Struthof — Natzweiler Concentration Camp

In the annexed Alsatian mountains, the SS opened Natzweiler-Struthof in 1941—the only Nazi concentration camp established on French territory. Prisoners quarried pink granite and, from 1943, were subjected to pseudo-medical experiments; 86 Jews were murdered in a gas chamber built here so that their skeletons could form an anatomical 'collection' for a Nazi professor in Strasbourg. Members of the Resistance condemned under the 'Night and Fog' decree were sent here to vanish. Of some 52,000 deportees who passed through Struthof and its sub-camps, around 22,000 died. Evacuated in 1944 before the Allies arrived, the camp is now France's principal memorial to Nazi deportation.