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Perhaps The source for the fact that the camp held a gas chamber could be provided.
I just wanted to make a few suggestions in order to help with this article. Perhaps you might consider looking into the work and living conditions in the camp. As well the individuals that are mentioned in the post-war trials do not have pages of their own, perhaps you could insert a little note beside their names indicating the role they played in the camp. Also, readers might be interested in the camp as it sits now, the monument and the reasons why the housing units are no longer present. You might also consider looking around the ( http://www.struthof.fr) site, it seems that there is more information that can be found on it. Finally, here are some sites I have come across that might come in handy:(www.holocaustresearchproject.org ),(www.holocaustresearchproject.org ). Michaela.constant ( talk) 22:00, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
source: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=36603
Heinrich Wicker. Untersturmführer (junior officer rank equivalent of 2nd Lt. in US Army)
July 1, 1944: Assigned to KZ (concentration camp) staff at Natzweiler-Struthof.
-- I'm adding the source here, as I'm not sure if it's accepted. Valleyspring ( talk) 02:44, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
Also, the Military Channel did a show 1/22/13 on the subject of the "SOE- Vera Maria Atkins," and they show how she tracked down all but one of 11 of her women agents in the field, whom the nazis had murdered at Natzweiler. They did indicate that there was a gas chamber in the camp. Valleyspring ( talk) 02:47, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Ruehl_(Arzt)
Named as a Dr at this camp. Valleyspring ( talk) 06:29, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
The article refers to a "Gerry-rigged gas chamber". The phrase is "Jury rigged" used by sailors to describe how a partly dismasted boat can be got under way by temporarily rigging a torn sail to a mast stump. It has nothing to do with the WW1 nick-name for German soldiers, commonly called "Jerry", not "Gerry". Historygypsy ( talk) 23:42, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
This article is placed in a Wikipedia category as having weasel worded text since February 2014. I do not see such text identified so it could be changed. If it has already been changed, can that categorization be removed from the article? -- Prairieplant ( talk) 05:19, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
None of the statistics, like number of people in the camp in the years it operated, the documented number who died there, have specific references. Do these numbers refer to the network of smaller camps on either side of the Rhine River, administered with the main camp at Natzweiler? Further, are there sources for these numbers? I added a source for 52,000 people in the camp from a speech by a French government official in 2014, the 70th anniversary of a grisly day at the camp prior to the evacuation. The speech cited the total, but made no comments about the network of camps. The documented number who died, where is it documented? I have seen other numbers in various articles as I learn, and understand, more of what went on in this camp from the other Wikipedia articles, on line sources. It is hard for me to tell if the other sources are more authoritative when their number of deaths does not exactly match what is in this article. I hope someone else knows more about the latest as to counts. For one, the numbers in this article do not match those in the List of Nazi concentration camps (which has an odd source in the column for a reference). Interesting, but not definitive, I think. The other need is for someone who knows how to write a fair use note for this article, as there seems to be one for each English Wikipedia article that uses the photo of cadaver of the man killed in the gas chamber at this camp for that odd Jewish skeleton project. The photo had to be taken at the camp, or in Strasbourg where the bodies were found in 1944. I have not figured out how to write those, or I would do it. -- Prairieplant ( talk) 21:48, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Eighteen people are named as Notable prisoners, all having a link to the English Wikipedia article on the person. In that linked article, their stay at this camp is mentioned. Two of the 18 wrote of their experiences in concentration camps (having survived) and their writings are noted at the end of this article (Bratelli and Ottosen). I do not have those writings at hand, to give a page citation from their writings. There are two names mentioned, in addition to these 18, as being tied to the Great Escape; I do not know who first added that text. There is no English Wikipedia article about those people and no source I could find (there may be a source, I could not find it). Those were marked citation needed. Now the whole section is marked as needing in-line citations. How much more is needed for those 18 whose names have Wikipedia articles linked to them, and sources in those articles? As a side note, this is a longer list than that included the French Wikipedia article, and interesting to note, this article does not include all mentioned in French Wikipedia. -- Prairieplant ( talk) 09:35, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Heinrich Wicker was never a commandant of KZ-Natzweiler, he was an Untersturmführer (a junior officer equivalent of 2nd Lt. in the US Army) and a guard commander at 2 subcamps of Natzweiler (Aussenkommando Cochem and Aussenkommado Mannheim-Sandhofen). He was left in charge of dachau when all of the senior officers fled before the advancing US 42nd Infantry Div. He shouldn't be listed as a commander (commandant) at KZ-Natzweiler in this section, and further, there is no reference for him being killed on the spot. His name should be removed from this section. The list of camp commandants of Natzweiler is: SS.Hauptsturmführer Hans Huttig, SS.Sturmbannführer Egon Zill, SS.Hauptsturmführer Josef Krämer, SS.Sturmbannführer Fritz Hartjenstein and SS.Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Schwarz. If there is no objection, I am going to remove Wicker. I already updated the war crimes section on Hartjenstein and the other 5 people tried at Wuppertalin May 1946 but the other criminal trials and criminals from Natzweiler should be included. N0TABENE ( talk) 04:18, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
