Travel Stories - France

"natzweiler-struthof"

introduction

After some detours we end up in the small French town called "Schirmeck"; it is cold today and it is raining. We read on board on a pole close tot he busstop that the bus will arrive in five minutes and we’ve got the feeling that this must be our lucky day in France. But all so many times in France it’s just doesn’t show up. A bit annoyed I walk into the bus station and try to persuade the man to come and look at the post, and he tries to help us out. This afternoon there will be a bus he’s trying to explain to us and we walk into the village disappointed to find a place where we can warm up because it is 4 degrees today! There is a small market in this totally non touristy village and we accidentally open a door of a busy, cozy bodega where we order a menu of the day for a reasonable price that tastes great as well. We like it so much in this original French grand café that we even decide to order wine where the atmosphere is authentic. Ready for a new challenge we walk back to the bus stop but again no bus. What do we do? Walking or hitchhiking? A car stops and decides to give us a lift.We’re on our way.

The French "Konzentrationslager"

We sit in the car from the guy that picked us up and look at each other; where are we going? It’s a winding road up the mountain that lasts and lasts and are happy that we didn’t start to walk up this steep hill. Later we read that the prisoners of the camp often had to walk this way since the train arrived just like now in Rothau, in the valley! At a parking lot next to the camp, high on the mountain we stop and get out while the wind is blowing like crazy here. It is extremely cold. We rush to the big new building in where we buy a ticket and we try in vain to place our big bags here. The gate is like we are entering an amusement-park but we know that will not bet he case. "Natzweiler-Strutthof" labor camp was a terrible place for working in the quarries for the German buildings in the new built cities. From the top of the mountain we have a good overview of what the camp looked like and how cold it must have been here without food, clothes and dead tired of the excessive work. The camp made its fame right: mist and darkness were regular guests here. A French commemorative book mentions that in the long winters an ice-cold cutting northeast wind was blowing, which in addition to fog also brought rain and snow storms. Even in May it could still snow there. That cold was seen by prisoners as a greater torment than hunger; unlike hunger, you could not forget cold. Among us we see different levels, where all barracks were during WW2. Now there are four left, all in dark blue paint and we go quickly enter the first because it is cold.

NATZWEILER-STRUTHOF (I):

Introduction and construction:

At the re-annexation of France in 1940, Germany immediately declared French Alsace to German territory with the mandatory German language and German laws. On April 21, 1941, Himmler had the concentration camp, "Natzweiler - Struthof" (near the French town "Natzwiller"), opened. It was a main camp with 70 smaller annex-camps in the area around it far away from the inhabited world which was exactly the intention. This remote emptiness at 800 meters height gave many prisoners a sense of being away and abondonded by everything and everybody. Natzweiler-Struthof was the only German concentration camp on French soil. Between 1941 and the German evacuation in September 1944, a total of nearly 52,000 prisoners of all nationalities were staying in the main- and/or in the smaller camps, of whom only 30,000 would survive and the war. Twenty-two thousand of them died in the camps in Alsace. Normally "Natzweiler - Struthof" was built for the accommodation of some 2,000 forced laborers at the same time, who had to cut into granite in the quarries above the camp. But there were times when the camp had about 7,000 residents at a time, and that the prisoners had to share a barrack, intended for 250 people, with 750 people. At the end of 1941 four barracks were completed in Natzweiler, in March 1942 there were seven. In the end of the war, they were seventeen, fourteen for prisoners and three for the kitchen, the crematorium and the prison.

Granite:

Many people who stayed in the Natzweiler-camp have died as a result of wha the Germans named “the Vernichtung durch Arbeit” (destructed due to working). Notorious was working in the quarry at some distance from the camp, where red granite was mined for building and sculptures of the Reich. With that granite, Albert Speer was able to realize the new capital of the Third Reich, Germania. The quarry was operated by the German company DEST (Deutche Erd- und Steinwerke); the beautiful granite was one of the reasons why this place was chosen to build a concentration camp. The prisoners had to dig tunnelsand there were deep caverns in which the stone was pulverized by the construction of roads. It was heavy, unhealthy labor. In the “Steinbruch” many died - from exhaustion or because they were beaten to death by the SS. At the same time, salvation stories went around in and about the quarries of men who thanked their lives to another who secretly took over a heavy burden. Natzweiler was not a death camp where the prisoners were systematically gassed after selection. The corpses and body parts here were intended for the anatomical museum that the Nazis wanted to have for decorating at the medical faculty of Strasbourg. In this faculty were also results medical experiments – mainly carried out on “Gypsies” – were gathered. Furthermore, everything happened that you imagine at a concentration camp. Daily, severe assaults, dog bites, hunger, hard labor, torture and fusillades.

