“Coming from Sachsenhausen, I could very quickly tell the differences that might exist between camps and understand all the meaning of that singular label we were given: NN (Nacht und Nebel, Night and Fog). We were quite simply already crossed off the list of the living.

Of course, like all the camps, Natzweiler is sadly famous for its more or less summary executions, its so-called medical experiments, its gas chamber and its torture. But what we remember most is that slow, inexorable extermination through physical degeneration that Hitler’s followers measured out in a sinister way, which, in the minds of those gentlemen, had to lead to decaying morale and death. That was the plan of men like Kramer, the dreadfully remembered camp commander.

Is it necessary to recall the exhausting work, already too hard for even the most able-bodied men? The lack of food, the brutality and bestiality of our guards and some kapos? The lack of rest, long periods of standing still, interminable roll calls no matter what the weather, exhausting, pointless fatigue duty? And all that in a camp whose structure and location already posed a permanent threat to our health.

Is it necessary to recall the typhus, tuberculosis, dysentery and other diseases that decimated our ranks without us doctors being able to treat them because we had no medicine?

Yes, it took strong morale to maintain the physiological balance necessary for survival in such conditions. Fortunately, an important factor played a role for the survivors: friendship and solidarity. And if today we have the pleasure of each other’s company, it is because each of us, at least once, found a comrade willing to lend a hand at the right time, whether it was by giving a piece a bread, a little help or just some comforting words.

That solidarity and friendship overrode differences of opinion, social class and even, and above all, nationality. We are proud to have kept that international solidarity alive, as the presence here of my friend François Faure, President of the Natzweiler-Struthof Camp International Committee, which represents our friends from France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany, etc. attests.

If we have one role left to play in our respective countries, it is to set an example of friendship and solidarity; to prove to men of good will who love freedom that it is not only possible but necessary to join hands beyond philosophical convictions, social classes and nationalities so that tomorrow our children can live free in a united Europe and a world at peace.”

Speech by Dr. Bogaerts, handing Maurice Bruyninckx, President of the Belgian association of Natzweiler-Struthof NN deportees, its new flag, published in KL Na, bulletin de l’Amicale des Déportés et Famille de Disparus de Natzweiler-Struthof et ses Kommandos, no. 2, 1973.

Bogaerts had been deported to Natzweiler and was head of the sick bay from spring 1944 to the camp’s evacuation.

• Thematic excerpts
• Doctor Bogaerts
• Max Nevers
• Konrad Pflug