Deep in the forests and hills of the Vosges, over 20km west of Barr, Le Struthof-Natzwiller (daily: March–June 9am–noon & 2–4.30pm; July & Aug 10am–5pm; Sept–Dec 10am–noon & 2–4.30pm; closed Jan & Feb; tel 03.88.97.04.49; €1.50) was the only Nazi concentration camp to be built on French soil (though at the time, of course, it was part of the Greater German Reich). The site is almost perversely beautiful, its stepped terraces cut into steep hillside, giving fantastic views across the Bruche valley. Set up shortly after Hitler's occupation of Alsace-Lorraine in 1940, it is thought that over 10,000 people died here. When the Allies liberated the camp on November 23, 1944, they found it empty – the remaining prisoners having already been transported to Dachau.The barbed wire and watchtowers are as they were, though only two of the prisoners' barracks remain, one of which is now a museum of the deportations. Captions are in French only, but the pictures suffice to tell the story. An arson attack by neo-Nazis in 1976 only served to underline the need for such displays. At the foot of the camp is the crematorium with its ovens still intact. A couple of kilometres down the road to the west, towards Schirmeck, the Germans built a gas chamber – proof that Le Struthof was a fully integrated part of the Nazi killing machine. To the east, the two main granite quarries worked by the internees still survive, clearly signposted from the main road.
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