HISTORY

Photo: Amit Jerusalem Yad Vashem

Photo: Niederländisches Institut für Kriegsdokumentation via KZ- Gedenkstätte Flossenbürg

A picture of Flossenbürg inmates waiting for food to be served, the ruins of the castle

can be seen in the background. The photograph was taken in approximately 1942.

For eight years, the castle became the backdrop for the inhuman suffering and death

of thousands of people.

Shot of the Flossenbürg concentration camp quarters with the ruins

of the castle in the background.

workers, including construction apprentices,

were in daily contact with them.

The command staff of the Flossenbürg

concentration camp consisted of about 90

SS members. The SS-Totenkopf guard units

numbered about 300 men in the spring of 1940.

During the building of the 94 sub-camps that

fell under Flossenbürg, their number grew to

about 2,500 men and 500 women by 1945. After

the beginning of the war, some SS members

went to the front, so the command deployed

older men, Luftwaffe soldiers, members of

other nations and women as guards to the

concentration camps. There any attempt to

escape was punishable by death, and in 1941

mass executions began to take place.

Between 1938 and 1945, some 84,000 men and

16,000 women from more than 30 countries were

imprisoned in the Flossenbürg concentration

camp and its sub-camps, most of them Jews

from occupied Europe, Soviet prisoners of war,

and, after the Warsaw Uprising, a large number

of captured Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa)

fighters. During the war, members of the SS

were involved in more than 2,500 murders in

Flossenbürg and its sub-camps. After the war

most SSguards received no or little punishment

for their crimes in Flossenbürg , often due to

insufficient evidence or lack of direct witnesses

to the murders.

The Flossenbürg concentration camp was

unfortunately a significant economic factor in

the region during the war. A number of local

companies became its suppliers, and many of

them borrowed prisoners for forced labour,

mainly of a craft and agricultural nature.

From 1942 onwards, prisoners were used

in this way in the weapons industry, and in

early 1943 a Messerschmitt factory based in

Regensburg set up production facilities right on

the concentration camp site. By the end of the

war, 5,000 prisoners were already working in

Photo: Niederländisches Institut für Kriegsdokumentation via KZ- Gedenkstätte Flossenbürg

This photograph, probably taken in 1942, shows the slave

labour of inmates in the stone quarry on the Flossenbürg

site. During twelve-hour shifts in harsh conditions, many lost

their lives due to exhaustion, accidents or execution.

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INFO Eduard

September 2023