In every Nazi concentration camp the population was deliberately mixed, with varying nationalities and reasons for internment. The point was to avoid any solidarity among prisoners in one way or another. Nevertheless, due to circumstances the mixture was never quite the same from one camp to another, and the relationships established among the different groups was peculiar to each camp. The following information concerns Dora and the annex camps and Kommandos, until the end of 1944—i.e., prior to the arrival of prisoners evacuated from Auschwitz and Gross Rosen.
In order to understand the position of each of the populations involved, we must refer to the structure of Europe at the end of 1943, which was dominated by Nazi Germany. It comprised three main groups: 1. The German Reich with its two dependent territories: the Bohemian-Moravian protectorate and the General Government of Poland. 2. The conquered territories of the Soviet Union that were administered by the Reich commissariats of Ostland and the Ukraine. 3. The occupied countries of Western Europe: France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway, and Italy.
We can leave aside the Allied countries or vassal states of Central Europe and the Balkans, which had few nationals at Dora, except for the Hungarian Jews who, in any case, formed a special community.
In this chapter we will discuss the Germans and those assimilated to Germans, the Czechs and the Poles; then Russians, Ukrainians, and other Soviet peoples; and finally the French, the Belgians and the Dutch, the Italians, and the Slovenians. The last paragraphs will be devoted to the Hungarian Jews and the German Gypsies.
Hitler’s Germany was called the Deutsches Reich, which, since 1871, had already been the name, first of the Hohenzollern Empire, and second, of the Weimar Republic.1 Its citizens were therefore Reichsdeutsche—i.e., Germans of the Reich. This included Germans prior to 1938 as well as Austrians, Germans from Sudetenland, Memel, and Danzig, and all the German-speaking people of Bohemia-Moravia and the former Poland. In some camps, such as Dachau, one might encounter political prisoners—monarchists or social democrats—who called themselves Austrians. That was not the case at Dora.
The SS were Reichsdeutsche regardless of their origin. Among them were also Volksdeutsche, German nationals of foreign countries who could not be in the Wehrmacht and therefore joined the SS. They came from Slovakia, Hungary, Romania (“Saxons” from South Transylvania or “Swabs” from Banat). The “Romanian” SS who appear in the accounts were Volksdeutsche from Romania (Hermann Oberth, one of the rocket pioneers [see chapter 2], who spent several years at Peenemünde, was also one). The term was used at least for a while to refer to natives of Alsace-Lorraine, Luxembourg, and Belgians from Eupen and Malmédy, before they were drafted “in spite of ourselves” in the German army.
The Germans were the only prisoners whose status was differentiated by the color of their triangles. In Dora there were hardly any except Greens (“common-law” prisoners), who accounted for the great majority, and Reds, the political prisoners.
The Greens belonged to two categories, which are defined by Kogon.2 “The Gestapo distinguished between the ‘BV prisoners’ who had already been punished for criminal acts, and the ‘SV prisoners’ who were still purging their punishment. The first were said to be ‘held preventively for a temporary period’ (Befristete Vorbeugungshäftlinge), from which was derived the general expression, using the same initials, of ‘professional criminals’ (Berufsverbrecher). The second were called Sicherungsverwarte or ‘prisoners for security reasons.’ ” (Some people believed that SV meant Schwerverbrecher or “dangerous criminals.”) The testimonies of other prisoners hardly make any distinction between these two categories, or with the rare “black triangles,” who were usually pimps. The whole range of criminals could be found there, from bloodthirsty brutes to peaceful crooks.
The Reds were not only in the minority; as Langbein remarked, “At Dora there must have been barely 40 politically-aware Germans and hundreds of criminals.” The fact that the political prisoners usually held important positions corresponded to a deliberate choice on the part of the camp commander, who was eager to keep peace in a camp linked to a secret weapons factory. As a result, in annex camps such as Ellrich, the least recommendable Greens held sway to the misfortune of the others.
Among the Reds, the French prisoners met a number of former members of the French Foreign Legion, who had been imprisoned for that reason. Their behavior toward the French was highly variable.
