Since the end of the Hitlerian Reich, along with the concentration camps that were one of its essential characteristics, literature on the subject has never ceased to grow within Germany itself and in the other countries concerned, in Europe as well as in the United States and Israel. Thus on the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war and the “liberation of the camps,” a number of excellent commemorative works were published, most often in the form of anthologies. This particular study of the Dora camp, however, is of a quite different sort. It is a historical study, written by a historian, who also happens to have been a Häftling, a “prisoner,” in the camp, where his identity was reduced to the number 39570. In undertaking to write this book, I was seeking to meet the expectations of my fellow prisoners, who wanted it to be done by a professional historian.
For a variety of reasons the concentration camp world was not, for many years, systematically studied from a truly historical perspective. In 1945 we were confronted with a previously unknown type of institution—unknown, at any rate, in terms of the extent of its criminal perfection. Its analysis was not made any easier by the mediocrity of information provided by those in charge of the camps themselves—that is, the SS. From 1933 to 1945, everything that had anything to do with the camps was secret, and many of the relevant documents were destroyed during the war’s final weeks.
An essential explanatory role was played, in the first years after the war, by a handful of German and Austrian prisoners who had found themselves assigned to positions in the camps that had enabled them to gain an understanding of the workings of the system and to appreciate the behavior of all those involved, from the wardens to the various categories of prisoners. The writings of Eugen Kogon, Hermann Langbein, and Walter Bartel, in particular, made it possible to interpret both the contents of the remaining documents and the evidence given by the SS in the trials following the war.
The consequence of this absolutely unavoidable procedure was to give a somewhat stereotyped picture of the concentration camp universe—a picture stemming from the experience of the German political prisoners who had spent many long years imprisoned in one of the “big” camps. It was in this way that the specificity of the Shoah came to be inadequately emphasized—although this did not prevent the three above-named authors from proving themselves effective adversaries of attempts at revisionism. In the same way, too little weight was put on the shift in scale that took place in the last two years of the camps’ history, between 1943 and 1945, because of the increase in the number of exterior Kommandos and the considerable growth in the number of prisoners.
Given that the Dora camp itself, including its annexes, was no doubt the most perfected expression of this transformation, it struck me as necessary, having read the testimonies of my fellow French, Belgian, Dutch, Czech, and Slovenian prisoners, to point out clearly the particular characteristics of this period as well as the complexity of what had been observed. My ambition was to replace the somewhat static picture of the concentration camp phenomenon with a narrative that both takes account of the chronology and integrates it into the history of the final period of the Nazi regime, that of its decline and collapse.
As I will explain further along, I have based my work on a large and somewhat eclectic collection of testimonies assembled by the Former Dora Prisoners’ Association. Although it came as no surprise, I was struck by the extreme variety of individual “paths.” While small groups, such as the one to which I belonged, whose stories were more or less the same, did come together, many of the stories are marked by individual incidents. Above all, we all lived in ignorance of what was happening to most of the others. My friends and I scarcely had any idea about what was going on outside of our underground factory. Conversely, many of our fellow prisoners never set foot in the factory.
I was therefore confronted with a collection of texts, all of which referred to a greater or lesser number of incidents that had occurred at given times and places. In isolating the episodes of each of these testimonies, I found myself with dozens of pieces of an enormous puzzle; it was putting them together that enabled me to reconstitute the history of the whole in a coherent way. I was thereby able to do extensive—and generally satisfying—cross-checking between the testimony of witnesses independent of one another. This procedure was only possible through the identification of some five hundred prisoners, witnesses, and witnesses’ partners who were quoted on one or more occasions in clearly determined circumstances.
I now know, with assurance and precision, the sequence of events in the underground factory at Dora and in the neighboring camp, in the annex camps such as Ellrich and Harzungen, in the underground work sites in the Zorge valley, and on the railway work sites in the Helme valley. I know when the most dramatic as well as the calmest periods were, and where they took place. But this history makes sense only when illuminated by the development of the military and political situation in Germany at the time.
