Talk:Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp

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Perhaps The source for the fact that the camp held a gas chamber could be provided.

Is that a rumor or is it really a fact?!
Its' a fact : I've visited it. It was a small experimental one but many people were murdered in it.
There's a photo of the building on the french Wikipedia (coming from Commons I guess).
Papatt (talk) 21:44, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The gas chamber still exists and its use is documented in court files and post-war studies. In Jean-Claude Pressac's, THE STRUTHOF ALBUM, STUDY OF THE GASSING AT NATZWEILER-STRUTHOF, for example.Bluespaceoddity2 (talk) 10:42, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Ruehl_(Arzt)

Named as a Dr at this camp.Valleyspring (talk) 06:29, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling correction needed[edit]

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)[reply]

weasel worded text? Where are the flags identifying that text?[edit]

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)[reply]

does data cover main site or main site and network of camps?[edit]

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)[reply]

Notable prisoners & sufficient citations[edit]

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)[reply]

Delestraint, one of the 18 mentioned above, now has his English Wikipedia article and a citation from a French museum, with a quote from his story in French, also translated into English, showing his link to Struthof. Now the question remains about the other 17 who were not the leaders of the French resistance, receiving awards. --Prairieplant (talk) 10:38, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Great Escape story now has links and a reference. There is also a reference in another section that mentions the four women SOE agents who were executed at Struthof. My inclination is to delete that flag for references needed, given the one most in need is done, and all the rest have their own Wikipedia articles mentioning their time at Struthof. --Prairieplant (talk) 06:27, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Commanders[edit]

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)[reply]