The Czechs became part of the Deutsches Reich when the Bohemian-Moravian protectorate was proclaimed on March 15, 1939. Hence the Czech prisoners wearing a red triangle with a T could belong to any category, including that of common-law prisoners. There were a number of these at Dora, but the vast majority of Czechs were former partisans. Despite the traditionally large size of their party, there were not many Czech communists at Dora; they stayed, well organized, at Buchenwald.
After the events of 1938–39, the Czechs were politically extremely hostile to the Germans, a fact that they later demonstrated by expelling the German-speaking population from the Czech Republic in 1945–46. Yet they were closely linked from a cultural standpoint, as Bohemia and Moravia had belonged for centuries to the Holy Roman Empire and then to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Most Czechs at Dora spoke German and were well educated, which ensured them secretarial positions both in the camp and in the factory and a role at the Revier. It is hard to estimate the pace of their arrival at Buchenwald, and then at Dora, as none of the convoys—this is inside the Reich, remember—were readily identifiable. We know from the testimony of Benès3 and Litomisky4 cited previously that Czech prisoners arrived at Dora in the very first weeks, after a difficult stay at Auschwitz. Another large group was present when the camp was built. Some could also be found at Ellrich.
Although they were Slavs, the Czechs were not treated like the Poles and the Russians. There were no Czech prisoners of war, since there had been no war against them. The Czechs had been conscripted for compulsory labor and there were Czechs among the free workers who became the “Wifos” of the Dora Tunnel. In some ways their discipline and taste for organization were surprising in a concentration camp world, and they were rewarded for it by earning a certain amount of esteem. As we saw earlier, Litomisky explained with pride how he had overseen the distribution of food in a tunnel block, and Benès mocked so-called German organization in laying the tracks for tunnel B.
After the Austrians in 1938 and the Czechs in March 1939, the Poles appeared in the camps at the end of 1939. Once Warsaw had capitulated on September 27, the German authorities were determined both to reduce the territory that would keep the name of Poland and to deprive the Polish people of their traditional elite. In any case the Soviet Union annexed the eastern part of the country, which was divided up between Ukraine and Belorussia, and transferred the Polish population of these territories to Siberia and Kazakhstan. The Russian massacre of Polish officers at Katyn took place in the spring of 1940.
The German portion of Poland was itself cut in half. One part was directly attached to the Deutsches Reich with a view to its Germanization. Once again Poznan became Posen, and it was there in the setting of the castle that Himmler made his great speeches. Oswiecim, in Upper Silesia, became Auschwitz, and a camp was set up there in May 1940, whose first occupants along with Germans were Poles. The other part formed the General Government of Poland, attached to the Reich and placed under its direct administration. The General Government had its headquarters in Krakow; Warsaw was in ruins. Polish prisoners of war were distributed throughout Germany, along with millions of Polish civilian workers, usually forced laborers. Above all, the nation’s managers, functionaries, academics, and officers were sent to camps such as Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen.
In 1943–45 a number of Poles arrived at Dora. Quite often they were civilian workers who had been sanctioned under various pretexts. There was also a diverse group of delinquents, and the number of sentences requiring internment in a camp was lower for the Poles than for the Germans or the Czechs. Generally speaking, the Poles at Dora formed a proletariat deprived of practically any national political or cultural framework. A number of them spoke German, which earned them positions as Kapos and even as block leaders, especially if they were delinquents linked to their German counterparts. Others were Vorarbeiter, Stubendienst, or nurses. They did not have a good reputation; in fact, they were often detested by Western prisoners, particularly the French.
Two accounts seek to give a better image of the Poles at Dora, relying on limited, but real, examples. The first is from J. B. de Korwin-Krokowski5 on the one hand, an officer who managed to leave Poland in 1939, fought in France in 1940, and was arrested as a Resistance fighter in December 1943. The second is from Tadek Patzer, arrested in Poland in 1941 and transferred from Auschwitz to Dora in 1943. Both of them, who were quite familiar with camp life, corresponded after the war with Langbein, who refers several times to their accounts.
The political vicissitudes of Poland, which was divided until 1918 among Germany, Austria, and Russia, were such that problems of nationality were sometimes difficult to sort out. Krokowski commented about a certain Janek, Stubendienst in Block 8, that he was “more Ukrainian than Polish.” No doubt he had originated in Eastern Galicia, as we shall see later. He also mentioned the case of Hans Kaczmarek, who was a German political prisoner (communist) at Dora, and after the war was decorated with the highest Polish military distinction for his resistance action at Dora. In fact, the Polish partisans imprisoned at Dora claimed allegiance to the Polish government in London, and the communists were in the minority.
