Flossenbürg

The concentration camp at Flossenbürg was comprised primarily of political prisoners, German criminals convicted of repeated crimes, and following the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, Soviet POWs. With a few thousand prisoners at any given time, the camp’s prisoners were forced to quarry granite and produce aircraft materials for the Messerschmidt company.

In the spring of 1945, as larger concentration camps comprised mostly of Jewish prisoners were evacuated by the SS, Flossenbürg came to hold tens of thousands of Jews, who were quickly forced to flee due to the Allied advance. When the 90th Infantry division entered Flossenbürg on April 23, 1945, roughly 1,500 survivors were left in the camp.