Page "Salzwedel" Paragraph 7

In 1943, the Neuengamme concentration camp built a female subcamp in Salzwedel, capable of holding more than 1, 000 female prisoners.

Eventually more than 3, 000 women were held there, both Jews and non-Jews.

The guard staff at the camp included sixty SS men and women.

One Aufseherin is known today by name, Lieselotte Darnstaedt, who was born in 1908.

Darnstaedt also served at Ravensbrück before coming to Salzwedel.

On April 29, 1945, the US Army liberated the Salzwedel women's subcamp, and also a men's camp nearby for male non-German political prisoners.

They were shocked to find more than ninety corpses of women who had died of typhus, dysentery and malaria.

At the beginning of 1945, prior to the arrival of American ground forces, Allied war planes attacked the main train station of Salzwedel, killing 300 people.

The US Army eventually turned over control of the city to the Soviet Red Army, causing Salzwedel to eventually become part of the German Democratic Republic.