Natzwiller-Struthoff.

Tuesday 23rd. May 2006.

Well despite having a bed, I didn't sleep too well. Probably anxious about the weather.

When I woke at 6.00 am the skies were showing some encouraging patches of blue between the scudding clouds that were still being driven on a strong wind.

I got up, washed and dressed (only my boots were still damp but they'd soon dry out on my feet). With everything packed I uncovered and re-loaded the bike.

I decided that if I was heading for Normandy later, I'd be pushing on and it would be a long day, so a decent breakfast would be in order. Leaving only my jacket, helmet and gloves in the room, I forced myself to eat, deciding to make up for the room price by stuffing myself from the buffet breakfast (6.8 Euro).

How do people eat at that time of the day? It really was an effort to force down more than the fruit-juice and coffee. I can sometimes manage a croissant, maybe two but until I've been up for a few hours my system finds it hard to accept food.

I was on the D933 by 8.40 am. The roads were mainly dry but it was quite cold. I had Natzwiller set as my destination in the Nav II and had selected 'shortest route' to see if I'd be directed along some of the minor roads and tracks shown on Mapsource.

It turned out to be a varied and interesting route. Some parts of the D933 are really picturesque, very like the western Pyrenees. Heavily forested, the road twists and turns through the hills and mountains.

I found myself on some logging tracks. Felled timber sat piled waiting for transportation. I had met one truck with a semi-trailer carrying huge tree-trunks coming the other way on the D933. The truck needed to straddle the centre of the road to negotiate the bends so I was mindful that I might encounter another truck on these minor tracks.

Some of the sections were great with twists and turns through dark forest, climbing most of the time. Alone and with a loaded bike, I took it steady. Sometimes, although there might be tarmac somewhere, it was often covered in mud and debris from the logging. I didn't fancy unloading the bike if I had to pick it up!

This screenshot is just west of Natzwiller and shows how the area is criss-crossed by 'unpaved roads'.

The road from Natzwiller to Struthoff is a switch-back ascent. I came up behind two German coaches and passed the second one but the first one was being driven "spiritedly"! I got past but wondered what it would be like encountering it travelling in the opposite direction.

I arrived at the car park of the visitor centre well before the coaches but by the time I'd parked, sorted out my helmet etc. and got my camera out, the coaches has disgorged herds of German 'yoofs'.

Some history now, sorry but I guess not many people will have heard of Natzwiller-Struthoff Concentration Camp (Konzentratsionslager or KZ), lost as it is amongst the more notorious or infamous names such as Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Mauthausen etc.

The continued low profile of this KZ is somehow pertinent given its history and intent. No doubt the carefully chosen location has added to this. In-fact that was the original intention.

Struthoff was intended to serve the Nacht und Nebel (NN. Night and Fog) programme of the Nazi's. This programme intended that prisoners disappear. KZ's generally and especially in the earlier days of the Nazi regime, were prisons but prisons of a particularly brutal type where those considered as dangerous to the state, political opposition, dissidents, church leaders who opposed the Nazi's and recidivist criminals were sent.

Later the inmates included homosexuals, Gypsies and Jews. Before the "Final Solution" massed murder programme at places such as Sobibor, Treblinka, Birchenau and Chelmno was instituted, in the early days those sent to KZ's could be traced by family members.

It may seem incredible now, bearing in mind the way that the Concentration Camp system is perceived today but when the Nazi's first came to power and really until their conquest of Europe delivered more populations into their hands and therefore more "undesirable elements", the KZ really was more like a prison system. The fact that KZ's later were turned into places where millions died through disease, malnutrition, brutal work regimes, medical experimentation and simple inhuman brutality has understandably overtaken their original purpose. It would be wrong however to give the impression that early KZ's were prisons such as we might recognise today.

Struthoff was chosen for it's remoteness. It's position, high in the Voges, made it perfect for Nacht und Nebel purposes. Even in summer the place is often shrouded in low cloud. It was also sited near granite quarries that provided stone for the Nazi building programme so the inmates could be worked in the quarries (sometimes to death) and the Nazis builders could secure granite for the 'Thousand Year Reich's' architects cheaply.

