Concentration Camp Mittelbau (Dora)

The collection contains among others:

Report on the Concentration Camp (1.4.44 - 1.12.44) ZA II (statistical listings, announcement of monthly reports, et al), Report on the Concentration Camp (1.12.44 - 3.4.45) (Order of the SS-WVHA regarding autonomy of the DORA labor camp effective as of 1.10.44, listing of the prisoners according to nationality, list of persons of the Boelke barracks camp from 25.1.45, transport lists, monthly report of the prisoner-hospital barracks, et al), numerical and alphabetical listing of prisoners, status reports, arrivals and departures lists, lists of personal effects, various death lists and excerpts, crematorium lists, cemetery lists, original death books and registers, lists of transfers within a camp, transport lists, escaped prisoners, punishment measures, hospitals, DP-materials, liberated and returned prisoners, various reports, correspondence, invoices, witness statements about various commandos, investigation reports of the US Army, post-war documents

Individual documents (164.065 dig. Doc.):

This part of the Concentration Camp Mittelbau-Dora collection contains by far the predominant part of the documentation, which in each case can be immediately and clearly attributed to one specific prisoner of the concentration camp. Thus this sub-collection contains prisoner registration cards, arrival registration forms, postal control cards, prisoner-clinic card, medical pamphlets, hospital files, death certificates, death documentation, etc.

The collection contains a part of the prisoner-related administration files of Concentration Camp Mittelbau including the prisoner hospital and individual outside units in the original or as a copy – in some cases even from the time as of 1943, when the camp was still run as Buchenwald-satellite camp – as well as whole series of lists and assessments relating to Mittelbau-prisoners, which were created after the war.

The following camps and commandos are mentioned in the documents, at times with varying names:

CC Mittelbau I (“Dora”) – Main camp near Nordhausen

Labor camp Mittelbau II (“Erich”) – camp/commando in Ellrich

Labor camp Mittelbau III (“Hans”) - camp/commando in Harzungen

Labor camp Boelke-Kaserne, Nordhausen

Commando Adorf

Commando“Anhydrit”, Harzungen

Commando Ballenstedt (“Napola”)

Commando Blankenburg (“Klosterwerke”)

Commando Bleicherode

Commando Ilfeld

Commando Klein-Bodungen (“Emmi”)

Commando Kelbra

Commando Osterode (“Dachs IV”)

Commando Quedlinburg

Commando Rossla

Commando Rottleberode

Commando Trautenstein

also:

1. SS-construction brigade, Neusollstedt

3. SS- construction brigade

4. SS- construction brigade, Ellrich

5. SS- construction brigade, Osnabrück

6. SS- construction brigade, Brühl/Köln

7. SS-railway construction brigade, Stuttgart

8. SS-railway construction brigade, Offenburg

Information on the later fate of the prisoners evacuated in April 1945 is not contained in this collection.

History of Concentration Camp Mittelbau (Dora) 1943-1945:

On 28 August 1943, near Nordhausen in Thuringia, in the area of a subterranean research facility which had existed since 1936, satellite camp Dora of Concentration Camp Buchenwald was founded.
The creation of the camp was an immediate consequence of the British airstrike on the Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde, located on the Baltic island Usedom, on 17/18 August 1943 [JCW1]. Since 1936, a group headed by engineer Wernher von Braun had been setting up a research center for rocket development. Their flagship product became both famous and infamous in 1944 with the description used by Goebbels: reprisal weapon 2 (V2).
Immediately after the airstrike, Hitler gave the order to have the rocket production relocated to an underground site. In August 1943, in discussions with SS-Chief Himmler and Minister of Defence Speer it was decided that concentration camp prisoners would be used for the construction work and rocket production. The responsibility of managing and supervising the project was given to engineer Dr. Hans Walter Kammler (Head of Division C of the Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA).
In that same month of August 1943 the decision was made to relocate the production site from Kohnstein, a mountain ridge in the outer area of Nordhausen, to a tunnel system of the Economical Research Society (WiFo), which was financed by the Reich Ministry of Economics.
As the result of a discussion, the Mittelwerk GmbH was founded on 21 September 1943 as a Reich-owned concentration camp facility. While from this point on the Mittelwerk GmbH carried responsibility for the rocket production, the WiFo assumed the task of restoring the tunnel system.
For the subterranean work to be done, prisoners were recruited from Buchenwald, 90 km away. The first transport, comprising 107 Buchenwald prisoners, already arrived on 28.8.1943, and thus a new satellite camp, the so-called Dora labor camp, a satellite camp, was associated with Camp Buchenwald. By the end of October 1943 there were already more than 3,000 prisoners in Kohnstein, and in winter 1943/44 it was more than 10,000 camp inmates who filled the subterranean area. By late March 1944 at least 5,000 of the approx. 17,000 prisoners who had been deported to Dora by this time had died as a result of the horrific work and living conditions there.
In the summer of 1944 a CC Buchenwald satellite camp, located in the Harz region, was administratively separated and, on 28.10.1944, given the status of autonomous main camp as Concentration Camp Mittelbau.
As the first of several more camps – which, like the Dora camp, had been initially allocated to Concentration Camp Buchenwald – satellite camp Heinrich in Rottleberode was opened. Operations began there with 200 transferred prisoners on 13.3.1944. On 1.4.1944 Camp Harzungen (cover name Hans) was set up, intially envisaged as housing for German civilian workers of the Mittelwerks, but which until early 1945 was filled with 5,000 prisoners.
A small prison camp started operations - also in April 1944 – on Bischofferode estate (cover name Anna). It was closed, however, by early May 1944 and its 300 inmates transferred to Camp Ellrich-Juliushütte (cover name Erich), which was opened on 2.5.1944. From the summer of 1944 the Ellrich-Juliushütte camp had, on average, 8.000 prisoners, and was thus the second-largest camp in the Mittelbau-Dora complex.
Dora became the control center for the movement of prisoners from and to neighboring construction camps. The Economic and Administration Main Office (WVHA) supported Doras development towards becoming an autonomous concentration camp by assigning it a work detail supervisor, the SS-Untersturmführer (second lieutenant) Alois Kurz, who was re-assigned from Auschwitz for just this purpose. Especially the centrally organized management of the prisoner slave-labor and the gradual installation of a unified, standardized administration of all the camps had considerable significance for the independence of the Mittelbau-Dora camp complex.
On 10.9.1944 the camp, which until then had gone by the name Dora, was renamed Work Camp Mittelbau I, while the camps in Ellrich-Juliushütte and Harzungen, were from then on called Mittelbau II and Mittelbau III, respectively. The decree of autonomy given by the WVHA from 28.10.1944 followed simply as a formality [BUW1]. On this day the entire camp system of Concentration Camp Mittelbau was comprised of 32,532 prisoners.
There were essentially three groups of camps created: The first camp consisted of camps of the Mittelwerk and its subsidiaries, i.e. the main camp Dora and its satellite camps in Rossla and Kleinbodungen, all of which were dependent on the program of the “V-Waffen” rocket program to exist. The second group was formed by the SS-construction brigade stationed in the southern Harz area, where the prisoners were primarily planned for the work done on the railways network of the Bahn. The third group was comprised of the so-called construction camps in Rottleberode, Harzungen and Ellrich.
Until April 1945 the number of prisoners of Concentration Camp Mittelbau climbed to more than 40,000, despite the constantly rising death rate. During the same time period at least 15 more satellite camps were created.
Whereas all the newly established camps tended to be small, there were two exceptions: on the one the womens’ camp Gross-Werther, to which on 15.3.1945 roughly 300 Hungarian Jews from Morchenstern, an expanded satellite camp of Gross-Rosen, were transferred. The other exception is the satellite camp which was set up on the premises of the Boelcke-Kaserne on the outskirts of Nordhausen.
On 11 April 1945 the camp was liberated by the Americans.


Author: Irmtrud Wojak, former Head of Research, ITS