A particularly large number of prisoners at Dora came from the Soviet Union. They arrived in two ways. The first were interned in Ukraine and deported to Buchenwald when Soviet troops began reconquering the territory, as we saw earlier. The others were already prisoners of war or civilian laborers in Germany and were transferred to the concentration camps with or without reason.
We know that the young Ukrainians, organized into groups of looters, were preying on others during the first few months at Dora, inside the tunnel as well as outside. Kogon evokes those that remained at Buchenwald as follows:6 “Whereas the prisoners of war formed well-disciplined teams who were very skillful, as well as fair, in protecting their collective interests, the mass of Ukrainians made up a crew that is difficult to describe. In the beginning, they were so favored by their German comrades that it was almost impossible to make the slightest complaint against a ‘Russian.’ Soon, however, due to their insolence, laziness and the lack of camaraderie among many of them, the situation was rapidly reversed, and they could no longer hope to obtain important positions.” Other authors show the perplexity of the German communists in the face of this unforeseen side of the new “homo sovieticus.”
Until the spring of 1942 the Germans were hardly concerned about using the manpower constituted by Soviet prisoners of war, whom they massacred or left to die. Civilians in the occupied countries were at the time simply conscripted on the spot by military authorities. The attitude of the Germans changed in 1942 when they had to mobilize fresh troops to offset their losses on the Eastern Front and were starting to encounter a lack of manpower in Germany. Sauckel was in charge of recruiting laborers from the occupied countries, particularly in the East. Millions of Ostarbeiter, both men and women, were thus transferred to highly varied jobs. When the SS, under the impetus of authorities such as Kammler, needed to extend its hold over economic life, the Gestapo had only to arrest a suitable number of Ostarbeiter and dress them in prison stripes—an operation known as Einkleidung.
It was above all in 1944 that these new prisoners arrived at Dora; they were either former prisoners of war or Ostarbeiter and belonged to all the nationalities of the Soviet Union: Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, and others. Recently Joseph Béninger7 and the author, in discussing their experiences of the Scherer Kommando, evoked the memory of one of their friends, a young Bachkir who had been a film projectionist and had read (in Russian translations, of course) the works of Balzac, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and Jules Verne. Miller says the same thing in talking about his friend Vladimir at Ellrich: “Like all of his compatriots, he had read much of our literature, and never ceased expressing his admiration for Victor Hugo, Balzac and Alexandre Dumas. There was not a village in the USSR where the young people were not familiar with the father of The Three Musketeers and admired him, he explained.”8
There were some Estonians, Letts, and Lithuanians, but generally most residents of the Ostland were sent to the Stutthof camp near Danzig. The Soviet prisoners were primarily Russian and Ukrainian. The difference between them was clear-cut in the beginning but faded with time. In all probability the other prisoners had trouble distinguishing them. François Heumann,9 who was more familiar than others with Slavic languages, notes that the much-discussed Ukrainians spoke Russian, whereas he had heard a group of Ostarbeiter speaking Ukrainian in Metz before his arrest. Indeed, the Ukrainians at Dora, who were deported from Dnepropetrovsk, east of Ukraine, came from a region in which Russian was commonly spoken—and still is today—whereas the Ostarbeiter who were transplanted to Metz no doubt came from the western part of Ukraine where only Ukrainian was—and is—used.
We should add that Eastern Galicia, which passed from Polish hands to those of the Soviet Union in 1939–41, had by this time been incorporated into the General Government of Poland and thus into the Reich, even though its population was mainly Ukrainian since the Poles had been transferred to the interior of the Soviet Union. In the face of such confusion, even Krokowski limits himself to describing Janek as Polish-Ukrainian. One final point that is not without interest: the SS recruited black-uniformed Ukrainian militiamen in this region, who became guards at concentration camps. On occasion guards and prisoners would exchange a few words in Ukrainian in the Kommandos outside.
