Flossenbürg concentration camp

Flossenbürg concentration camp was a German prison constructed in 1938 at Flossenbürg, in the Oberpfalz region of Bavaria. During World War II, most of the prisoners sent to Flossenbürg, or its approximate 100 sub-camps, came from the German-occupied eastern territories. The camp's site was selected so that the prisoners could be used as free labor to quarry the granite found in the nearby hills. The prisoners in Flossenbürg were housed in 16 huge wooden barracks, its crematorium was built in a valley directly outside the camp.

By 1945, there were almost 40,000 inmates being held in the Flossenbürg camp system as a whole, including almost 11,000 women. Prisoners were forced to work in the Flossenbürg camp quarry and in armaments-related production. Malnutrition, disease, and exhaustion from hard labor was rampant among the prisoners being held. Combined with the brutality of the guards, this treatment was the cause of thousands of prisoner deaths.

It is estimated that between April of 1944 and April of 1945, more than 1500 death sentences were carried out here. For this purpose, six new gallows hooks were installed. In the last months the rate of daily executions exceeded the capacity of the crematorium. As a solution, the SS began stacking the corpses in piles, dousing them with gasoline, and setting them alight. Incarcerated in what was called the "Bunker," those who had been condemned to death were kept alone in dark cells with no food for days until they were executed. Amongst the Allied military officers executed here were Special Operations Executive agents:

1944:

• Francois Gerard Michel executed between 1-15 of June
• Gustave Daniel Alfred Biéler, executed September 6

As Germany's defeat loomed, a number of the SOE agents who had been tortured repeatedly by the SS in order to extract information, were executed on the same day. The SOE agents hanged on March 29, 1945 were:

• Jack Charles Stanmore Agazarian
• Phillip John Amphlett
• James Frederick Amps
• George William Hedworth Demand
• Roland Dowlen
• Marcel Georges Florent Fox
• Harry Huntington Graham
• Eugene Francis (Levene) Felangue
• James Francis George Menesson
• Brain Dominic Rafferty
• David Whytehead Sibrée
• V. A. Soskice
• Jean Worms

In early April of 1945, as American forces were approaching the camp, the SS executed General Hans Oster, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Dr. Karl Sack, Dr. Theodore Struenck and General Friedrich von Rabenau who were involved in the 1944 Adolf Hitler assassination attempt. They then began the forced evacuation of 22,000 prisoners, leaving behind only those too sick to walk. On the death march to Dachau, SS guards shot any prisoner too sick to keep up. Before they reached Dachau, more than 7,000 prisoners had been shot or had collapsed and died. By the time the U.S. Army 90th Infantry Division liberated Flossenbürg on April 23, 1945 more than 30,000 inmates had been killed.

The Flossenbürg War Crimes Trial began in Dachau, Germany, on June 12, 1946 and came to a conclusion on January 22, 1947. Forty-six former personnel from Flossenbürg concentration camp were tried by an American Military for crimes of murder, torturing, and starving the prisoners in their custody. All but five of the defendants were found guilty, fifteen of whom were condemned to death, eleven received life sentences, and fourteen were jailed for terms of one to thirty years.