That is fine. Wicker was listed as commandant when I first read the article, so I left it as it was. The source added to support Schwarz being executed, an article in the book edited by Boyne, mentions Schwarz's name once, for his role at Auschwitz, saying nothing about him at Struthof, or in post war trials or execution. Boyne's book seems very good, but it is not clear it is a good source for this article. I do not own the book, but google books let me see the Table of Contents and most of the Auschwitz article. That url is in the reference now. Schwarz's execution was in two places in the article so I deleted the first instance, leaving the second. If you could put that nifty list of the commandants in order in that section, it would be great. Other concentration camp articles list them in order and then talk about them if there is anything particular to say. Is there a source for those names? I tried looking around for one when I happened on this article, never found one online. Might be in a book -- unless you memorize these lists ;-). I removed the lengthy reference from a file on ancestry.com because I cannot figure out how that one person being liberated from Dachau supported the sentence where the link was put. Plus it is one messy reference, the way it was done, and ancestry.com uses pipes in their URL, and other odd characters as well. What awful places these camps were. I can work on this article for a while, then I have to do other things for a rest from the horrors. --Prairieplant (talk) 06:22, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that ancestry.com reference is probably less than an ideal source. I think revising the Commandant list as you suggest would be more useful, and then have a separate section listing the war crimes trials. I have been reading the official reports and transcripts of the war crimes trials held at Wuppertal, Rastatt, Nuremberg and Metz for Natzweiler and I too will need to take a break. Why any of them got anything less than an immediate death sentence is beyond me. I changed the staff section from the narrative to the list as suggested to comport with other concentration camp WP articles. N0TABENE (talk) 02:05, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Schwarz is mentioned on the war crimes trials page of the Struthof website http://www.struthof.fr/en/the-kl-natzweiler/introduction-to-the-history-of-the-camp/the-evacuation-of-the-camp-the-trials-of-those-responsible/the-trials/ confirming his role at KZ-NS, his trial with hartjenstein at Rastatt and execution. There is also a definitive academic text on KZ-Natzweiler by Robert Steegmann, Struthof, le KL-Natzweiler et ses kommandos, 1941-1945. Strasbourg, La Nuée bleue, 2005, (ISBN 2-7165-0632-9), mais il est en français, et mon français n'est pas bon pour la traduction :) N0TABENE (talk) 05:07, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The article is better organized now, making it clearer what happened there and has better references. Reading the transcripts of the war crimes trials, eh, that is rough going. Well, I realized that Roger Boulanger specifically described the execution of the four SOE agents, focussing on the secrecy, movements by night and the lack of records, so I added that. I can translate from French within limits, so I do it for this article to include the sources. It is hard to exclude a definitive academic text on this camp, just because it is in French. If we use nothing from it, I suppose it cannot even be further reading or bibliography, but you have all the information on it. I will remove the section ref flag on Notable Prisoners now, as the most complex stories are well referenced, and at the Dachau article, with its enormous list of notable prisoners grouped by how they came to that place, relies wholly on wiki links of the individuals, or in the case of the priests, a link to a main article on them, and one or two cases where the prisoner wrote a book (like Boris Pahor). I read the articles for each notable prisoner, and it seems adequate reference to me, with no need to copy the references from those articles back to this one, when the purpose here is to mention the names of a few of the 52,000. There is one bit of information at the museum web site, Statistics is the tab, from a PhD thesis assessing all the prisoners who passed through the camp, of that total of 52,000, that 40% died -- not at this camp, but somewhere in the Nazi camp system. It is a rough (as in hard to take) number, and one that requires careful explanation. I would be curious if that research was included in the book by Steegmann, and thus worthy of inclusion here. None of the links to the official site are connecting just now, to give you the exact page with this information, in English. Later I will get the link. I am also adding a few words to make clear that the University of Strasbourg was full of Nazis, not French, who were run out of there when France fell. --Prairieplant (talk) 20:01, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The PhD thesis you mention that is on the Struthof website is by the same Robert Steegmann (sorry, I neglected that the inline link for him is only on the French Wikipedia page) author of the reference I mentioned vide supra, and the material for the thesis he did for the University of Strasbourg was indeed included in the book. Adding the book to the Further Reading section is a good idea. Regarding the 4 women SOE agents murdered, the article by Charlesworth I added includes a description of each of the women, and the circumstances as presented in the trial. I accessed it through Google Books. I also located the report of the Wuppertal trial of the 9 camp staff accused of the murders of the women in the New York Times on May 30, 1946, and then the report of the hanging of several Nazis including Dr. Rhode who ordered the injections (NYT Oct. 13, 1946). I agree that the "notable prisoner" section should be limited to those who have articles or sources available. I added Bishop Bishop Gabriel Piguet, from the French Wikipedia site, but not Léon Boutbien, a Socialist party leader. Both of them, as you point out, passed through Natzweiler en route to Dachau. Transfer between camps was very common based on conversations I have had with people who were interned. Also, although I am reluctant to revisit the War Crimes section, what I included is only the mention of the commandants' trials; there were trials at Wuppertal, Rastatt and Metz of Natzweiler staff, and 2 of the doctors were interrogated at the Nuremberg Doctors Trial. Maybe a brief summary of each of those trials would be helpful? Lastly, there needs to be a general clean-up of the references. I see quite a few duplicates and several different references to pages on the Stuthof website with different formats. That needs to be addressed, perhaps in collaboration? Would you consider moving the French quotation on Delestraint that is currently in the Reference section up to the Notes section, and changing the format of the citation to the web link to comport with the style of the other references? Both the French quote and English translation would be better in the Notes section, IMHO. N0TABENE (talk) 06:13, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The museum site is working now, the page I meant is http://www.struthof.fr/en/the-kl-natzweiler/the-deportees-of-kl-na/statistics-on-the-camp-deportees/ and I see it is the same name, Steegman, and the book is there in Further reading, so that is done. As to the ref with the French quotation, it struck me that I could put the English translation in single square brackets after the French in quote=, to eliminate the note, and the confusion that at least one reader experienced. I did that with a shorter quote from Roger Boulanger, and just now put that up for Delestraint. (the Note section heading remains, can be deleted if there are no notes) Would that suffice? I know it is the opposite of what you suggest -- see if this looks okay, given there are now two such translations. There is no "trans-quote" in the cite web/cite book formats, as there is a trans-title. As to references to Museum web site, I just now tried to make them standard, with titles matching the page on which the data are shown, the same parameters in each citation and the correct page for each point it supports. I hope it makes it clear they are different pages from the same extensive source. See a related comment under Liberation.
Based on conversations you have had with people who have been interned -- well, that is a stunner. Those must have been difficult conversations. Have you written those up? --Prairieplant (talk) 18:02, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I have known several people and have had many discussions about their experiences of being interred in concentration camps. Just a few years ago, it was not uncommon for people to see their tattooed numbered forearms visible during the summer. I spoke with a survivor of Auschwitz just recently, and my father's unit liberated one of the Dachau camps. And yes, they were and are difficult conversations. N0TABENE (talk) 04:36, 11 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Liberation[edit]

