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By 1945, there were almost 40,000 inmates being held in the Flossenbürg camp system as a whole, including almost 11,000 women. Prisoners were forced to work in the Flossenbürg camp quarry and in armaments-related production. Malnutrition, disease, and exhaustion from hard labor was rampant among the prisoners being held. Combined with the brutality of the guards, this treatment was the cause of thousands of prisoner deaths.
It is estimated that between April of 1944 and April of 1945, more than 1500 death sentences were carried out here. For this purpose, six new gallows hooks were installed. In the last months the rate of daily executions exceeded the capacity of the crematorium. As a solution, the SS began stacking the corpses in piles, dousing them with gasoline, and setting them alight. Incarcerated in what was called the "Bunker," those who had been condemned to death were kept alone in dark cells with no food for days until they were executed. Amongst the Allied military officers executed here were Special Operations Executive agents:
1944:As Germany's defeat loomed, a number of the SOE agents who had been tortured repeatedly by the SS in order to extract information, were executed on the same day. The SOE agents hanged on March 29, 1945 were:
In early April of 1945, as American forces were approaching the camp, the SS executed General Hans OsterHans Oster ( 1887 1945) was a career officer in the German Army, and a dedicated opponent of Hitler and Nazism. He was a central resistance figure; suspicions of this and also of aid to Jews led to his dismissal in 1943. Following the failed July 20 plot,, Admiral Wilhelm CanarisThis article is about the 20th-century German military officer. For the 19th-century Greek naval officer, see Constantine Kanaris. Wilhelm Franz Canaris ( January 1, 1887 — April 9, 1945) was head of the German military intelligence service, the Abwehr, f, Rev. Dietrich BonhoefferDietrich Bonhoeffer ( February 4, 1906 — April 9, 1945) was a German religious leader and participant in the resistance movement against Nazism. Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and theologian, took part in the plots being planned by members of the Abwehr (M Dr. Karl Sack , Dr. Theodore Struenck and General Friedrich von Rabenau who were involved in the 1944 Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler ( April 20, 1889 April 30, 1945) was the Fuhrer (leader) of the National Socialist German Workers' Party and of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. In that capacity he was Chancellor of Germany, head of government, and head of state, ruling as a assassination attempt. They then began the forced evacuation of 22,000 prisoners, leaving behind only those too sick to walk. On the death march to DachauDachau is a city in Southern Germany, in the federal state of Bavaria. Just 20 km away from Munich, it has become a popular housing area for people working in Munich, and now has roughly 40,000 inhabitants. Dachau was founded in the 8th century, and was t, SS guards shot any prisoner too sick to keep up. Before they reached Dachau, more than 7,000 prisoners had been shot or had collapsed and died. By the time the U.S. Army 90th Infantry Division liberated Flossenbürg on April 23, 1945 more than 30,000 inmates had been killed.
The Flossenbürg War Crimes Trial began in Dachau, Germany, on June 12, 1946 and came to a conclusion on January 22, 1947. Forty-six former personnel from Flossenbürg concentration camp were tried by an American Military for crimes of murder, torturing, and starving the prisoners in their custody. All but five of the defendants were found guilty, fifteen of whom were condemned to death, eleven received life sentences, and fourteen were jailed for terms of one to thirty years.