Flossenburg

Flossenburg was founded as a Hohenstaufen stronghold in 948. It is located on the Czech border.

Flossenburg has a large granite quarry, which was used to build the castle.

The castle was destroyed during the 30 Years War by the Swedes.

The town of Flossenburg

Flossenburg Concentration Camp was founded by enterprising SS leaders who wanted to use slave labor to mine the granite and sell it to the Nazi government to build Albert Speer's monumental projects. The SS even had their own business, the German Earth and Stone Works Company (DESt).

The Nazis wanted the German populace to think the stone used in monuments like the Nuremberg Rally site were mined by noble German stonemasons, not slaves.

You can see Flossenburg castle in the background.

SS officials were willing to sell labor assistance to locals in the area for the right price, and the local community was integrated into the fabric of the camp. After WWII a great forgetting occurred about the complicity of the populace with the crimes occurring at their doorstep.

As the Soviets liberated Poland, Flossenburg was flooded with prisoners from other concentration camps. This is when the majority of prisoners died at the camp. The Poles built the first memorials here to remember their dead.

The church at Flossenburg Concentration Camp has stained glass windows of the nations and peoples most effected by the Nazi's disregard for non-German human life.