Ellrich-Juliushütte Camp Liberation Anniversary: April 14th Event

A commemoration ceremony will be held on Tuesday, April 14th, at the Ellrich-Juliushütte memorial site to mark the 81st anniversary of the liberation of the camp, a subcamp of the Mittelbau concentration camp. The ceremony is scheduled to start at 11:00 am.

American soldiers liberated Ellrich-Juliushütte on April 12, 1945, as they took control of the town of Ellrich. The site, established in May 1944, initially fell under the administration of the Buchenwald concentration camp before being transferred to the newly formed Mittelbau concentration camp in November of the same year. It was the largest subcamp of Mittelbau-Dora.

The commemoration will include welcome addresses from Andreas Froese, Director of the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial, Henry Pasenow, Mayor of Ellrich, and Lars Deiters, Mayor of Walkenried. Tim Kaunov, son of concentration camp survivor Stanislav Kaunov, will deliver a speech.

Ellrich-Juliushütte primarily housed approximately 8,000 male prisoners, the majority of whom were from the Soviet Union, Poland, and France. The proportion of Jewish and Sinti and Roma prisoners held at the camp was notably high compared to other Mittelbau-Dora subcamps. Prisoners were forced to work expanding tunnels in the Kohnstein and Himmelsberg mountains.

In the days leading up to the liberation, between April 4th and 6th, 1945, the camp leadership ordered the evacuation of the prisoners as American forces advanced. Most were transported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which was subsequently liberated by British soldiers on April 15th. A small number of severely weakened prisoners were left behind at Ellrich-Juliushütte and were freed by the arriving American troops on April 12th.

Approximately 12,000 prisoners passed through Ellrich-Juliushütte during its operation, and around 4,000 perished there, including many French, Belgian, Polish, and Soviet prisoners. The site holds particular significance for remembrance efforts in those countries. The camp occupied grounds belonging to both Ellrich and Walkenried, straddling the historical border between Braunschweig and Prussia, and was constructed on the sites of abandoned gypsum factories.