Recent historical studies make it possible to identify the series of decisions that determined our fate. The first was to make systematic use of the concentration camp labor force in the arms industry. The second, in application of the first, was to make use of prisoners in the factory at Peenemünde (on the Baltic) in the construction of V2s. The third, following the bombing of Peenemünde, was to transfer V2 production to an underground site in Thuringia, using prisoners alone alongside German civilians. The fourth was to situate German aeronautic production as a whole underground, having prisoners do the necessary digging and construction work.
Thus in late August 1943 the Dora camp was set up in Thuringia at the same time that the Dora “Tunnel” was re-built for the construction of V2s. Large underground or railway work sites were opened in the spring of 1944 in the surrounding area at the same time as the annex camps. Both in the case of the secret weapons—the V2 as well as the Vi—and in the case of the aeronautics industry, we were caught up in a power struggle between the SS and the civil and military technocrats: in other words, between Arms Minister Albert Speer and his engineers, Wehrmacht artillery specialists, and the team of rocket specialists behind Wernher von Braun. In making use of the concentration camp labor force, the SS sought—and to some extent managed—to take control of the Reich’s war industry.
The consequences of this escalation were dramatic for prisoners throughout Germany, but it was the factory in the Dora Tunnel—the sole production site of the V2s, and subsequently of the V1s—that was constantly at the heart of this strife, which was more or less clearly arbitrated by Hitler himself.
In the hierarchy of concentration camps and Kommandos (work details), the Dora camp was the last to be classed as an “autonomous” camp, a “main” camp. Far more recent than the other camps in this category, such as Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald, its importance stems from its association with secret weapons production. Ironically, though, this very association has proved detrimental to its notoriety.
All the other large camps bore unequivocal place names, such as Auschwitz. The Dora camp was situated in a secret region designated by a variety of code names, relatively disconcerting for the uninitiated historian but which wouldn’t have raised many problems for Allied intelligence. Dora was one of these code names—as was Mittelbau, which in the final months designated all of Dora and the adjoining camps. There were thus two names for a single reality, to which circumstances conspired to add a third. When American troops reached the area in April 1945, the vast majority of the prisoners were no longer there, the SS having “evacuated” them in often murderous fashion. What they discovered was a combination of cadavers and near-dead survivors in a Nordhausen barracks. This discovery was to leave an impression, and the subsequent trial of the Dora war criminals came to be referred to as the “Nordhausen Trial.”
These difficulties of terminology could have been overcome were it not for the fact that the very existence of the Dora Tunnel was concealed, as much by the Americans as by the Soviets, who, in their duel for the missile technology, each inherited members of the Peenemünde research team. It was not a problem to acknowledge the role of von Braun and his team; but it was unseemly to recall the Dora Tunnel and its prisoners. And it was largely in reaction against this tendency to consign Dora to oblivion that the camp’s former deportees wanted this book to be written.
In France after the war, associations were created made up of former deportees who had been in the same camps or same Kommandos. With regard to Dora, one association includes former prisoners from Dora, Ellrich, and Harzungen as well as the Kommandos attached to them in the framework of Mittelbau.1 Another association, that of Buchenwald-Dora,2 is made up of former prisoners of Buchenwald and of the Kommandos that depended on Buchenwald—which was the case with Dora in its early days. Certain fellow prisoners are members of both associations, which, as far as the writing of this book was concerned, were never in competition with one another.
The initiative came from Dora-Ellrich, which in the late 1980s set up a historical commission. Its objective was to assemble the greatest number of testimonies, whether in published form, simply put together by their respective authors for distribution among friends and family members, or even just left in manuscript form. A pamphlet brought out in 1989 made it possible to establish an initial schema, which I made use of when I embarked on a study of the history of Dora, following historical research of another nature. From that point on, the various contacts I established with a variety of former prisoners from Dora-Ellrich, Buchenwald-Dora, and the corresponding Belgian association completed my information and enabled me to understand what had taken place in those places I had not experienced personally.
Like so many others in the camps, I had been an ordinary prisoner. As opposed to my father—with whom I was arrested and who was imprisoned at Buchenwald—I had not been a French Résistance leader. I held no position in the camp’s functioning. I had the good fortune to be appointed as an “electrician” in a quality control Kommando in the tunnel factory, along with others as ill qualified for the job as myself, given that I had been a history teacher in the Cambrai high school. I could just as easily have had another fate, and not have lived. Given that I had the capability to write this book, I felt that it was my responsibility to do so, quite simply, in memory of those who did not return. Perhaps the fact of “having been there” enabled me to see it through.