Sources indicate that the camp was discovered empty by the First French Army under the command of the Allied 6th Army Group on 23 November 1944, after the transfer of all prisoners and guards to subcamps and then to Dachau beginning in August 1944 ( http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/natzweiler.html). The lede stated that Natzweiler was the first camp liberated by the US Army, while technically true that the 1ere Armee under Gen. de Lattre de Tassigny was under the command and control of the U.S. 6th Army Group, it was the First French under that liberated the camp. However, it was not the first camp to be liberated. On 26 October 1944, Canadian forces liberated the abandoned Herzogenbusch concentration camp ( Vught concentration camp) in the Netherlands ( https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Vught.html), albeit some sources refer to Vught as a transit camp ( http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/vught.html). The lede was corrected accordingly. N0TABENE ( talk) 13:12, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
N0TABENE This seems like another important topic for better agreement with current sources. Who documented the 4,431? There is no citation in this article. Trying to hunt it out, I found that so many sources in English copy this Wikipedia article in whole or in part, thus also containing the phrase 4,431 documented dead, and with no independent source. Is it an old number now replaced by the work of Steegman? Do we change it to 20,000 estimated, citing the museum's web page, and his book? Does that number includes the main camp and all sub-camps, so we can safely leave aside separate estimates for the march out of the subcamps compared to the march out of the main camp? It would be nice to know who is the source of the 4,431 count. Enough for today. -- Prairieplant ( talk) 20:08, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
@ N0TABENE: @ Prairieplant: Unsourced has been deleted because it is based on confusion between two prisoners of same name (husband and wife). Please don't add it back in. I was the one who put it in there in the first place, and I'm taking it out. There is no source other than the source that led to the confusion in the first place. auntieruth (talk) 17:44, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
I changed the text in the Jewish Skeleton section. The reason to change the text is that the role of Natzweiler-Struthof in that bizarre skeleton project was larger than killing the people without damaging their corpses. Before that, the people lived for two weeks (quinze jours in French) eating well so they would be better specimens for the purpose of the study, which fact had not been in this article previously. This is based on information presented in a documentary by Sonia Rollet and others in 2013. The documentary won an award at a French film festival in 2014, as described in an article posted by RFI (radio France international, I believe) in 2014, also cited in this article. The film, 55 minutes, is posted by several people to you tube, always in French, always without subtitles. One posted it in four parts of 15 minutes or less. I cited the third part (using cite AV template) for the images of the corpses as found in Strasbourg, which images I find to be very powerful in conveying this particular part of the Nazi story and the part N-S played in it, along with the Reich University in Strasbourg. I cited the article about the documentary a few times, as it quotes from the documentary and describes it rather fully. I translated two quotes from the film to English, hope that was okay, citing the article, which included those quotes. I do not know if the documentary is restricted in any way, that might someday bar it from being on you tube. It was produced by Temps Noir, an independent film producer in France, whose website is not updated, showing 2008 as copyright date, and the film in production under a tentative name. Bless them, they have an English version, here it is http://www.tempsnoir.com/En/Production.aspx . The director was inspired to make this film from rumors she heard while a student at the university of Strasbourg (modern French version of the place), to prove them false, or as she said, to find the truth worse than the rumors. There is now a plaque honoring these victims at the medical school of the university, so the university has come around to the notion of telling the truth about what the Nazis did during the war in the University's buildings. In External links, I put the link to two you tube uploads of the documentary, one of the film in four parts, and one showing the 55 minute film in whole, using the you tube template, similar to the IMDb template, I have now learned. Please review to see if this reads well, and is adequately documented.
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"Four female British SOE agents were executed together on 6 July 1944:" in the german Wiki it is the 6th June 1944! What date is correct please? 84.155.48.34 ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:19, 20 July 2016 (UTC) ...according to Natzweiler-Struthof page it is 6. Juillet, so Engl. page is correct! 84.155.48.34 ( talk)
My concern is that images of crematoria in Holocaust history are associated with their use as gas chambers and incineration facilities. That is to say, instruments of extermination and genocide.