A large number of these Russian-Ukrainians were restricted to excavation works and transport at Dora as well as at Ellrich, Harzungen, and Wieda. At Peenemünde and Wizernes the Ostarbeiter made up the basic workforce. Others at the camp were Stubendienst or Kalfaktor (orderlies) in the Revier. Still others, more rarely, had jobs as “specialists” in the tunnel, such as the young Bachkir.
The prisoners of other nationalities suspected the existence of an internal organization within this community, with leaders whose authority was recognized. The arrests and hangings during the final weeks were, as will be seen, a serious blow to the group. After the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, the two leaders who appeared as representatives of the Soviets were Lt. Col. Alexander Manko from Leningrad and Capt. Mikhail Piskunov of Minsk.
Most of the deportations from France to Germany, aside from those of the Jews deported as such, originated at the camp of Compiègne. It was a complex of French military buildings that had been installed in Royallieu, south of the town. The buildings were used by the Germans starting in 1940, first as a prisoner-of-war camp (Frontstalag 122), and then as an internment camp, with one part of the buildings reserved for American nationals and the other for French (or foreigners in France) arrested by the German services.
The latter stayed at Compiègne camp for varying lengths of time, but it usually served only as a transit camp. The internees came from all the German prisons of France and were grouped together there while awaiting the next convoy leaving from the Compiègne train station for one of the large concentration camps in Germany. Jews were deported from another camp, located in Drancy, northeast of Paris. The prisoners were not all deported from Compiègne to the major camps. Some were sent to German prisons after passing through special camps such as Hinzert, near Trier, or Neuenbremme, south of Saarbrücken. This latter group of deportees generally belonged to the category “NN,” i.e., they were the subject of a decree of December 7, 1941, concerning some of the Resistance fighters arrested in the occupied countries in the West. No one was to know what happened to them, and they were unable to write about their news. NN stood for Nacht und Nebel (“night and fog”). Contrary to what Alain Resnais’s film suggests, this regime did not concern all camp prisoners.
The aforementioned organization underwent two changes in 1943–45. Some NN prisoners were transferred from prisons to camps, such as Neuengamme or Gross Rosen. In the later period Compiègne was no longer the sole departure point. Convoys were organized in August 1944 in various other train stations in France.
As we mentioned earlier in chapter 3, all the deportation convoys that left from Compiègne between June 1943 and January 1944 went to Buchenwald, and a large proportion of the French prisoners involved were transferred from there to Dora between September 1943 and March 1944. After that the distribution changed: convoys from France and “transport” from Buchenwald both had more varied destinations.
From April to August 1944, Buchenwald and Neuengamme received the greatest number of deportees, ahead of Mauthausen and Dachau. Of the five convoys that arrived at Buchenwald, two in particular were used to populate the camps of Ellrich, Harzungen, and Wieda; the deportees in the other convoys were in large part transferred to Flossenbürg or into one of the increasing number of Kommandos. In all, only a small percentage of newcomers were assigned definitively to Dora itself. The first of the convoys in question left Compiègne on May 12, 1944, and arrived in Buchenwald on May 14. The corresponding matriculation numbers ranged from “50,000” to “53,000.” Among the deportees were victims of the roundup, particularly at Saint-Claude on April 9, Easter Sunday. The transfer to Wieda or Harzungen took place in early June. The other convoy is called the “77,000”s, as the matriculation numbers went from “76,000” to “78,000.” This convoy left from the Pantin train station on August 15, 1944, with deportees taken, in particular, from Fresnes prison. It arrived in Buchenwald on August 20, and the transport to Dora took place in late August or early September. Most of the prisoners involved were quickly transferred to Ellrich.
Aside from the transport corresponding to convoys from France, French prisoners with quite varied matriculation numbers were sent from Buchenwald to Dora in small groups, especially after the August 24, 1944, bombing that destroyed the Gustloff factory.
The French represented a large percentage of the population of Dora, Ellrich, Harzungen, and Wieda, but they did not form a homogeneous group. They came from every region and had been arrested under different circumstances and at different times.
