Boelcke-Kaserne concentration camp

Boelcke-Kaserne concentration camp was a subcamp of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp complex where prisoners were left to die after they became unable to work. It was located inside a former Luftwaffe barracks complex in Nordhausen, Thuringia, Germany, adjacent to several pre-existing forced labor camps. During its three-month existence, about 6,000 prisoners passed through the camp and almost 3,000 died there under "indescribable" conditions. More than a thousand prisoners were killed during the bombing of Nordhausen by the Royal Air Force on 3–4 April 1945. Their corpses were found by the US Army units that liberated the camp on 11 April. Photographs and newsreel footage of the camp were reported internationally and made Nordhausen notorious in many parts of the world.

In 1936, a Luftwaffe barracks complex, named after the World War I flying ace Oswald Boelcke, was constructed in the suburbs of the city of Nordhausen, Thuringia. From 1942, parts of the barracks complex had housed forced laborers for Mabag, a company involved in arms production. Additional prisoners arrived in June 1944 for forced labor with Junkers and in the Mittelwerk tunnel system, mostly for the production of V-1 and V-2 rockets. There was also a Gestapo-run Sonderlager , and other forced labor camps nearby, but these were not part of the Mittelbau-Dora complex.

Wikipedia