As such, the prominent image of the crematorium in this article may lead readers to believe its purpose in this camp was as part of the extermination process. But as the article makes clear, with some exceptions, this camp wasn't an extermination centre, and the crematorium was essentially used for conventional cremation, not as a gas chamber, and not to incinerate the bodies of extermination victims.
The places where crematoria were part of the extermination process were Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Majadek and of course Auschwitz-Birkenau. In those camps, the ovens and crematoria were an integral part of genocide and mass extermination. Not so at Natzweiler-Struthof, hence my slight unease with the prominence of the picture.
I really do not like the interlanguage link format, with a red link followed by a two letter link to the article in the other language. I did not change what was done, but I very much preferred the direct blue links to the articles in other languages of Wikipedia that were already in place in this article. Lotje has made several such changes, and I know some Wikipedia editors like that format. I really do not like it. I hope no more such changes are coming for this article, which relies on sources in German, French and English, and links in all three languages as well. Red ink/red link means a mistake to me, and no one has shown that the red ink/red link ever causes an article to be written in English Wikipedia, to take the place of the article in another language's Wikipedia. That is my say, after working a lot on this article to have good sources in it. -- Prairieplant ( talk) 03:50, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
Hi! Your recent edit to Natzweiler-Struthof introduced several errors to reference #22. Could you please fix these errors? Thanks, and happy editing! GoingBatty ( talk) 02:55, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
Extermination camp makes this clear, the Nazis had no extermination camp in France and no credible references claim otherwise. There's a reason "extermination camp" is a preferred term over "death camp", because how many people have to die at a camp to make it a death camp? 1,000? 10,000? 25,000? That the Nazis murdered many people at many camps is not in dispute, but they only had extermination camps in Eastern Europe. FDW777 ( talk) 21:30, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
There's a reason why historians use the Nazi definition, because whether a camp was a concentration camp or an extermination camp is a straightforward factual distinction. To do otherwise brings up the problem I mentioned in my very first post, that it is impossible to come up with a number which you can use to define which camp was an extermination camp and which camp was a concentration camp. A conversation between some historians attempting to come up with a number would go something like this.
"It seems biased to use the Nazis definition of Vernichtungslager as the only camps that were extermination camps when many people were murdered at other camps, perhaps we should class some other camps as extermination camps?"
"That's an excellent point, perhaps we should widen the definition?"
"Yes, how about any camps where over 50,000 people were murdered?"
"But what about this camp where 48,000 were murdered, surely that should be included too?"
And the conversation will continue with increasingly lower death tolls being mentioned and the bar to a camp being an extermination camp getting lower and lower, as there's always a reason why a camp shouldn't be excluded if a few hundred less people were killed than at another camp which is classed as an extermination camp.
"We've classed this camp as an extermination camp where 20,000 people were killed, but that was only 10% of the people sent there. What about this camp where 6,000 people were killed out of 12,000 sent there?"
"Good point, we'd better include a cut-off point based on percentage of people killed."
"But if we're including this camp where 6,000 people were killed, is it fair to exclude this camp where 14,000 people were killed just because the percentage is lower?"
"Another good point, we'd better include that camp too."
And the conversation will continue with more and more camps being classed as extermination camps, until virtually all concentration camps have been reclassified as extermination camps. Then this will probably happen.
"We seem to have hundreds and hundreds of extermination camps where the death toll was quite low, what shall we do about camps like Treblinka where hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and whose sole purpose was to kill the people sent there?"
"We need a new classification obviously, how about 'genocide camp'?"
"Yes, problem solved. There were seven camps whose sole purpose was to kill the people sent there, so we have seven 'genocide camps' and hundreds of 'extermination camps'."
"Hang on, what about this camp where over 50,000 people were murdered? Shouldn't that be classed as a genocide camp too? After all, the murder of 50,000 people must be genocide?"
And the problem has now come full circle. No matter what figure you use to define which camp was an extermination camp, there is always a reason to lower that figure to include other camps. And the more you lower it, the more you need a new term for the places like Treblinka where hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and even as you continue to use more and more harrowing terms to define the seven camps, people will continue to argue that term should be applied to other camps. That's why historians use the Nazis' own definitions of their camps, because there is no other way to define the camps.
