The Struthof, which was the only Nazi concentration camp located on French territory during World War II, is starting one of its most important renovations, we learned on Wednesday from the visitor reception structure, located in Natzwiller (Bas-Rhin).
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The works, for a planned amount of 4 million euros, are scheduled over three years. They will concern in particular one of the last huts still present as well as the building which housed a gas chamber, explained Guillaume d'Andlau, director of the European Center for the Deported Resistance member (Cerd), a structure which offers an introductory course to the visit to the camp entrance. The “kitchen” barracks, now a storage place closed to the public, will be transformed into a “museum space” to
“help to feel the deprivation of food”
which was inflicted on the deportees, added Guillaume d'Andlau.
This construction is the last one to remain in its original state, the three other huts still existing were either reconstituted for one of them, or refitted, while the 14 others had been destroyed during an official ceremony in 1954. The gas chamber building will also be restored and redeveloped to
"explain the role of this building and its context"
, according to Cerd.
It served as a place for supposedly scientific experiments on inmates.
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This work is part of a
"master plan for the management of the site of the former Natzweiler-Struthof camp"
, drawn up by the State and the chief architects of Historical Monuments at the beginning of the years 2010. The document has already been produced on the restoration of two other barracks (“bunker block” and “crematorium block”), the memorial, the necropolis and the watchtowers, for a cumulative amount of 6.3 million euros, exposed the Cerd.
Under construction until 2035
The work should continue until 2035.
"The restorations to come take into account the pivotal moment in which we find ourselves: the living memory of the former deportees disappears to bring the camp definitively into the time of history"
, commented Guillaume d'Andlau.
Read also: Renovations underway at Auschwitz-Birkenau
The only concentration camp located on French territory, in Alsace then annexed to the Third Reich, the Struthof interned around 17,000 detainees and deportees from May 1941 to September 1944, of which at least 3,000 died on the spot.
He was at the head of a network of 53 neighboring annex camps which together with him totaled 50,000 imprisonments and nearly 20,000 deaths.
It is visited by 200,000 people each year, a constant increase in attendance.