In 1943, among the prisoners were numerous frontaliers, i.e., those who had tried to cross the Pyrenees to reach North Africa. These included students like Raoul-Duval, Dutillieux, and Soubirous, and military men like Demuyter. Dora also had many graduates of the officers’ academy of Saint-Cyr, some frontaliers and others not. Bernard d’Astorg and Xavier Lamothe were among the “20,000”s, Louis Mével and Jean Mialet among the “21,000”s, André Rogerie among the “31,000”s, Luc Clairin and René Haentjens among the “38,000”s, Guy Tartinville among the “40,000”s, Michel Delaval and Louis Gamier among the “44,000”s, Roger Couëtdic and Jean de Sesmaisons among the “49,000”s, and Pierre Dejussieu among the “77,000”s.
Beginning in 1943 the number of Resistance fighters who were arrested increased, along with the number of roundups. Among those who arrived at Dora there was only a very small group of active communists while the others remained at Buchenwald when they were detected by the “Red” leaders in the camp who tried their best to spare them bad “transports.” In general, noncommunist Resistance leaders in the three convoys of January 1944, whether members of Parliament or not, also remained at Buchenwald. It was not until September 1944, amid the disorder following the bombing, that such leaders belonging to the “77,000” convoy were sent on to Dora. Yet this did not suffice to give a real structure to the French group from a political standpoint.
Small, very lively units were formed, however, mainly out of the work Kommandos in the tunnel factory, when their composition remained unchanged. Some groups that were formed in Compiègne subsisted in spite of the difficulties. People from the same area such as those from Saint-Claude also maintained certain ties. That was the case of the three “Vendéens,” Maurice de la Pintière, Xavier de Lisle, and Robert de Lépinay, who were arrested together while trying to get across the Pyrenees. Lépinay died in March 1944, before leaving for Bergen-Belsen.10
Indeed, the French were not all political prisoners, despite the red triangle with an “F” that they were all required to wear. Some of them, a very small number incidentally, had been arrested in France for common-law violations affecting the German authorities: theft, swindling, etc. French criminals or delinquents who were judged by French courts, however, remained imprisoned in France. Most of the time these prisoners behaved in the camp like the rest of their fellow Frenchmen, and some were even exemplary.
Little mention is made of them in the accounts. The best accounts were given by Max Dutillieux of three prisoners in the Rossla Kommando, whom we will encounter in the next chapter. In the Dora Tunnel, Francis Finelli, a high-ranking civil servant in the Interior Ministry, had the chance to chat in Corsican in a neighboring hall with a certain Martin Colonna. While inspecting a prison after the war, he found him again: he had “fallen again,” according to his own expression. Other French prisoners were interned in concentration camps for offenses committed in Germany. It was mainly in Dachau that Edmond Michelet ran into them when he arrived in the camp.
At Buchenwald and Dora, a significant number of prisoners came from Alsace-Lorraine. They ended up there in two ways: either they were professors and students from the University of Strasbourg, which had retreated to Clermont-Ferrand in 1939, or they were Alsatians or Mosellians who had been arrested at home since Alsace and Lorraine had been annexed by Germany in 1940.
After occupying the “free zone,” the German authorities were not pleased at the prospect of having the University of Strasbourg continue in Clermont-Ferrand. An initial roundup took place on June 25, 1943, another on November 25, 1943, and isolated arrests continued during the first few months of 1944. Thus Jean-Pierre Ebel, Étienne Eckert, Robert Gandar, André Gérard, Eugène Greff, Paul Hagenmuller, Jean Lassus, André Lobstein, and François Schwertz arrived sooner or later at Dora. Charles Sadron, a native of the Berry region and a professor at that university, was also arrested on November 25, 1943. They were all deported as French prisoners after spending some time, like all the others, in Compiègne.
From the German point of view, the situation of the Alsatians and Mosellians who were arrested at home was quite different. Though not Reichsdeutsche, they were at least Volksdeutsche. In the camps, most of them ended up being recognized as French with an F on their triangle. Similarly, natives of Luxembourg were often able to keep their identity. Natives of Lorraine, such as Joseph Béninger, François Heumann and Albert Schmitt, went through the Struthof camp before being given identity numbers at Buchenwald among the “38,000”s and sent to Dora in late December 1943.