And I don't need to edit any other article to make anything more clear for your benefit. You have been asked to provide references that Natzweiler-Struthof was an extermination camp, you have repeatedly failed to do so and accordingly I have removed the claim. See WP:BURDEN, the onus is on you to provide the references. FDW777 ( talk) 11:57, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
The text introducing the list of firms, added here, does not make it clear that all those firms were using forced labor at Natzweiler-Struthof. If that is so, could the text be expanded to say that? If it is not true, why was the list added to the article? Renata3 Thanks. -- Prairieplant ( talk) 11:47, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Buidhe, this page is the work of several editors working hard and working together. If you plan to rip out maps and rewrite the lead, remove all location info and the other things you have been doing, please post your intentions here and wait for consensus. -- Prairieplant ( talk) 04:59, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
@ Peacemaker67: Here is more information about the location:
The Natzweiler concentration camp (Le Struthof- Natzwiller) is the only one to have been built by the Nazis on French territory. It was set up in Alsace, whose two departments had been annexed to the Reich in July 1940. The occupiers considered Alsace and Moselle to be German lands destined for radical Germanization. Alsace was joined with the Nazi Party province (Gau) of Baden, whose Nazi Party provincial chief (Gauleiter) was Robert Wagner, and Moselle was joined with that of the Palatinate, under the leadership of Gauleiter Josef Bürckel. A civilian administration was installed in Strasbourg, and an internment camp was created as early as July 2, 1940, just two weeks after the entry of German troops into Strasbourg....
The first camp was built next to a small town in the Vosges, Schirmeck, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Strasbourg, and received the name of Schirmeck- Vorbrück (French: Schirmeck- La Broque).... The camp functioned throughout the entire war but never became a concentration camp. It was more of a local work camp, labeled education camp (Erziehungslager) or detention camp (Sicherungslager)....
Some months after the creation of the Schirmeck camp, the SS created a second camp, not far from the fi rst. The official date for the establishment of a second camp is May 1, 1941. The chosen site was Natzweiler, in the Bruche valley, because of the existence of a granite quarry there. [this is the Natzweiler main camp]— Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, volume 1, page 1004
Per this description, its location should be described as "Natzweiler, Gau Baden-Alsace" and/or "former French territory annexed to Nazi Germany" rather than "in France". Reference to Schmirek should be dropped as that is the location for a different camp. b uidh e 02:36, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
I agree with using the German Gau as that was the geopolitical division at the time, and also agree with being a bit clearer in the first sentence that it was in German-annexed French territory and the legal status of the annexation, which was de facto rather than de jure. My suggested wording is:
I see that you two are taking over the page,
Peacemaker67 and
Buidhe. I will ask one past editor,
N0TABENE to review your actions and let him know the article has a new name. I have restored images; present day images are of value, especially as the camp was vandalized since the days of its use and the liberation. I do not have time at this moment to go over your location comments and your copy edits of the lead; I will come back to that later today, if you can wait. --
Prairieplant (
talk) 16:39, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
A consensus of two with another person very strongly disagreeing on many points is not a consensus.
You are the someone who does not like carefully chosen photographs. - - Prairieplant ( talk) 02:07, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
The photo in the infobox is one of the entrance to the camp on a foggy dayin reply to
As such, the prominent image of the crematorium in this article may lead readers to believe its purpose in this camp was as part of the extermination processwhich seems to be a complete non sequitur. I think the old infobox image was quite poor, when simply looking at the thumbnail in the infobox it is difficult to see anything. Given the difficulty I had even removing a straightforward factual inaccuracy from this article, I didn't feel it was a worthwhile use of my time pursuing other changes FDW777 ( talk) 07:11, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
"The first camp commandant, Hans Hüttig, was sentenced to life in prison on 2 July 1954 by a French military court in Metz. In 1956, he was released from detention after being imprisoned for eleven years."
1956 - 1954 = 11?-- Maxaxa ( talk) 23:43, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Hartjenstein was sentenced to death by firing squad on 5 June 1946.
[1] The sentence was not carried out, and he was then extradited to France, where he was tried at Metz for his crimes at Natzweiler and sentenced to death.
[1]
Elinruby (
talk) 08:34, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
References
Hartjenstein's postwar fate consisted of many trials. First, he was arrested by the British and sentenced to life imprisonment on June 1, 1946, at Wuppertal for executing four resistance members. Then he was again tried by the British for hanging a POW who was a member of the Royal Air Force and sentenced to death by firing squad on June 5 of that year. He was then extradited to France, where he was tried for his crimes at Natzweiler and sentenced to death. He died of a heart attack while awaiting execution on October 20, 1954.