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)[reply]

I do agree with you, it was indeed liberated by the French army in their way to Strasbourg. DeGaulle wanted the capital of the Alsace région to be liberated by a French army.--Gabriel HM (talk) 13:15, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
We seem to have a situation of reliable sources that say slightly conflicting things. All agree on the date of the liberation and that the camp had been evacuated of prisoners. All agree it was the Allied army that arrived. The museum web site says the Americans, the sources from NOTABENE say it was a French unit under the Americans, and Gabriel HM says that is how DeGaulle wanted it -- at least for the capital of Alsace, which means the city and not necessarily the concentration camp. This page at the museum's extensive web site http://www.struthof.fr/en/the-kl-natzweiler/introduction-to-the-history-of-the-camp/the-evacuation-of-the-camp-the-trials-of-those-responsible/ says in the first paragraph this was the first concentration camp liberated and by the American forces ("On 23 November, the day Strasbourg was liberated, the American army entered the camp, the first example of the Nazi concentration camp system discovered by the Allies in Western Europe.") How is that best handled? Do we believe one source and ignore others, or find a way to incorporate what they all say, and cite it? One angle is to say concentration camp, as transit camps, though awful, seem to be in a different category. Was the Dutch transit camp abandoned by the German staff as well as the prisoners -- does that matter? --Prairieplant (talk) 18:20, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Prairieplant, I said that Degaulle insisted that Strasbourg had to be liberated by its fellows French nationals, and it was on the way. The camp was indeed liberated by the French army. Here is another well informed source: [1] (I saw that you could read French on your homepage). The same problem is about the discovery of Hitler's residence in Baviere. The French army declared that it was them, and the Americans too. The situation back then was confused, the different sections were not very well co-ordinated, and the fact that the French were under the command of the American army is even more confusing for the restitution of the truth. I would say that at last, the more important is that they were fighting together and the nationality is secondary. But, in France it is well known that the camp was liberated by its army (under American command), and later the camp was used for detaining nazis and their collaborators. If someone has access to better sourcing, they are welcome, otherwise, we could argue on this subject forever. But once again the essential is that this place of horror was liberated by the allied forces.--Gabriel HM (talk) 18:39, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Prairieplant, regarding the date of liberation, I reviewed sources for Herzogenbusch concentration camp, referred to as a Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch in German and as Kamp Vught by the Dutch and according to the the official concentration camp memorial website history http://www.nmkampvught.nl/historische-informatie/. The Herzogenbusch Camp was liberated by the Canadian 4th Armoured Division on 26 October 1944, Natzweiler was liberated on 23 November 1944. If the dates are correct, then Herzogenbusch was liberated a month before Natzweiler was, and was therefore the first concentration camp in Western Europe liberated by Allied forces, irrespective of the statement on the Natzweiler website regarding precedence. I don't think it is worth continuing to discuss the point, but Natzweiler was not the first camp liberated. As to whether Herzogenbusch/Vught was a concentration camp or a "transit camp", read the desciption by the British soldiers who took over for the Canadians and decide if it was just a transit camp: http://ww2today.com/23-november-1944-british-soldiers-discover-horrors-of-vught-concentration-camp. N0TABENE (talk) 01:59, 12 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

the 4,431 documented dead[edit]

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)[reply]