the visit

Unfortunately, most of the explanation is in French even though we get an idea of what happened here. A couple of schoolkids run around and are filling out a questionnaire for school or so. When we get outside, we walk by the stairs at the side of the camp where watch towers and barbed wire have been installed to the lower levels via the square where once the appel was kept. The crematorium is built in one of the lower barracks where the oven is still standing. Here also the medical experiments were carried out and especially the blood sample and drainage are impressive to see. In the last barrack is the cell block; these are so small that you could not sit or stand. There were once 15 wooden barracks, two of which were also built of concrete and cement. Those concrete structures were the prison cell barrack and the crematorium. We read that around the year 1954 the wooden barracks began to collapse and something had to be done. Later two of them have been renovated; the kitchen bar at the top of the slope, and the first barrack at the left at the entrance. Outside the camp is an ash mountain and then you walk into the surrounding forest. We ask when we encounter somebody who is working here where the prisoners worked in the quarry and the guy points to the other side of the mountain. We decide to leave that because it’s quite a walk he tries to understand. We look at the terrible monument on top of the mountain which functions as a memorial and then decide - mainly because it is so cold - to go back to the valley.

NATZWEILER-STRUTHOF (II):

“Nacht und Nebel” camp:

The concentration camp was designated as, what the German said a "Nacht-und-Nebel" camp which is s..th. like a “night and fog” camp. It means that in Natzweiler camp every right and every law had been taken away from the prisoners. This was not the case in the other camps and NN prisoners enjoyed even less legal protection than 'ordinary' prisoners: according to the internal camp rules. Any SS-er, of which rank could use violence against an NN prisoner. NN's were officially not entitled to medical care; Nor were obituary notifications sent home, which was the prescription for other prisoners. So people suddenly disappeared. The family should never be informed of the death. The prisoners had to do heavy physical work in the nearby quarries, and due to food shortages, the cold and the minimal sanitation, this led to many victims. People were also killed in the gas chamber of the camp and then burned at the crematorium. Twenty-five thousand people died before the end of the war. In all, forty thousand people (from France, the Netherlands, Poland, Norway, Germany and the Soviet Union) were detained in Natzweiler-Struthof. There were some 600 Dutch resistance fighters and England navigators with different political backgrounds. Half of this group did not survive the camp.

Liberation

When the Allied troops approached the Alsace region in the autumn of 1944, the main camp Natzweiler was evacuated by the SS. It was never really liberated, which is one of the reasons why this camp is not so well known to the public. (Another reason is that the camp was not in Germany or Poland). So there’s no liberation-date to celebrate, no pictures with victims. Most prisoners still alive where, when the nazi’s left, put into trains and brought to other camps not liberated; most of them were liberated some nine months later in Austria’s “Mauthausen” or in one of the sub-camps of Natzweiler called “Vaihingen”. Most of the people picked 23 November 1944 as the official liberation day of the Natzweiler camp.

Shock waves

We start to walk down the hill and everytime we hear a car coming up from behind us, we turn around and try to get a lift. After having walked quite a lot ourselves, we are picked up by an older man and I do not quite understand what he says but he does take us back to the village where we came from. We had hoped for another delicious meal, the same we had before but they don’t serve food anymore. We are too late back in what we call “our” cafe. After a glass of wine we walk back to the supermarket and walk towards "Rathau" for a suitable place to camp. The only thing we find is a swampy field and we are forced to go back to "Schirmeck". We cross a bridge over a train track and look at the options for overnight accommodation. We decide to walk up the mountain and to our relief we see a sign with a "tent" on it - in other words, there must be a kind of camping. We come across a woman who’s walking her dog and we ask where the camping is. She tells her the camping doesn’t exist anymore. But she is willing to take us to another one by car in “Rothau”.

The reception is closed but there are several people and we set up our tents between the hedge shrubs that are here and there on the site. When we have eaten our sausages and are sipping our wine we bought, it starts to rain again. The advantage of a campsite is that you can take a hot shower and that's what I do. After that the rain stopped and we finish our wine. It’s time to go into our tents. Unfortunately we are standing next to a railway track and if the train passes through it seems that the whole campsite is lifted and thrown back again. Hopefully these local trains stop riding after midnight.

tips & advice (2010)

Name: camping "Municipal"

Address: Rue Pierre-Marchal, 67570, Rothau

Phone nr. : 03 88 97 07 50

Content:

A very quiet campsite (of the municipality) where you are - with a bit of luck – alone or only with a few people. Do not expect a large swimming pool, games afternoons or a large playing field; it is a small campsite without extensive facilities or maybe this will change in highseason. The shower is hot, the money is collected in the afternoon and the reception is closed most of the time. It is ideal for hikers or like us - in front of the lake -. You have WIFI there but the disadvantage is that a railway line is built next to where a traintrack is next to the campsite.