On 29 October 2009 I brought a visit to Vught concentratiion camp. I saw the cel where the bunker tragedy was and the crematorium, which are also in other German concentration camps. I was curious to visit this camp since I heard a lot about it when I was at Amersfoort concentration camp. Many prisoners in Amersfoort concentration camp were taken to Vught since the camp in Amersfoort was under construction.

Vught was the only official SS concentration camp in occupied Northwest Europe, established in occupied Holland. Construction began in May 1942. The first prisoners arrived at the camp before it was finished at the end of 1942. These prisoners came from the camp in Amersfoort, which the Nazis wanted to give up. The famished and abused prisoners arrived at the railway station in Vught and were marched off along the streets.

The first commander of the camp was an SS captain named Karl Chmilewski. This SS Officer was well known for the barbaric atrocities he had committed at the camp of Gusen, an sub-camp of Mauthausen. (Mauthausen had a reputation as one of the most brutal Nazi camps). Later, the commanders of the camp were SS officer Grunewald (October 1943) and SS officer Huttig (February 1944).

 

A Canadian soldier is looking at the electric fences and the watch towers after the liberation of the camp.

Herzogenbusch concentration camp (Dutch: Kamp Vught, German: Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch) was a Nazi concentration camp located in Vught near the city of 's-Hertogenbosch, in the Netherlands. Herzogenbusch was the only concentration camps in western Europe outside of Germany. The camp was first used in 1943 and held 31,000 prisoners. 749 prisoners died in the camp, and the others were transferred to other camps shortly before the camp was liberated by the Allied Forces in 1944. After the war the camp was used as a prison for Germans. Now there is a visitors center with exhibitions and a national monument remembering the camp and its victims. During the World War II, Germany occupied the Netherlands (1940–1945). The Nazis transported Jewish and other prisoners from the Netherlands via the transit camps Amersfoort and Westerbork to concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.[citation needed] When Amersfoort and Westerbork appeared to be too small to handle the large amount of prisoners, the Schutzstaffel decided to build a concentration camp in Vught near the larger city 's-Hertogenbosch

The building of the camp Herzogenbusch, the German name for 's-Hertogenbosch, started in 1942.[2] The camp was modeled after the concentration camps in Germany. The first prisoners, that arrived in 1943, had to finish building the camp.[2] The camp was used from January 1943 until September 1944. During this period, the camp held nearly 31,000 prisoners: Jews, political prisoners, resistance fighters, gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, homeless people, black market traders, criminals and hostages.

Due to hunger, sickness and abuse at least 749 children, women and men died in the concentration camp. 329 of them were executed at the execution site, just outside the camp.[2] When allied forces were approaching Herzogenbusch, the camp was evacuated and the prisoners were transferred to concentration camps further to the east. When the camp was liberated in September 1944, by the 4th Canadian Armored Division and the 96th Battery of the 5th Anti-Tank Division, the camp was almost deserted.

In the first years after the war, the camp was used for the detention of Germans, Dutch SS-men, (suspected)collaborators and/or their children, and war criminals.[3] At first, they were guarded by allied soldiers, but shortly after by the Dutch. As a parliamentary enquiry (the Committee A.M. Baron Tuyll van Serooskerken) showed in 1950, this resulted in maltreatment and even summary executions.

 

Current state

The camp was partially demolished after the war. The grounds now house an educational museum about the camp (known in Dutch as Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught), a Dutch military base called Van Brederodekazerne, a neighbourhood of maluku refugees, and a high security prison called Nieuw Vossenveld. Still, parts of the old camp remain. Central to the prison, the Bunker Tragedy bunker still stands, and large parts of the southern camp buildings are now used by the Dutch military, including the former SS-Barracks shaped like a German cross (not to be mistaken for a swastika)

I show you the photographs I took on my visit.

The entrance of National Monument Vught

Watchtowers and barbed wire fences in the camp

Maquette of the former Vught concentration camp

The entrance of the prisoner baracs

Under degrading conditions the prisoners had to use this toilet room. There was no seperation between men and women.

The lounge. One prisoner made two drawings during a musical performance by and for prisoners.

On this horrible place the bunker tragedy took place.

Cell 115 in which 74 women were pressed ehich had a surface of 9m2

Names of the women who died in that horrible night of 15 to 16 January 1944 in cell 115.

Entrance door to the bunker complex with cell 115.

Crematorium of Vught concentration camp.