On the scale of most KZ's, Struthoff is small but I had a reason to be here.

There is a modern building near the car park. This is the reception/entrance and houses an information centre. I managed to get in by pushing my way through the German youth stood in a huge gaggle outside waiting for their teachers to negotiate their entry.

Inside I paid my 5 Euro adult entry price and strolled through the information centre. It is titled the European Centre on Resistance and Deportation, is geared to the Second World War and not specifically about Struthoff. It's probably a good thing in this day and age when there seems to be a fairly widespread ignorance about the period. The displays deal with the rise of Fascism thoughout Europe (including Sir Oswald Mosley's Union of British Fascists), the general rise of extreme nationalism and the war itself. It seemed an even-handed and factual explanation, never dipping into the realm of modern revisionism, even dealing with collaboration (a raw subject in France even today).

The original gateway still stands and is overshadowed by the Memorial tower.

Passing through the gates you have to show your ticket. It felt wrong to show proof of payment to enter somewhere that others who had passed through these gates would have paid with everything they had to avoid doing so.

Just inside the entrance, turning left gives a good view of the camp layout and the way it was arranged over terraces cut into the hillside.

The original wire perimeter fences (the inner one was electrified) and guard towers still exist. The inmates huts were pulled down in 1954 because of their dangerous condition.

The prison and the crematorium/medical hut still stand at the foot of the hill. A replica hut is just inside the gates and houses a museum.

The museum has some specific exhibitions dedicated to Struthoff such as this model of the original layout.

Many of the large photo's on display were from the better known camps.

A reproduction inmates bunk bed.

Outside, looking down over the camp from the Appel (assembly area).

Some of the original features still exist.....

Some of a more sinister nature.

The gallows are original. The box on which the condemned stood has a rudimentary trapdoor but the drop wouldn't be enough to break someones neck so death would be by slow strangulation instead of instant death.

The waggon thing is one of a number used by the inmates to haul granite from the quarry.

In total, in the three and a half years that Struthoff operated, 52,000 people from all over Europe were brought here. 22,000 never survived.

I'm here because of four of them but first some background.

Winston Churchill's declaration that he wanted to 'set Nazi Occupied Europe alight' led to the creation of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) by the British. SOE was split up with area's of operations following national borders. Their purpose was to foster resistance, arrange supplies and provide leadership to ensure that any resistance action dovetailed with Allied war aims.

From the start the existing Military Intelligence organisations were against what they saw as an amateur organisation overlapping their remit. There was concern that SOE was ripe for infiltration by enemy intelligence or would attract the wrong people who were in it for the wrong reasons.

There was no doubt a degree of protectionism by MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service) but we now know that their concerns were well founded, particularly in respect of 'F' Section (the section with responsibility for France).

In short, 'F' Section was infiltrated and the Germans were capturing SOE agents and couriers almost as soon as they were inserted, sometimes actually when they were landed. They then used the SOE radios and cyphers to ask for more supplies and worse, more agents. The Germans had successfully played what they called the Funkspiel (Radio game) in other areas against SOE.

The captured agents were interrogated and imprisoned in Avenue Foch, Paris, before being sent to various prisons or Concentration Camps.

In the case of the female agents, at that time British Law prevented women from serving in the armed forces engaging in action or even carrying weapons. To get around this, the women agents were given positions in the FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) but when captured this gave them no protective status whatsoever.

On the morning of 6th. July 1944, four SOE girls who had been captured as a result of the German Funkspiel at various dates in 1943, were brought to Natzwiller-Struthoff and passed through those gates.

All the other inmates of the camp were ordered inside their huts and locked-in but some saw the four girls as they were escorted on foot down...

the Lagerstrasse to the buildings at the foot of the hill.

One of the witnesses was Brian Stonehouse, another SOE agent held in the camp. Later during the investigations into what happened to the captured SOE agents, Stonehouse produced these sketches of two of the girls as they walked down the Lagerstrasse.

The investigation later confirmed the four as:

Diana Rowden,

Andrée Borell,

Vera Leigh and..