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Perhaps The source for the fact that the camp held a gas chamber could be provided.
I just wanted to make a few suggestions in order to help with this article. Perhaps you might consider looking into the work and living conditions in the camp. As well the individuals that are mentioned in the post-war trials do not have pages of their own, perhaps you could insert a little note beside their names indicating the role they played in the camp. Also, readers might be interested in the camp as it sits now, the monument and the reasons why the housing units are no longer present. You might also consider looking around the ( http://www.struthof.fr) site, it seems that there is more information that can be found on it. Finally, here are some sites I have come across that might come in handy:(www.holocaustresearchproject.org ),(www.holocaustresearchproject.org ). Michaela.constant ( talk) 22:00, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
source: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=36603
Heinrich Wicker. Untersturmführer (junior officer rank equivalent of 2nd Lt. in US Army)
July 1, 1944: Assigned to KZ (concentration camp) staff at Natzweiler-Struthof.
-- I'm adding the source here, as I'm not sure if it's accepted. Valleyspring ( talk) 02:44, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
Also, the Military Channel did a show 1/22/13 on the subject of the "SOE- Vera Maria Atkins," and they show how she tracked down all but one of 11 of her women agents in the field, whom the nazis had murdered at Natzweiler. They did indicate that there was a gas chamber in the camp. Valleyspring ( talk) 02:47, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Ruehl_(Arzt)
Named as a Dr at this camp. Valleyspring ( talk) 06:29, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
The article refers to a "Gerry-rigged gas chamber". The phrase is "Jury rigged" used by sailors to describe how a partly dismasted boat can be got under way by temporarily rigging a torn sail to a mast stump. It has nothing to do with the WW1 nick-name for German soldiers, commonly called "Jerry", not "Gerry". Historygypsy ( talk) 23:42, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
This article is placed in a Wikipedia category as having weasel worded text since February 2014. I do not see such text identified so it could be changed. If it has already been changed, can that categorization be removed from the article? -- Prairieplant ( talk) 05:19, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
None of the statistics, like number of people in the camp in the years it operated, the documented number who died there, have specific references. Do these numbers refer to the network of smaller camps on either side of the Rhine River, administered with the main camp at Natzweiler? Further, are there sources for these numbers? I added a source for 52,000 people in the camp from a speech by a French government official in 2014, the 70th anniversary of a grisly day at the camp prior to the evacuation. The speech cited the total, but made no comments about the network of camps. The documented number who died, where is it documented? I have seen other numbers in various articles as I learn, and understand, more of what went on in this camp from the other Wikipedia articles, on line sources. It is hard for me to tell if the other sources are more authoritative when their number of deaths does not exactly match what is in this article. I hope someone else knows more about the latest as to counts. For one, the numbers in this article do not match those in the List of Nazi concentration camps (which has an odd source in the column for a reference). Interesting, but not definitive, I think. The other need is for someone who knows how to write a fair use note for this article, as there seems to be one for each English Wikipedia article that uses the photo of cadaver of the man killed in the gas chamber at this camp for that odd Jewish skeleton project. The photo had to be taken at the camp, or in Strasbourg where the bodies were found in 1944. I have not figured out how to write those, or I would do it. -- Prairieplant ( talk) 21:48, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Eighteen people are named as Notable prisoners, all having a link to the English Wikipedia article on the person. In that linked article, their stay at this camp is mentioned. Two of the 18 wrote of their experiences in concentration camps (having survived) and their writings are noted at the end of this article (Bratelli and Ottosen). I do not have those writings at hand, to give a page citation from their writings. There are two names mentioned, in addition to these 18, as being tied to the Great Escape; I do not know who first added that text. There is no English Wikipedia article about those people and no source I could find (there may be a source, I could not find it). Those were marked citation needed. Now the whole section is marked as needing in-line citations. How much more is needed for those 18 whose names have Wikipedia articles linked to them, and sources in those articles? As a side note, this is a longer list than that included the French Wikipedia article, and interesting to note, this article does not include all mentioned in French Wikipedia. -- Prairieplant ( talk) 09:35, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Heinrich Wicker was never a commandant of KZ-Natzweiler, he was an Untersturmführer (a junior officer equivalent of 2nd Lt. in the US Army) and a guard commander at 2 subcamps of Natzweiler (Aussenkommando Cochem and Aussenkommado Mannheim-Sandhofen). He was left in charge of dachau when all of the senior officers fled before the advancing US 42nd Infantry Div. He shouldn't be listed as a commander (commandant) at KZ-Natzweiler in this section, and further, there is no reference for him being killed on the spot. His name should be removed from this section. The list of camp commandants of Natzweiler is: SS.Hauptsturmführer Hans Huttig, SS.Sturmbannführer Egon Zill, SS.Hauptsturmführer Josef Krämer, SS.Sturmbannführer Fritz Hartjenstein and SS.Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Schwarz. If there is no objection, I am going to remove Wicker. I already updated the war crimes section on Hartjenstein and the other 5 people tried at Wuppertalin May 1946 but the other criminal trials and criminals from Natzweiler should be included. N0TABENE ( talk) 04:18, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
