Zdjęcia w artykule: Instytut Pileckiego
Dora prisoners were forced to complete the back-breaking work of digging tunnels into the Harz mountains to house the large underground factories.
By October 1944, the SS made Dora an independent concentration camp with the aim of constructing and storing the so-called retaliation weapons.
Approximately 60,000 prisoners from over 40 countries were enslaved at Dora; over 20,000 of them succumbed to the inhumane conditions, slave labor, starvation, exhaustion and disease. The SS housed prisoners underground in enclosed and unstable tunnels, deprived of fresh air and daylight.
“Mittelbau-Dora was a slave labor camp where men lived and died under the harshest conditions in order to manufacture one of the world’s most advanced products - a rocket capable of incredible destruction,” Gilens explained.
Entrance to the tunnels. Contemporary view. Photo: Alvin Gilens