The Struthof camp was not, however, reserved for prisoners from Alsace-Lorraine. It was not located in France, any more than Auschwitz was located in Poland or Mauthausen in Austria. According to the delimitation of the period, all these camps were in the Deutsches Reich. Struthof was set high up in the Vosges Mountains of Alsace. For the SS it was the Natzweiler camp, built by German and Polish prisoners in 1941. Kramer was commander of the camp for a long time, before going to Auschwitz and then Bergen-Belsen, where he was stationed in 1945 at the time of the evacuations. For a while Fritz Pröll was a nurse there before coming to Dora. Plaza was the camp’s SS doctor between the beginnings of Dora and Ohrdruf. It was a very harsh camp. As at all the large camps there were outside Kommandos. Some were close by, like Sainte-Mariedes-Mines (then called Markirch). Others were more remote, like Rebstock in the Rhineland, which was working on the vehicles to transport V2s, or those in the Neckar valley where the Kammler Sonderstab had underground tunnels dug, as we shall see in chapter 11.
The prisoners that came through Struthof were of varied nationalities. This was the case of the Slovenians who were sent to Sainte-Marie-des-Mines in particular. There were numerous French prisoners, especially the NN, in the final weeks, when the massacres occurred. The camp, which was evacuated to Dachau in August–September 1944, was not liberated by the Americans until November 23.
There were few Belgians at Dora during the terrible early months. As we saw in chapter 6, there were 15 deaths among them compared to 708 among the French prisoners. No convoys from Belgium arrived before May 8, 1944. The first Belgians who arrived at Dora were already at Buchenwald or were in the convoys from France, or had gone through prisons in Germany.
Four convoys brought deportees from Belgium between May 8 and August 11, 1944.11 Some remained at Buchenwald, at least for a while. The others, who were sent to Mittelraum camps,12 were usually not used in the Dora Tunnel on assembling V2s or V1s. They quickly joined the new underground work sites under Kammler, which will be discussed in part 4. Many of them died. According to later studies, “The mortality rate was higher than average: taking into account those that perished during the evacuations or shortly after their liberation, there were about 1,400 deaths, which corresponded to nearly 55% of the Belgians at Dora-Mittelbau.” The fact of remaining or not remaining at Buchenwald was therefore of great importance, and the conditions governing the choice are still being hotly debated fifty years later.13
The 967 deportees who arrived in Buchenwald on May 8 came from Breendonck, a camp set up in a fort west of Malines that was particularly harsh. They found living conditions at Buchenwald much more bearable than at Breendonck. They were assigned identity numbers in the “48,000” and “49,000” series. In May and June 1944, 502 of them were transferred to Dora, and most of them were quickly assigned to Ellrich. The Breendonck camp, which opened in September 1940, was run like all the other camps in Germany, with an SS commander, Sturmbannführer Philipp Schmitt, and guards who were members of the Flemish SS. The SS from the Walloon Legion of Léon Degrelle were not concerned by this camp. We will talk about the French SS of the Charlemagne Division in chapter 21.
Of the 891 deportees in the May 23 convoy that departed from Brussels, who were given identity numbers in the “54,000” series, 699 were transferred to Dora, and most of them landed in Harzungen on June 10. A third convoy arrived from Brussels on June 20 with 574 deportees (the “60,000”s), and by July, 391 of them were in the Dora complex. The last convoy arrived from Brussels on August 11. Of the 824 deportees, 369, classified among the “75,000”s and “76,000”s, were sent directly to the new Blankenburg camp.
Later, at the time of the evacuation of the eastern camps discussed in chapter 14, numerous Belgian prisoners arrived from Gross Rosen who were NN internees initially sent to the Gross Strehlitz prison in Upper Silesia.
In Belgium as in France, the convoys included some foreigners who had been living in the country. They concerned, moreover, Frenchmen from North Pas-de-Calais, the region then under the control of the Militärbefehlshaber, and the Gestapo in Brussels.
Joseph Woussen,14 born in 1893 and at the time a lieutenant colonel in the Belgian army, arrived at Dora in October 1943 with the number 30060. One of the leaders of the Secret Army, he was arrested in 1942 and spent time in a series of prisons before being sent to Buchenwald. He stayed in the tunnel until April 1944. While in the camp he tried to “visit his fellow Belgians to boost their morale as far as he was able.” One of them added: “His personality, age and experience, perhaps, too, the fact that he was the highest-ranking Belgian officer in the camp, account for the influence he exerted over the other Belgians who saw him as a moral leader in whom they could confide.” Since he could speak German he served as the “public scribe,” writing postcards to the prisoners’ families. He gathered and disseminated news on military events.
