the ash pit where the cremated remains of 22,000 Struthof prisoners were buried.
Considering a man's cremated remains weigh approximately 8lbs this is not unfeasible for so many to be placed here.

There are no words

List of French Resistance

Execution Room. Prisoners were shot once in the head. The floor was tilted to ease in drainage.

The 'guinea pig' room where prisoners were experimented on. Three Nazi scientists were stationed here, one of whom was up for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1936. Their experiments were on gassing techniques and typhus injections and sterilization. Most died of the experiments.

'Guinea pig' barracks...

There are no words

Urns for cremated remains for German soldiers who died. These were returned home to their families.

Floor drain

Tools of the crematorium

My son

People have drawn hearts and left handprints in the dust on the oven.

Shoes

Prison barracks. This was where those who were interned and had fallen out of favor by the Nazi camp leadership were imprisoned.

Degrees of Punishment

Prugelbock

My daughter

Prison cell doors. I assume the small square hole cut in the stucco was for meals

German schoolgirls who were laughing and screaming in the barracks. I wanted them to know we noticed them. One of the girls (behind the blond in the white tank top) threw me a Nazi salute as we left. At first this REALLY pissed me off, but throughout the day I remembered they're in high school and the majority of the schoolchildren were quiet.

Museum Exhibit

Nazi soldier canteen

Oh I think this was a genealogical study on a Nazi officer to determine if he was of 'pure Aryan blood'. So much effort to put into so much hate.

Prisoners garb what they left in and what they arrived in

Pencil sketch of a prisoner

Trumpet case for a prisoner who performed in the camps

Stunning artwork

Natzweiler Camps in France

Legacy

Gas as a final solution

Gas masks used in experiments at Struthof

Doctor who performed typhus experiments

Aerial view of Struthof in 1950

Charles De Gaulle, President of France during World War II

Lantern lit for the prisoners

Basement Exhibit. Allied Artwork and News Footage

Potato Cellar dug into the basement of one of the buildings. The prisoners were put to work immediately into digging this immense cavern for 'storing potatoes'...it was never used for anything.

top to bottom: Hitler and his military, Russian being executed (notice the young girl's expression-what must she have thought?) Auschwitz children and Allied soldier discovering a German camp 1945.