Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp
Mittelbau-Dora was a Nazi concentration camp located near Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany. It was established in late summer 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, supplying slave labour from many Eastern countries occupied by Germany, for extending the nearby tunnels in the Kohnstein and for manufacturing the V-2 rocket and the V-1 flying bomb. In the summer of 1944, Mittelbau became an independent concentration camp with numerous subcamps of its own. In 1945, most of the surviving inmates were sent on death marches or crammed in trains of box-cars by the SS. On 11 April 1945, US troops freed the remaining prisoners.
Supervised by American soldiers, German civilians from Nordhausen bury the corpses of prisoners found at Mittelbau-Dora in April 1945.
Otto Förschner, camp commandant (after 11 April 1945)
Richard Baer, camp commandant
Emaciated survivors of Nordhausen discovered after liberation of the camp, 12 April 1945
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, including subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe.
Prisoners guarded by SA men line up in the yard of Oranienburg, 6 April 1933
Heinrich Himmler inspects Dachau on 8 May 1936.
Prisoners at Sachsenhausen, 19 December 1938
Forced labor at Sachsenhausen brickworks