In writing this book, I thought of the readers of today; of my children, and above all of my grandchildren. I wanted to make this period of history, which remains disconcerting for Europeans, intelligible to them. As a historian, I do not personally believe in the lessons of history. But I think that making an effort at lucid analysis of the events of the past is always an excellent exercise—especially when these events happen to have been dramatic, which is the case with Dora. The witnesses I quote have in no way exaggerated. That has alleviated any need for commentary on my part as well as any conclusion. Each reader remains free to draw his or her own.
In the course of the several years it took to prepare and write this book, I very deeply felt the confidence and friendship of my friends from Dora, which was a very great help to me. I am referring to Louis Gamier, to Jean Mialet, and to Jacques Brun, and to the members of the board and historical commission of the Amicale Dora-Ellrich, Yves Béon, André Cardon, Max Dutillieux, Étienne Eckert, Lucien Fayman, Jean Gineston, Étienne Lafond, André Rogerie, Pierre Rozan, Georges Soubirous. I am also referring to the president of the Buchenwald-Dora Association, Guy Ducoloné, and to its general secretary, Jean Cormont, who was himself one of our friends from Dora. I received the same cooperation from the Belgian association,3 from Ernest Abel, Leopold Claessens, Xavier Delogne, Albert Van Hoey, Raymond Wautrecht, and the general secretary, Marie-Claire du Bois de Vroylande, daughter of a prisoner who died at Ellrich.
I must pay very particular homage to the two men, successively in charge of the historical commission, Lucien Fayman and Georges Soubirous. It was they who collected and sorted through the first large collection of testimonies, without which this book could not have been written. And they never ceased to help me thereafter.
I must also pay particular tribute to my Slovenian friend, Milan Filipcic. We are virtually the same age, with only a few days’ difference. We were both young teachers when we met in Ko[mmando] Scherer. He already spoke French. I never got beyond the mere basics of Slovenian. I was thus unable to read the book he published on Dora with the help of his friends. But he kept abreast of my book as I was writing it, and I am happy he was satisfied with it.
I am greatly indebted to Étienne Eckert. Not only did he show me that I had mastered German words—which is now true to some extent—but he never ceased to share with me the discoveries he made in his reading, which were always in keeping with my own curiosities.
Various friends have shown close interest in my work on particular points: André Lobstein with regard to the Revier, Maxime Cottet about Harzungen, Raymond Wautrecht about Harzungen and Oranienburg, Clément-Robert Nicola about Harzungen and the Boelcke Kaserne, Jean-Pierre Couture about Ellrich and the Boelcke Kaserne, Bernard d’Astorg about Bergen-Belsen.
I also took advantage of the friendly assistance of three specialists, Paul Le Goupil, Yves Le Maner, and Joachim Neander. Paul Le Goupil, former prisoner from Buchenwald’s “tattooed convoy” and from the Langenstein Kommando, is remarkably skilled in using archives and always ready to provide assistance. Yves Le Maner, highly qualified teacher at the Saint-Omer high school, is the man behind getting the Wizernes site better known, and is well informed about the history of the V2s and the importance of the Dora Tunnel. In 1997, Joachim Neander defended his doctoral thesis on Mittelbau, and in particular on the April 1945 evacuations.
I was above all concerned not to betray the memory that my closest friends and fellow prisoners had retained of our common experience. Francis Finelli, Pierre Gáti, and Joseph Béninger died before the book was completed. André Fortané, René Bordet, and René Souquet are in agreement with regard to the content, and, perhaps most important, with the tone adopted.
I noticed recently that academics far younger than myself acknowledge the precious help provided by their children in overcoming computer problems. I could not have done this book without a computer, and it was my daughter Caroline who tutored me firmly and patiently.
My friend Anne Le Fur once again helped my son Jean produce original cartographic illustrations, which were truly adapted to the subject.
In the end, we all have to thank my wife for two important reasons. First, for several years running she accepted that the rooms of our house would be overrun, far more than usual, with dossiers and books. Then she was an attentive and demanding reader, tirelessly following all the phases of the work.