Sonia Olschanesky.

They weren't aware that their arrival was causing some consternation amongst the camp command because an order accompanied their arrival. It was from Berlin and instructed the camp authorities to execute them immediately as dangerous prisoners.

While the Commandant, officers and the camp doctors debated how to carry out their executions, the girls were locked in a cell here.

Each cell had a special section for additional punishment, a sort of cell within a cell where the prisoner could neither stand or sit. Instead they were forced into a crippling semi-crouch.

While the camp officers debated what to do, some inmates from the nearest huts risked a great deal and managed to briefly communicate with the girls.

It was decided that hanging the girls was too public as it would be seen by many inmates. A lethal injection was chosen but the camp doctors reported that there was insufficient quantities of the right drug available. Instead they made a cocktail of drugs and the girls were told that it was an injection against Typhus.

The injection was probably administered here,

in the medical/dissection room.

The person in charge of the crematorium later gave evidence that he was instructed to get it ready for cremations. Normally it was used to dispose of the bodies of those executed or those who had died from other causes. After bringing it up to operating temperature, he was returned to his room where he could see and hear the events that followed.

All the evidence suggests that the mix of drugs was at best partially successful. At least one of the girls was semi-conscious when she was placed on the trolley and pushed into the oven. She came around and scratched the face one of the men as she struggled. This was attested to by several witnesses. Others who never witnessed the events attested to the scar on the guards face.

The crematorium oven is still here.

On the wall of the crematorium is a commemorative plaque.

The smoking chimney above the building was a signal to all the inmates that the girls were dead. Again, eye witness accounts report that the chimney flared four times as the oven door was opened and the in-rush of air caused an up-draught. The camp inmates had seen this effect too often not to understand its sombre meaning.

One of the rooms in the building contains urns for human ashes.

At the bottom of the camp are memorials to some who died here. So effective was the NN programme that very few who were killed here can be identified.

The relative luxury of the camp commandants house and swimming pool in the woods seems obscene in the context of what went on here.

I made my way slowly back towards the camp gates. I was much more affected by seeing this place than I could have imagined. I have spent some time reading about the SOE and particularly about the female members. My reading has given me some insight into their lives, the events of their arrest, interrogation, incarceration and their executions. Now I had seen the place that they had died, walked the same pathways and been in the same rooms that they had unwittingly spent their last few hours.

I felt strangely close to them here. They weren't just faceless victims, they were real people.

I was assailed by all sorts of thoughts. Why were they executed? Only a month later the camp was evacuated. Were these four young women such a danger to the Nazis? A month after the evacuation the camp was found by Free French forces fighting with the US Army.

Strictly speaking the Germans were within their rights to execute the SOE agents as spies, we did the same thing. But so late in the war? What would their deaths achieve? The manner of their deaths and their treatment was inexcusable. I can only come to the conclusion that it was done out of some sense of twisted spite.

I couldn't help thinking that if SOE had been better at their job, their deaths would have been avoided. If someone in a position of authority at Struthoff at exercised some moral integrity, they might have survived. It's the benefit of hindsight I know but these thoughts wouldn't go away.

I had managed to stay ahead of the crowds of school parties but now I had to make my way through hoards of either sullen kids who didn't want to be there or others shrieking and messing about.

It really rankled. I wanted to drag them to the oven, show them this..

and tell them exactly what happened here that 6th. of July 1944.

I wanted them to know that four young women, not much older than they (the school parties) are now, had taken huge risks to help free Europe from tyranny and been killed in an horrific manner so that these self-absorbed oiks could take those freedoms for granted!

I made it back to the relative tranquillity of the car park without assaulting anyone (just) but even the improving weather and the view over the Voges couldn't lift my mood.

Like other similar sites, Natzwiller-Struthoff is a melancholy place and the feeling rubbed off on me. It was worth visiting and the sights will remain with me forever.

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By the time I was back on the bike it was 11.40 and picking the fastest route the Nav II gave an ETA in Falaise of 7.50 pm. An eight hour slog across France from east to west.