Prairieplant Sorry - was away on vacation. I can find no reference for the “documented” figure of 4431 deaths at KL-NZ. The closest I could find is an error in the brochure distributed at Stuthof which states: «Les registres indiquent 4462 détenus immatriculés dans le camp...» However, the same brochure later goes on to state: «Les registres tenus par l'administration SS indiquent 44623 détenus immatriculés dans ce camp. La plupart étaient affectés dans des camps annexes tels que Neckargerach, Neckarelz, Schönberg, Erzingen (situé dans le Bad Wurtemberg) et Ste Marie aux Mines en Alsace. On estime que 10 à 12 000 personnes y sont mortes de 1941 à 1944. » (The records kept by the SS administration indicate 44,623 registered prisoners in the camp. Most were serving in sub-camps such as Neckargerach, Neckarelz, Schönberg, Erzingen (located in the Bad Württemberg) and Ste Marie aux Mines in Alsace. An estimated 10-12 000 people died from 1941 to 1944.) The numbers vary widely for the number of deaths at both the main and subcamps, partly due to the time period included in the source.The estimation of 22,000 deaths, which includes both the main and all 70 subcamps, is from Steegmann, the KL-NZ website http://www.struthof.fr/en/the-kl-natzweiler/introduction-to-the-history-of-the-camp/ and the International Tracing Service (for Displaced Persons) https://www.its-arolsen.org/en/research-and-education/historical-background/anniversaries/index.html?expand=3305&cHash=1d028eced3528fa37f944f328d548268. This includes 14,000 deaths which occurred just from Oct 1944 to April 1945, accounting for the disparity in the number given in the onsite brochure which only includes deaths through 1944. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates the number of deaths in all KL-NZ camps as between 19,000 and 20,000 for the period of May 1941 to March 1945 http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007260. The National World War 2 Museum gives a figure of 25,000 deaths without providing source referencing http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-students/ww2-history/ww2-by-the-numbers/holocaust.html. As you mention the figure of 22,000 for the main and all subcamps seems to be the most reliable based on consensus of sources (a mini-meta-analysis, so to speak). I agree with changing to number to 22,000, and omitting the individual figures, since there is no source that I can find for the figure of 4431.N0TABENE (talk) 22:12, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
N0TABENE Such good research, thanks. I changed the number in the article text as well. The French Wikipedia site uses the 25,000 estimate in their infobox, with no specific citation. We are much more in sync now and have a source for the estimate. Glad you went on vacation, hope it was good. --Prairieplant (talk) 21:57, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Unsourced sentence deleted[edit]

@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)[reply]

Auntieruth55 I reverted the statement, having looked at the article before reading this talk page and feeling it was reverted before anyone could find the documentation if it exists. This camp did not hold women, in general, per text in the article, and Agfa camp was all women, so it does not seem unlikely that a group of women prisoners coming through (N-S was a transit camp as well as its other roles) may have been sent to Agfa-Commando. We were writing at the same moment, it seems. So you are removing what you added at some past time, okay. --Prairieplant (talk) 21:28, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Fatten them up before killing them, another fact about the skeleton project added[edit]

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.

The only sentence in that section whose origin is still a mystery to me is the statement about most of the victims being originally from Thessaloniki in Greece. Is that on the museum site? --Prairieplant (talk) 01:08, 9 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Answering my own question, at the web site made by Hans Joachim Lang, noted in Further reading in the article, he includes a short biography of each of the 86 people who were murdered by gas at this camp for the Skeleton project. The place of birth for many was Thessaloniki, a city that had been large percentage Jewish in, say 1900, and after wars that brought the Ottoman Empire to an end, Thessaloniki was made part of Greece, a trade of Muslims in Greece for Orthodox Christians in Turkey changed the population of Thessaloniki. Then the Nazis overran Greece, and took many of those Jewish people to the concentration camps. So we can leave the statement, documented in Lang's work published as a book and at the web site for Die Namen der Nummern (The names of the numbers). --Prairieplant (talk) 23:13, 10 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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I checked the reference, it is correct, changed to checked = true. --Prairieplant (talk) 09:17, 5 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]


discrepancy on date[edit]

"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)[reply]

Concerned picture of crematorium may be somewhat misleading[edit]

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.

