Last secrets of Nazi terror - an underground labour camp

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,14058,1599869,00.html

As a small boy growing up during the second world war, Dieter Michaelis knew to keep away from the old salt mine. The only hint of what was going on inside came when prisoners wearing blue-striped uniforms arrived under SS guard to collect bread from the bakery. "We were told they were bad people. They were enemies of Germany. They had to be locked up," Mr Michaelis, 68, said. "We didn't talk about it at school."

It was here in Wansleben am See that one of the last secrets of the Nazis was hidden. Now, 60 years after the war, documents found in the archive of East Germany's secret police, the Stasi, reveal how the Nazis used a vast subterranean complex as a concentration camp.
A retired pit foreman Horst Bringezu stumbled on evidence while researching a local history of the mining industry. Documents revealed that some 1,500 prisoners worked among its vaults; many died. They also revealed that the SS had used the secret tunnels linking two mine shafts to store rare books, priceless paintings and letters by Goethe - all now vanished.

In 1944 the SS picked 300 workers from other camps, including Buchenwald 75 miles away, to hack out vast underground chambers. Out of reach of allied bombers, production equipment was lowered into the mine. Deep underground, the Polish, French and Russian workers - some Jewish - assembled parts for Germany's war industry.

[Judi Lynn]

1. I'm glad to have read this article. Thanks for posting it. Damned sad. n/t

[MadHound]

2. Nice article, but I'm wondering

How is this a "last secret" ? It has been a well known fact that the Nazis had underground factories and storage facilities for decades now. I even heard of Wansleben underground complex twenty years ago. I just don't get why this is a big deal now when it has already been reported on many times since WWII:shrug:

[Orsino]

3. "We were told they were bad people."

"They had to be locked up."

That's why it's a big deal now--because it's very, very timely. While Gitmo and Abu Ghraib aren't literally underground, there is an unsettling familiarity in Herr Michaelis' words.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

6. The fundy churches teach that liberals are "bad people" too

We live in scary times...as startling as 60-70 odd years ago.

[BiggJawn]

4. Well, how many times did they discover the USS "Monitor"?

The last one, that Nat. Geographic was involved in, was supposedely the first, but I read an account about the discovery of the wreck in the late 60's, out of a book on scuba diving the East Coast that was published in the late 50's. The Author claimed to have put a bottle with a note in it inside the gunport on the turret.
Can you say "Gus Whitehead"?

Didn't they recently find another "Nazi Deathcamp guard" living someplace? Might be why they brought this story up again....

[Name removed]

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