Flossenbürg Concentration Camp

Flossenbürg was a Nazi concentration camp built in May 1938 by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office.

The SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, abbreviated SS-WVHA, was a Nazi organization responsible for managing the finances, supply systems and business projects for the Allgemeine-SS.

Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges, and thus no trial.

Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled before and during the Second World War.

Liberation of Flossenburg Concentration Camp by TheUSAHEC

Unlike other concentration camps it was located in a remote area, in the Fichtel Mountains of Bavaria, adjacent to the town of Flossenbürg and near the German border with Czechoslovakia.

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe that existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until its peaceful dissolution into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on 1 January 1993.

The Fichtel Mountains, form a small horseshoe-shaped mountain range in northeastern Bavaria, Germany.

Flossenburg Concentration Camp by mragin

The camp's initial purpose was to exploit the forced labor of prisoners for the production of granite for Nazi architecture.

Granite is a common type of felsic intrusive igneous rock that is granular and phaneritic in texture.

Nazi architecture is the architecture promoted by the Third Reich from 1933 until its fall in 1945.

In 1943, the bulk of prisoners switched to producing Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter planes and other armaments for Germany's war effort.

The Messerschmitt Bf 109 is a German World War II fighter aircraft that was the backbone of the Luftwaffe's fighter force.

Although originally intended for "criminal" and "asocial" prisoners, after Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, the camp's numbers swelled with political prisoners from Eastern Europe.

Operation Barbarossa was the code name for the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, which started on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II.

A political prisoner is someone imprisoned because they have opposed or criticized the government responsible for their imprisonment.

It also developed an extensive subcamp system that eventually outgrew the main camp.

Before it was liberated by the United States Army in April 1945, 89,964 to 100,000 prisoners passed through Flossenbürg and its subcamps.

The United States Army is the largest branch of the United States Armed Forces and performs land-based military operations.

Around 30,000 people died there, from malnutrition, overwork, or executions, or during the death marches.

Some of the perpetrators were convicted in the Flossenbürg trial, and the camp was repurposed for other uses before the opening of a memorial and museum in 2007.