Sources indicate that the camp was discovered empty by the First French Army under the command of the Allied 6th Army Group on 23 November 1944, after the transfer of all prisoners and guards to subcamps and then to Dachau beginning in August 1944 ( http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/natzweiler.html). The lede stated that Natzweiler was the first camp liberated by the US Army, while technically true that the 1ere Armee under Gen. de Lattre de Tassigny was under the command and control of the U.S. 6th Army Group, it was the First French under that liberated the camp. However, it was not the first camp to be liberated. On 26 October 1944, Canadian forces liberated the abandoned Herzogenbusch concentration camp ( Vught concentration camp) in the Netherlands ( https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Vught.html), albeit some sources refer to Vught as a transit camp ( http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/vught.html). The lede was corrected accordingly. N0TABENE ( talk) 13:12, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
N0TABENE This seems like another important topic for better agreement with current sources. Who documented the 4,431? There is no citation in this article. Trying to hunt it out, I found that so many sources in English copy this Wikipedia article in whole or in part, thus also containing the phrase 4,431 documented dead, and with no independent source. Is it an old number now replaced by the work of Steegman? Do we change it to 20,000 estimated, citing the museum's web page, and his book? Does that number includes the main camp and all sub-camps, so we can safely leave aside separate estimates for the march out of the subcamps compared to the march out of the main camp? It would be nice to know who is the source of the 4,431 count. Enough for today. -- Prairieplant ( talk) 20:08, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
@ N0TABENE: @ Prairieplant: Unsourced has been deleted because it is based on confusion between two prisoners of same name (husband and wife). Please don't add it back in. I was the one who put it in there in the first place, and I'm taking it out. There is no source other than the source that led to the confusion in the first place. auntieruth (talk) 17:44, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
I changed the text in the Jewish Skeleton section. The reason to change the text is that the role of Natzweiler-Struthof in that bizarre skeleton project was larger than killing the people without damaging their corpses. Before that, the people lived for two weeks (quinze jours in French) eating well so they would be better specimens for the purpose of the study, which fact had not been in this article previously. This is based on information presented in a documentary by Sonia Rollet and others in 2013. The documentary won an award at a French film festival in 2014, as described in an article posted by RFI (radio France international, I believe) in 2014, also cited in this article. The film, 55 minutes, is posted by several people to you tube, always in French, always without subtitles. One posted it in four parts of 15 minutes or less. I cited the third part (using cite AV template) for the images of the corpses as found in Strasbourg, which images I find to be very powerful in conveying this particular part of the Nazi story and the part N-S played in it, along with the Reich University in Strasbourg. I cited the article about the documentary a few times, as it quotes from the documentary and describes it rather fully. I translated two quotes from the film to English, hope that was okay, citing the article, which included those quotes. I do not know if the documentary is restricted in any way, that might someday bar it from being on you tube. It was produced by Temps Noir, an independent film producer in France, whose website is not updated, showing 2008 as copyright date, and the film in production under a tentative name. Bless them, they have an English version, here it is http://www.tempsnoir.com/En/Production.aspx . The director was inspired to make this film from rumors she heard while a student at the university of Strasbourg (modern French version of the place), to prove them false, or as she said, to find the truth worse than the rumors. There is now a plaque honoring these victims at the medical school of the university, so the university has come around to the notion of telling the truth about what the Nazis did during the war in the University's buildings. In External links, I put the link to two you tube uploads of the documentary, one of the film in four parts, and one showing the 55 minute film in whole, using the you tube template, similar to the IMDb template, I have now learned. Please review to see if this reads well, and is adequately documented.
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"Four female British SOE agents were executed together on 6 July 1944:" in the german Wiki it is the 6th June 1944! What date is correct please? 84.155.48.34 ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:19, 20 July 2016 (UTC) ...according to Natzweiler-Struthof page it is 6. Juillet, so Engl. page is correct! 84.155.48.34 ( talk)
My concern is that images of crematoria in Holocaust history are associated with their use as gas chambers and incineration facilities. That is to say, instruments of extermination and genocide.