Your post is not signed, so I cannot address my reply to you. This camp was a place where people were murdered by gas chamber, and some were shot, and others died from mistreatment. None were left there alive when the Nazis perceived that they were losing the war and the Allies approaching. The people selected for the Jewish skeleton collection were murdered in that gas chamber in the small photo about 4th or 5th down in the text of the article. The photo in the infobox is one of the entrance to the camp on a foggy day. If you got the impression this camp was part of the extermination of people deemed not fit to live by the Nazis, then you have understood it correctly. Total deaths are estimated at 22,000 people. Inmates were meant to disappear in the Night and Fog, no trace of them left. That Nazi project was directed at anyone in Europe who was identified as a member of the resistance to Nazi occupation. I disagree with your view, and find the article to present the events that occurred at Natzweiler Struthof in the time of its existence with reasonable accuracy, and reflecting new information uncovered in this century. Your phrase "conventional cremation" is rather mysterious, as bodies were cremated to leave no trace of their existence after death at that camp. Burial would leave their bones behind. Each camp has its own story of atrocities. I am sorry for your unease at seeing the small photo of the jury-rigged gas chamber, but it was a notable part of this camp, and it was put to use, making the photo an essential part of the description of the camp.
You might gain by reading the related articles, about Hans-Joachim Lang, author of The Names of the Numbers, and the Jewish skeleton collection, and August Hirt, who directed the project to collect the skeletons of Jewish people by selecting people from Auschwitz camp, feeding them for two weeks at Natzweiler Struthof, then killing them in the gas chamber, and transporting their corpses to the University facilities in Strasbourg while the university was under Nazi direction. The web site for the museum now maintained at the site of the camp is in the External links, and may also prove informative to you. If you have other comments, please do sign your comments by using four tilde characters in a row. --Prairieplant (talk) 11:45, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Interlanguage links[edit]

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)[reply]

@Prairieplant: the reason for (red) interlanguagelink is very simple: translate the article and the link gets blue. If there is no red link, there will never be a translation. Thank you for your time. Lotje (talk) 04:04, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Changes in references, deprecated parameters[edit]

Reference errors[edit]

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)[reply]

GoingBatty I moved your comment here, to the article's Talk page. Several refs generated errors when I was adding two images in the article, so I tried to understand why and how to fix them. The error message was that subscription=yes is deprecated, for the ref following the one you mention, which cited an image of the page in the NY Times reporting on the trial. The suggestions to replace that are found here. I do not understand how three words instead of one for url= replaces that parameter, but that is what I did. It took me three tries to get the NY Times ref correct, and in one of those tries I put the strange url = parameter in the ref preceding it. That is removed now. What is frustrating is that subscription= yes is still found at Template:Subscription required. The article gives no indication that it is deprecated. And more confusing, the advice at the Template Cite news page does not work either. I do have a subscription to the NY Times right now, so I do not know what people see if they do not have such a subscription and want to read the source. --Prairieplant (talk) 03:27, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It just dawned on me that Template:Subscription required is something I have never used. I posted a question on the Talk page for cite news, asking for clarification of the Deprecated parameters and the suggested replacements. --Prairieplant (talk) 03:49, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Extermination camp[edit]

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)[reply]

When the Natzweiler Struthof camp was in operation, the land was not part of France, it was part of the Third Reich. The university in Strasbourg was renamed to show that change. It is part of France since the war ended. "Between 1941 and 1944, Alsace was administered by Germany as an integral part of the German Reich." Quote from the article's text.
This is a point of distinction I do not understand, requiring a citation source for the classification of Extermination camp in the infobox. The article Extermination camp has map drawn by an editor, File:WW2-Holocaust-Europe.png with the caption "Mass deportations: the pan-European routes to the extermination camps"; is that the final word on what was an extermination camp? The article does not otherwise mention the name of Natzweiler-Struthof, beyond that graphic. The most recent data found 22,000 died from execution by rifle or by gas, starvation and overwork, of the 52,000 people held there. If that is not an extermination camp, I am mystified. A distinction without a difference? Saying it happened only in Eastern Europe seems like a false distinction. Perhaps the lack is in that article Extermination camp, which needs to mention Natzweiler-Struthof in the text, accurately. N0TABENE, others, do you have a view on this? --Prairieplant (talk) 00:18, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It's a straightforward distinction. The Nazis had thousands of concentration camps, where millions of people died. However they only had seven extermination camps. 50,000+ died at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, but it wasn't an extermination camp. 56,545 died at Buchenwald concentration camp, but it wasn't an extermination camp. 41,500 died at Dachau concentration camp, but it wasn't an extermination camp. 30,000 to 90,000 died at Ravensbrück concentration camp, but it wasn't an extermination camp. Per WP:REDFLAG please provide multiple high-quality references that Natzweiler-Struthof was an extermination camp, instead of drawing your own conclusion that because 22,000 people died that it must have been an extermination camp. FDW777 (talk) 08:15, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Here is an article explaining the difference by historian Laurence Rees, who has written extensively on the Holocaust. FDW777 (talk) 08:42, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If you rely on the Wikipedia article for making this distinction FDW777, then you ought to edit the Extermination camp article with the strong words you write here and the count of 7 (seven) places in the highlights / lead and in the article itself, and limit the article to discussion of those 7 camps, not showing all the Nazi camps on the maps, for one example, and limiting discussion, the text, to those 7 camps. It is an in-universe, the Nazi universe, distinction. I truly cannot see it as a distinction, except in the worldview of the Nazis, who did horrid things at all their camps and way stations, killed people outright, starved them or overworked them to death, but the deaths at those other camps, not the big 7, somehow did not count in their grand campaign. From the perspective of 2020, all those camps were extermination camps and the terminology of the Nazi campaign is irrelevant to a present day understanding of what happened at all the places where Nazis killed people. If you say it is the verdict of current historians to distinguish 7 camps from the others in describing that era of history, then I leave it you to provide current sources making that clear in the Extermination camp article. Then you can remove the term or link to the extermination camp article in any of the other articles on specific Nazi camps that are not in the Big 7 list per the words of the Nazis. --Prairieplant (talk) 23:13, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

