The liberation of the Natzweiler-Struthof Concentration Camp, 25 November 1944

Gateway and memorial. © CERD

In the Vosges mountains of Alsace, 800 metres up, word of the D-Day Landings soon reached the deportees of the only concentration camp on French soil, Konzentrationslager (KZ) Natzweiler-Struthof, giving them renewed hope. However, in late August 1944, refusing to allow the 6 000 remaining deportees to be freed, the SS received orders to transfer them to Germany. The camp was rapidly evacuated and the last 16 detainees departed on 22 November. Entirely rebuilt east of the Rhine, “Natzweiler concentration camp” would go on operating for several long months until its “true end” in March-April 1945.

On 23 November 1944, the capital of Alsace fell into Allied hands. Two days later, on the 25th, US soldiers headed towards the village of Natzweiler. Two miles away, believing it to be a forest rangers’ camp at first, the GIs stumbled upon what turned out to be the first concentration camp in Western Europe, completely empty. Four months earlier, much further east, the Red Army had discovered the Lublin-Majdanek camp.

25 November each year represents an important date in commemorations linked to the history of this concentration camp. At 2.30 pm on 25 November 2021, 80 students from Collège Anatole France in Bethoncourt (Doubs) laid a symbolic wreath before the camp’s gateway, as part of a visit to the European Centre for Resistance Deportees.

Find out more:

• The history of the camp
• An article by Guillaume d’Andlau, director of the European Centre for Resistance Deportees, Struthof, on the site’s Franco-German identity
• Website of the European Centre for Resistance Deportees