As such, the prominent image of the crematorium in this article may lead readers to believe its purpose in this camp was as part of the extermination process. But as the article makes clear, with some exceptions, this camp wasn't an extermination centre, and the crematorium was essentially used for conventional cremation, not as a gas chamber, and not to incinerate the bodies of extermination victims.
The places where crematoria were part of the extermination process were Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Majadek and of course Auschwitz-Birkenau. In those camps, the ovens and crematoria were an integral part of genocide and mass extermination. Not so at Natzweiler-Struthof, hence my slight unease with the prominence of the picture.
I really do not like the interlanguage link format, with a red link followed by a two letter link to the article in the other language. I did not change what was done, but I very much preferred the direct blue links to the articles in other languages of Wikipedia that were already in place in this article. Lotje has made several such changes, and I know some Wikipedia editors like that format. I really do not like it. I hope no more such changes are coming for this article, which relies on sources in German, French and English, and links in all three languages as well. Red ink/red link means a mistake to me, and no one has shown that the red ink/red link ever causes an article to be written in English Wikipedia, to take the place of the article in another language's Wikipedia. That is my say, after working a lot on this article to have good sources in it. -- Prairieplant ( talk) 03:50, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
Hi! Your recent edit to Natzweiler-Struthof introduced several errors to reference #22. Could you please fix these errors? Thanks, and happy editing! GoingBatty ( talk) 02:55, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
Extermination camp makes this clear, the Nazis had no extermination camp in France and no credible references claim otherwise. There's a reason "extermination camp" is a preferred term over "death camp", because how many people have to die at a camp to make it a death camp? 1,000? 10,000? 25,000? That the Nazis murdered many people at many camps is not in dispute, but they only had extermination camps in Eastern Europe. FDW777 ( talk) 21:30, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
There's a reason why historians use the Nazi definition, because whether a camp was a concentration camp or an extermination camp is a straightforward factual distinction. To do otherwise brings up the problem I mentioned in my very first post, that it is impossible to come up with a number which you can use to define which camp was an extermination camp and which camp was a concentration camp. A conversation between some historians attempting to come up with a number would go something like this.
"It seems biased to use the Nazis definition of Vernichtungslager as the only camps that were extermination camps when many people were murdered at other camps, perhaps we should class some other camps as extermination camps?"
"That's an excellent point, perhaps we should widen the definition?"
"Yes, how about any camps where over 50,000 people were murdered?"
"But what about this camp where 48,000 were murdered, surely that should be included too?"
And the conversation will continue with increasingly lower death tolls being mentioned and the bar to a camp being an extermination camp getting lower and lower, as there's always a reason why a camp shouldn't be excluded if a few hundred less people were killed than at another camp which is classed as an extermination camp.
"We've classed this camp as an extermination camp where 20,000 people were killed, but that was only 10% of the people sent there. What about this camp where 6,000 people were killed out of 12,000 sent there?"
"Good point, we'd better include a cut-off point based on percentage of people killed."
"But if we're including this camp where 6,000 people were killed, is it fair to exclude this camp where 14,000 people were killed just because the percentage is lower?"
"Another good point, we'd better include that camp too."
And the conversation will continue with more and more camps being classed as extermination camps, until virtually all concentration camps have been reclassified as extermination camps. Then this will probably happen.
"We seem to have hundreds and hundreds of extermination camps where the death toll was quite low, what shall we do about camps like Treblinka where hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and whose sole purpose was to kill the people sent there?"
"We need a new classification obviously, how about 'genocide camp'?"
"Yes, problem solved. There were seven camps whose sole purpose was to kill the people sent there, so we have seven 'genocide camps' and hundreds of 'extermination camps'."
"Hang on, what about this camp where over 50,000 people were murdered? Shouldn't that be classed as a genocide camp too? After all, the murder of 50,000 people must be genocide?"
And the problem has now come full circle. No matter what figure you use to define which camp was an extermination camp, there is always a reason to lower that figure to include other camps. And the more you lower it, the more you need a new term for the places like Treblinka where hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and even as you continue to use more and more harrowing terms to define the seven camps, people will continue to argue that term should be applied to other camps. That's why historians use the Nazis' own definitions of their camps, because there is no other way to define the camps.
