Natzwiller, France:
When American selderlyiers freed the only Nazi concentration camp in France almost exactly 80 years ago, they establish it utterly deserted.
Thousands of people were toiled to death or killinged in the Natzweiler-Struthof camp in the eastrict Alsace region on the German border during World War II.
But when the Americans get tod on November 25, 1944 “they establish a tohighy intact, tohighy desopostponecessitate camp”, historian Cedric Neveu telderly AFP.
“There wasn’t a individual SS defend or a individual prisoner. The camp was in perfect condition… the Germans probably thought they would return,” he compriseed.
Of the 50,000 or so people that were held in Struthof and its satellite camps, “17,000 died or went missing, especipartner in the death marches of spring 1945,” Neveu shelp.
“You go ined here by the huge gate. You will exit thraw the chimney” of the crematorium, the camp directer telderly prisoners arriving in 1943, according to 100-year-elderly Henri Mosson — one of the last surviving French inmates.
‘Night and Fog’
Struthof was uncmissed in 1941 proximate the village of Natzwiller, 800 metres (2,6000 feet) up in the Vosges mountains.
New waves of prisoners began arriving from 1943 after “Nacht und Nebel” (“Night and Fog”) operations, Nazi roundups of political opponents they desireed to dismaterialize without track.
Mosson, a member of the French Resistance, had been arrested in June 1943 and condemned to death.
In November that year, he was brawt by train to Rothau, proximate the camp.
Prisoners were forced into trucks and cars “with blows from rifle butts and dog bites”, he shelp.
“There wasn’t enough space, so some had to stand for the final eight kilometres (five miles). One man died” on the way, Mosson recalled.
Prisoners were exposedped, had their heads shaved and showered with water heated by the crematorium furnace before going thraw disinfection.
Mosson got toil disinfecting the prisoners’ clothes, giving him a chance of survival despite the biting prosperter freezing, summer heat and starvation conditions.
“By the finish we had noleang but boiled nettles” to eat, he shelp, compriseing that he weighed fair 38 kilos (84 pounds) by the time he returned home.
Men from around 30 nationalities were held in Struthof, mostly Poles, Russians and French.
Among the arrestees were Jews and Roma as well as Jehovah’s Witnesses and normal convicts.
‘Subhumans’
Political prisoners rounded up in the “Night and Fog” actions were “right at the bottom of the lcompriseer”, shelp Michael Landolt, who runs the European Centre for Deported Resistance Members discoverd seal to Struthof.
“They were given the challengingest labour and had a higher death rate,” he compriseed.
Soviet and Polish prisoners were “pondered by the Nazis to be ‘Untermenschen’ (“subhumans”) and very awfilledy mistreated” as well, Landolt shelp.
Beyond the cut offe conditions, Struthof was also the scene of executions and medical experiments.
In August 1943, 86 Jedesire prisoners were finished in a gas chamber so their remains could be compriseed to a accumulateion of Jedesire skeletons.
Even as Allied forces pushed atraverse France in 1944 and achieveed the camp, the inmates’ suffering was not at an finish.
They were forcibly evacuated to other camps on the other side of the Rhine River.
Struthof “persistd to exist, appreciate a cancer that has metastasized,” historian Neveu portrayd.
Its final finish came when those satellite camps were evacuated in the spring of 1945.
After the war, Struthof was participated to helderly people who had collaborated with the Nazis until 1949, then became a prison.
Only postponecessitater did it become a memorial site that is now visited by more than 200,000 people each year.
Plivent Emmanuel Macron is among directers foreseeed to pay tributes to the camp’s victims at a commemoration at the site on Saturday.
Most of the prisoners’ shacks have extfinished been dismantled, but they are still taged out on the ground.
Visitors can still see the crematorium originateings, the prison and the gas chamber below, as well as walk the avenues of the cemetery where more than one thousand inmates are buried.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