He ended up being assigned for many long months to peeling potatoes and was able to supply a few friends. Despite his age and the length of his deportation, he was one of the essential witnesses of the evacuation to Ravensbrück and Malchow.
When he returned to Belgium, General Woussen became president of the Belgian Association of Political Prisoners of Dora and Kommandos, until his death at age 102.
There were never more than a few Dutch prisoners at Dora. They arrived through various itineraries, as two examples illustrate. Doctor Groeneveld was arrested in Paris. Van Dijk, conscripted for compulsory labor, was arrested in Germany while trying to get back to the Netherlands. Thanks to their knowledge of German they often found quite acceptable positions in the factory or the camp. The solidarity in their group was very high.
In September 1943, when the Badoglio government concluded an armistice with the Allies, the Germans disarmed the Italian troops in all of the territories they were able to control, both in Italy itself and in the Balkans. The soldiers were transferred to Germany, and a small proportion of them agreed to continue fighting. Although there was, generally speaking, no resistance, the others were considered as “prisoners of war” and interned in the Stalag.
Between October 14 and November 2, 1943, 748 prisoners were transferred from various Stalag to the Dora camp, where a barracks, Block 18, was reserved for them. They kept their uniforms. They were given their own series of identity numbers, beginning with 01.
Some of them refused to work on rocket production, which they considered contrary to the Geneva Convention of 1929 concerning the protection of prisoners of war. Six were shot to death in early December 1943 in the camp: Emmine Blanchet (0276), Giovanni Scola (0278), Ernesto Moz (0279), Elisio Flamatti (0456), Giuseppe Bacanelli (0457), and Carlo Massoni (0458).
The Italian prisoners of war were not in a privileged situation. They were harshly treated by the Greens and subjected to looting by the young Ukrainians, as noted in chapter 5. Like the Wifos, they gradually melted into the mass of prisoners and could be found at Dora, Ellrich, and Harzungen. In the end, 264 of the 728 prisoners did not make it home.
When we speak of Yugoslavs in 1943–44, it is somewhat difficult to define them after the border upheavals in April 1941 and September 1943.
The Yugoslavia of 1919 was completely shattered by 1941. Parts of the territory went to neighboring countries: northern Slovenia to the German Reich, the Vojvodina to Hungary, Macedonia to Bulgaria, Kosovo to Albania under Italian domination, and southern Slovenia and Dalmatia to Italy. Three entities were created: Serbia under the control of the Germans, Montenegro under an Italian protectorate, and Croatia which also included Bosnia-Herzegovina. Germany dominated the interior part of former Yugoslavia and Italy the coastal area.
In 1943 the Germans replaced the Italians and directly administered southern Slovenia as well as Istria, Trieste, and Frioul within the scope of the Adriatisches Küstenland. The “Yugoslavs” at Dora were former Italian nationals: Slovenians, Croats from Istria and Dalmatia, and Montenegrins. They were differentiated from the Serbs and the Croats. In February 1945 there were thus thirty Serbs, five Croats, and forty-eight Yugoslavs.
The majority of the Yugoslavs were interned in Italy when the Germans occupied the country. They were in a camp in Renicci, near Perugia. On September 23, 1943, they were placed in a transport of 700 people that ended up, by mistake, at a prisoner-of-war camp in Nuremberg. From there they were transferred to the Flossenbürg concentration camp. Then, 506 of them were sent to Buchenwald and given identity numbers in the “32,000” series. Finally, 350 arrived at Dora on October 28.
Other Slovenians, arrested later on, were quarantined in Dachau when they were selected for the Dora factory, as we shall see in the next chapter. To illustrate the complexity of things, which was not new in that part of Europe, it should be mentioned that the former Slovenian prisoners of Dora include two Slovenians from the western part of the country who were at the time Italian prisoners of war and two Slovenians from northern Slovenia, who had refused to be incorporated into the German army. The Slovenians, who are necessarily multilingual, were often assigned to acceptable positions.
When we examine the head count statement regularly drawn up by the SS, we find various nationalities. They were often foreigners arrested in another country, like the two Hungarian students; Peter Gáti and Boehm, who were arrested in France.