And I don't need to edit any other article to make anything more clear for your benefit. You have been asked to provide references that Natzweiler-Struthof was an extermination camp, you have repeatedly failed to do so and accordingly I have removed the claim. See WP:BURDEN, the onus is on you to provide the references. FDW777 ( talk) 11:57, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
The text introducing the list of firms, added here, does not make it clear that all those firms were using forced labor at Natzweiler-Struthof. If that is so, could the text be expanded to say that? If it is not true, why was the list added to the article? Renata3 Thanks. -- Prairieplant ( talk) 11:47, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Buidhe, this page is the work of several editors working hard and working together. If you plan to rip out maps and rewrite the lead, remove all location info and the other things you have been doing, please post your intentions here and wait for consensus. -- Prairieplant ( talk) 04:59, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
@ Peacemaker67: Here is more information about the location:
The Natzweiler concentration camp (Le Struthof- Natzwiller) is the only one to have been built by the Nazis on French territory. It was set up in Alsace, whose two departments had been annexed to the Reich in July 1940. The occupiers considered Alsace and Moselle to be German lands destined for radical Germanization. Alsace was joined with the Nazi Party province (Gau) of Baden, whose Nazi Party provincial chief (Gauleiter) was Robert Wagner, and Moselle was joined with that of the Palatinate, under the leadership of Gauleiter Josef Bürckel. A civilian administration was installed in Strasbourg, and an internment camp was created as early as July 2, 1940, just two weeks after the entry of German troops into Strasbourg....
The first camp was built next to a small town in the Vosges, Schirmeck, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Strasbourg, and received the name of Schirmeck- Vorbrück (French: Schirmeck- La Broque).... The camp functioned throughout the entire war but never became a concentration camp. It was more of a local work camp, labeled education camp (Erziehungslager) or detention camp (Sicherungslager)....
Some months after the creation of the Schirmeck camp, the SS created a second camp, not far from the fi rst. The official date for the establishment of a second camp is May 1, 1941. The chosen site was Natzweiler, in the Bruche valley, because of the existence of a granite quarry there. [this is the Natzweiler main camp]— Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, volume 1, page 1004
Per this description, its location should be described as "Natzweiler, Gau Baden-Alsace" and/or "former French territory annexed to Nazi Germany" rather than "in France". Reference to Schmirek should be dropped as that is the location for a different camp. b uidh e 02:36, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
I agree with using the German Gau as that was the geopolitical division at the time, and also agree with being a bit clearer in the first sentence that it was in German-annexed French territory and the legal status of the annexation, which was de facto rather than de jure. My suggested wording is:
I see that you two are taking over the page,
Peacemaker67 and
Buidhe. I will ask one past editor,
N0TABENE to review your actions and let him know the article has a new name. I have restored images; present day images are of value, especially as the camp was vandalized since the days of its use and the liberation. I do not have time at this moment to go over your location comments and your copy edits of the lead; I will come back to that later today, if you can wait. --
Prairieplant (
talk) 16:39, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
A consensus of two with another person very strongly disagreeing on many points is not a consensus.
You are the someone who does not like carefully chosen photographs. - - Prairieplant ( talk) 02:07, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
The photo in the infobox is one of the entrance to the camp on a foggy dayin reply to
As such, the prominent image of the crematorium in this article may lead readers to believe its purpose in this camp was as part of the extermination processwhich seems to be a complete non sequitur. I think the old infobox image was quite poor, when simply looking at the thumbnail in the infobox it is difficult to see anything. Given the difficulty I had even removing a straightforward factual inaccuracy from this article, I didn't feel it was a worthwhile use of my time pursuing other changes FDW777 ( talk) 07:11, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
"The first camp commandant, Hans Hüttig, was sentenced to life in prison on 2 July 1954 by a French military court in Metz. In 1956, he was released from detention after being imprisoned for eleven years."
1956 - 1954 = 11?-- Maxaxa ( talk) 23:43, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Hartjenstein was sentenced to death by firing squad on 5 June 1946.
[1] The sentence was not carried out, and he was then extradited to France, where he was tried at Metz for his crimes at Natzweiler and sentenced to death.
[1]
Elinruby (
talk) 08:34, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
References
Hartjenstein's postwar fate consisted of many trials. First, he was arrested by the British and sentenced to life imprisonment on June 1, 1946, at Wuppertal for executing four resistance members. Then he was again tried by the British for hanging a POW who was a member of the Royal Air Force and sentenced to death by firing squad on June 5 of that year. He was then extradited to France, where he was tried for his crimes at Natzweiler and sentenced to death. He died of a heart attack while awaiting execution on October 20, 1954.