About 25km west of Obernai stands Natzweiler-Struthof, the only Nazi concentration camp on French territory. Today, the sombre remains of the camp are still surrounded by guard towers and concentric, once-electrified, barbed-wire fences. The four crématoire (crematorium ovens), the salle d’autopsie (autopsy room) and the chambre à gaz (gas chamber), 1.7km from the camp gate, bear grim witness to the atrocities committed here. The nearby Centre Européen du Résistant Déporté pays homage to Europe’s Resistance fighters.
In all, some 22,000 (40% of the total) of the prisoners interned here and at nearby annexe camps died; many were shot or hanged. In early September 1944, as US Army forces approached, the 5517 surviving inmates were sent to Dachau.