FDW777 They were all extermination camps in my view, so your numbers game is not enlightening to me. However, the Extermination camp article is still poorly written. I recall reading it when I worked on this article with several other editors; none of what you call now in 2020 the key definitions of an extermination camp were made clear in that article. Whether I added that link to the infobox, I do not recall. --Prairieplant (talk) 04:28, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

List of firms added to article[edit]

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)[reply]

Major changes must be discussed on talk page first[edit]

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)[reply]

Please see diff. It absolutely is misleading to describe the camp as located "in France"; compare Polish concentration camps.
Here are the changes to the lead which are objected to:
Natzweiler-Struthof was a German-run concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the Alsatian village of Natzwiller (German: Natzweiler) in France, and the town of Schirmeck, about 50 kilometres (31 mi) southwest of the city of Strasbourg. Natzweiler-Struthof was the only concentration camp established by the Nazis on French territory, though there were French-run temporary camps such as the one at Drancy. (Prairieplant version)
Natzweiler-Struthof was a Nazi concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the village of Natzweiler in the Gau Baden-Alsace. Natzweiler-Struthof was the only concentration camp established by Nazi Germany on territory annexed from France, though there were French-run temporary camps such as Drancy transit camp. (My version—most changes are highlighted)
Benefits: no language school, no easter egg links (Drancy and concentration camp), no misleading characterization of the camp's location. buidhe 05:06, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I cannot claim to have written the lead, it was a group effort. I find it clearer as is, writing now, when the land is again part of France. It is clear in the second paragraph how the war time borders are different from modern day borders. Drancy is not the topic of the article, Natzweiler-Struthof is the topic, so I see no problem in using the pipe to make the lead read more simply. It still takes a person to the article, if Drancy is unknown and of interest to a reader.
Be aware that it is France keeping up the site as a museum, not Germany. Modern day France conducts the ceremonies of memorial. The map of France is the correct map to show the location. We are writing today in the 21st century when the land, the museum on the land, is French territory. --Prairieplant (talk) 05:18, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Before I make a suggestion about the construction of the first para, the location of the camp is very unclear in the lead, and isn't detailed and cited in the body of the article. At present the lead says it was both near Natzwiller and also near Schirmeck, which gives the impression it had two sites. A quick look at Google Maps shows that it is in fact a single location a short distance north of the villages of Natzwiller and Struthof, which makes sense given its name. Mentioning Schirmek isn't at all helpful. Surely the memorial has a website which describes its location? BTW I have moved the article as it wasn't even clear the article was about a concentration camp. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 14:10, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@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. buidhe 02:36, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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:

Natzweiler-Struthof was a Nazi concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the villages of Natzweiler and Struthof in the Gau Baden-Alsace of Germany, on territory annexed from France on a de facto basis in 1940. It operated from 21 May 1941 to September 1944, and was the only concentration camp established by the Germans on territory annexed from France.
Thoughts? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:47, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I suport this wording. buidhe 03:58, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I do not support this wording. Who needs "de facto" and "de jure" in the lead paragraphs? Clear and simple language in the lead is what I support. Those words are not in the article itself, and the lead is to be highlights of the article, quote from WP:CREATELEAD "Use extreme caution when revamping or updating an existing lead. Any changes to the lead should be based on content in the body. Always seek a consensus version." You do not have a consensus version. --Prairieplant (talk) 22:43, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Prairieplant, I am working on a background section which explains the location in the main article. buidhe 23:07, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]


