The village of Flossenburg

The little village of Flossenburg is situated in a basin at the foot of the ruins of an old feudal castle. At the time, the village had at about 300 inhabitants and some quarries. The village was situated in a sparsely populated and impoverished area. The extraction of granite was not a profitable business.

The DESt ('Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH' or ‚German Earth and Stone Works Company') took a 30-year lease on the quarries and made the business profitable because they used slaves to quarry the granite. (After the war, all DESt-possessions, and thus SS-possesions, were given to the Bavarian state). Those slaves were originally German prisoners (green triangle) or asocial people (black triangle). It was not until 1940 that the first foreign prisoners would arrive.

The inhabitants at the time were told that the prisoners in the camp were “gangsters, bandits, robbers, murderers,…”. They were not allowed to help the prisoners. If the inhabitants dare to look at the prisoners, they could be punished.

It is very difficult for the elder generation to talk about the concentration camp. Still they witnessed the long column of prisoners marching through the village every day. At the end, these prisoners were merely walking corpses. The inhabitants were not able or did not want to react or offer them help. The repressive system of Nazi-Germany resulted in people being afraid to take action. Families, neighbours, friends couldn't trust each other. In order to be in favour of a party or a party officer, many people committed treason. Those people who did not act as they were supposed to, became prisoners and were introduced into the camp system.