One may note that there were few Spaniards. There were, however, many Spanish Republicans in the first convoy from Compiègne in January 1944. Like Jorge Semprun, who arrived with the third convoy, they remained at Buchenwald.
The Hungarian Jews were the last European Jews to be the subject of systematic deportation after the occupation of Hungary by German troops in March 1944. At the time they were supposed to be assigned to armaments factories, after “selection” at Auschwitz.
From 1938 to 1941, Hungary recovered part of the territories it had lost in 1920 through the Trianon Treaty. It added on the southern part of what is now Slovakia, sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, northern Transylvania, and Vojvodina. In these territories there was a large population of Jews who had been Czech, Romanian, or Yugoslav nationals since 1920 and were henceforth considered Hungarian Jews.
The characteristic of the Jews belonging to the Hungarian realm of the nineteenth century was their desire to be assimilated both linguistically and culturally. They spoke Hungarian, except in the northern zones where the rural population was Ukrainian; the Jews in these areas were very religious and spoke Yiddish. This was the case of Elie Wiesel’s family, who came from Sighet, a small town on the northern edge of Transylvania. In the rest of Transylvania, which was Romanian from 1920 to 1940, the Jews belonged to the Hungarian-speaking minority.
It appears that the Jews who arrived at Dora in May–June 1944 were originally from Transylvania. Deportation began in that region because it was the most threatened by the advance of Soviet troops. Others came from sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, such as Theodor Braun, who was arrested in Uzhorod and spoke Czech. During his quarantine in Buchenwald he managed to get himself recognized as a Czech Jew by the camp bureaucracy. At Dora he was a sort of Hungarian-Czech Jew.15
Initially the first Hungarian Jews to arrive at Dora were put to work equipping the camp: carrying barracks components and finishing the roll-call yard. They were brutalized by the SS and the German Greens. They also had their own Kapos, as Mialet and many others have noted. Special harassment was invented for them. François Heumann gave the following account:16 “Inside the camp, the Jewish barracks was specially surrounded by barbed wire; we walked beside them when we came back from work at night. One courtyard was surrounded by barbed wire; in the middle of the courtyard was a post; the courtyard sloped downward. After a day’s labor, the Jews were required to go around this post. The farther they were from the post, the faster they had to walk. One had only to see them to realize that some of them would not come through the ordeal alive.” Spitz also recalled:17 “They were used to clear the camp to allow the construction of new barracks. Most of the time, they had no tools and we saw them dig with their hands around trees to extricate the roots.” After a short stay at Dora these Jews were assigned to Harzungen and Ellrich. That is where the children were eliminated under the conditions we shall see in chapter 12.
Other Hungarian Jews arrived next at Dora from Volkswagen factories in Fallersleben, where they were working to produce V1s. They continued this activity in the Dora Tunnel. Lucien Fayman found survivors from this group in Israel who still spoke Hungarian.18 The other “Hungarian” Jews who remained at Dora, such as Theodor Braun, were assigned to unload trains. Braun, who was still an adolescent and German-speaking, was then employed in the shoe warehouse.
The Hungarian Jews were apparently the only Jews who were sent to Dora to work. Other Jews of various nationalities arrived later in January–February 1945 due to the evacuation of Auschwitz, along with non-Jews, as we shall see in chapter 14.
A small number of French Jews, arrested as Resistance fighters, were not recognized as Jews. Some had false identity papers, which was no doubt the case of a few Jews of other nationalities.
Several hundred Gypsies (Zigeuner) arrived at Dora in 1944 from Auschwitz via Buchenwald. Of German origin, there were many in Block 130. Spitz was Schreiber there, and he liked them.19
“Like everyone, I had certain prejudices about the ‘Roms’ and their reputation as thieves made me somewhat wary of them, but I soon changed my mind. They were a very friendly group. At night, no matter how long the roll call went on, they never went to bed without giving themselves the pleasure of a quick concert. Before going into the Block, they would sit in a circle and sing strange chants in their guttural tongue, using their overturned mess tins as tambourines.
“One day, they all left in a transport to Ellrich.” Others were taken to Harzungen, where they made up 12 percent of the prisoner population in December 1944. In both Harzungen and Ellrich they took advantage of their knowledge of German to become frequently associated with the Greens, and they were not always judged favorably by prisoners of other nationalities.