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)[reply]

There's no takeover and you dont WP:OWN the article. It is certainly misleading to highlight an image which shows modern day structures that didn't exist at the time, especially since that is never explained. Most other concentration camp articles which have free images of themselves at liberation use general views to illustrate.
MOS:LEADIMAGE says, "Lead images should be natural and appropriate representations of the topic; they should not only illustrate the topic specifically, but also be the type of image used for similar purposes in high-quality reference works, and therefore what our readers will expect to see." Three of the four images in Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos entry are three of the 1945 views that I added to the article (and the fourth image is non-free) so the current version fails to follow high quality reference sources. buidhe 20:26, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Looking above, it seems the skeleton image was removed as non-free. It's now shown to be freely licensed so that rationale doesn't apply. buidhe 20:27, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
There is no such thing as "taking over the page", as no-one owns Wikipedia articles. Alerted by a notice at Milhist, I proposed an soundly policy-based alternative that Buidhe agreed with, so there was a consensus to implement it, and I did. If you remain unhappy with the current consensus, you could put up a neutrally-worded RFC to get a wider community consensus. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:15, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A consensus of two with another person very strongly disagreeing on many points is not a consensus.

You think all concentration camp articles use only past photos and no current photos. Look at those articles on Natzweiler-Struthof in other languages, and you will see that is not true. Most articles on Natzweiler-Struthof use the photo I selected in the infobox, or a version of it on a sunny day, with that memorial showing clearly. I checked that at the time the photo was selected, and I do not think you looked anywhere else, you just know what is in the articles about Natzweiler-Struthof, without looking. The photo was discussed back then, as of course with all photos, different people respond differently to the image.
The consensus achieved on this article earlier included more than two people, as people from earlier times dropped in to explain points where the text seemed confusing as more detail and more recent research, publications and films were added to the article.
If this is your attitude toward consensus on a sensitive topic, the concentration camp in Alsace where the people selected for the Jewish skeleton project were killed, where the names of those people who were killed were uncovered just a few years ago by a German journalist from the other side of the Rhine River, where so many people in the resistance across Europe were imprisoned or killed, a place where France is still making peace with its own past, then you appear to me as editors who do not appreciate the work of others and you are editors who are difficult to consider as team players. Prior to your arrival on this scene, it was challenging but calm to work on this article with other editors. You have taken over the page because you revert everything that is not YOUR WAY and I have not seen a compromise nor understanding of another view yet. That is what I mean. This is no longer a team effort, except for the team of Peacemaker67 and Buidhe. Yes, I am angry, as I think you have crossed lines blithely, and no I do not own the article, I never did, but you own it now. --Prairieplant (talk) 22:43, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia in any language is not a "high-quality reference work". Also, the photographs of 1944 and 1945 were just uploaded by me and previously not available on Commons, so they aren't widely used yet. Also, we do not consider the nationality of a writer for their reliability. There are a lot of really good German historians writing about the Nazi era, and it would be wrong to exclude them. Per WP:NOTCENSORED we should not remove pertinent images just because someone doesn't like them. buidhe 23:02, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You are the someone who does not like carefully chosen photographs. - - Prairieplant (talk) 02:07, 7 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It might be a weak consensus, but it is a consensus. As I have said already, feel free to use dispute resolution to get a wider consensus. Some possible options are taking the matters you are concerned about to the dispute resolution noticeboard or initiate a neutrally-worded request for comment. Having interacted with Buidhe before on several occasions, I am sure that Buidhe and I will accept a different outcome if a wider consensus is sought and the community agrees with you on any or all of these matters. That is how we roll on WP. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:48, 7 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I cannot see any prior discussion where the infobox image was discussed, other than in 2017 when Prairieplant says The photo in the infobox is one of the entrance to the camp on a foggy day in 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 process which 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)[reply]

Hans Hüttig[edit]

"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)[reply]

Needs another source; Jewish virtual library is deprecated[edit]

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)[reply]

References

  1. ^ a b "Friedrich "Fritz" Hartjenstein". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved September 18, 2015. 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.

Elinruby (talk) 08:34, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]