About 25km west of Obernai, off the D130, 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.
In all, some 22,000 of the prisoners (40% of the total) 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.