That's one advantage of a SatNav, it takes the guess work out of such things but it can also be a drawback because now I'd be fixated on the ETA and it would take some time before I saw the clock and the ETA drawing together.

The early part of the journey was on really good 'D' roads through the Voges but soon I was on the N4 near Nancy and would stay with it until Paris.

I still found myself half expecting to see Clive in my mirrors. One advantage of being alone again is that I can go longer between stops for fuel. On average I can get 280 miles from a full tank until the warning light comes on but I usually let fatigue dictate my stops.

There was nothing for it but to plod on. The thought of that pleasant campsite in Falaise sustained my efforts. That and the thought that if I could make it today, there was every chance that I could set-up in the dry.

The winds were still present but now it was a headwind most of the time. It made 80 mph feel more like 90-95 with the additional buffeting. It was tiring.

One of my comfort stops was just short of Paris before getting onto the Peripherique again. I thought it expedient to be as fresh as possible before diving into the Parisian rush-hour traffic. I remembered last year and the perfect weekend I spent with Kate in Paris and wished that she'd still been living there to repeat the experience. I sent her a text message saying the same and received a reply wishing she was here too instead of taking her final exams in Bristol.

Paris driving is the same as most major cities. Full of people who know where they are going, while you, the joker in the pack, spoil their day by dithering & trying to work out what's going on.

French drivers generally make room for motorcycles and expect riders to behave in an almost anarchic way. Often they'd see me come up behind and move a little to the right to allow me to pass. The trouble was that this would be at speed and I have a too well defined sense of self-preservation to squeeze past at 70 mph. I like to think that their confusion would clear-up once I did pass and they saw a UK registration!

Parisian motorcyclists on the other hand take whatever route they deem fit, weaving and diving into gaps that don't really exist. When the traffic came to a standstill, I filtered past wherever possible and most drivers move aside. I followed one Parisian motorcyclist who dealt with car drivers who didn't move by thumping or flipping their door mirrors as if to say "how about using this?" He did make a path for me to follow for a while.

Once clear of Paris I was on the N12 heading for Verneuil-sur-Avre via Dreux and then the N26 and D13 via Grace and Trun to Falaise. I ran into heavy rain just outside Paris and dark clouds were hanging over my intended direction. I kept my fingers crossed that the rain would hold off long enough for me to reach Falaise and it did.

The last section along the D13 was really enjoyable after the endless straight 'N' roads and dual-carriageways. I'd avoided Toll-roads and even after stopping to buy some bread and fruit on the outskirts of Falaise, I made it to the campsite six minutes inside the ETA projected back at Struthoff.

It was 7.44 pm when I rode through the municipal campsite gate. I'd stopped twice for fuel and a snack at the same time and twice more for a stretch and a cigarette.

650 km, another long day on the bike.

Seeing that the same pitch I had used last year was free, I couldn't resist setting-up again in that spot.

I'd missed the opening hours of the campsite office but 'knew the score' here. In the morning I'd go and book-in and pay for my stay. First things first, tune in the radio to BBC Radio 4 Longwave again and listen to the Archers while I get myself my dinner.

I hadn't been able to do any dhobi (clothes washing) for a few days. It wouldn't have had a chance to dry when near Arras because of the weather and last night in the hotel I was more concerned with drying-out what I'd been wearing (Was that really only last night? It seemed like at least several days had passed!). The washing facilities at this site are as good as you'll get, so before I settled down to a coffee and the BBC, I did a load of dhobi and then had a shower too.

It's a bit dull and overcast. There's a pretty strong wind too but there is some shelter here under the castle.

Tomorrow I'm going to have a day off the bike. I'll go and wander around Falaise and see if the castle is open to visitors. I need a rest day or even two!

Comments

[Klaus Kain]

Crossing the Voges from West to East in Summer 2009 we happened to pass this camp. As Germans we left this place with great depression. And again unanswered questions to our forfathers came up. Again we felt ashamed for them.

While serving with the Canadian Forces in Germany from 1981 to 1985 I took my daughters aged 11 and 6 to the camp. It was an eye opening visit for them and my wife and I. We saw all the sites mentioned in the article and left with the same sadness and reverence.