The Gelsenberg Lager was a subcamp of the concentration camp
Buchenwald
Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or sus ...
in Gelsenkirchen-Horst.
About 2000 Hungarian Jewish women were held in this subcamp, and were given the task of clearing the area of the
Gelsenberg Benzin AG of rubble in the summer 1944.
Approximately 150 of them were killed during heavy bombing attacks on the hydrogenation plant in September 1944. A few badly injured survivors were taken to
Gelsenkirchen hospitals.
After the dissolution of the camp in the middle of September 1944, the remaining Hungarian Jewish women in the camp were sent to the subcamp Soemmerda in
Thuringia
Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million.
Erfurt is the capital and lar ...
and the other women were shifted to
Essen into another subcamp of the
KZ Buchenwald
The Gelsenzentrum, a center for urban and contemporary history in
Gelsenkirchen, contains documents concerning the history of the subcamp Gelsenberglager.
Buchenwald concentration camp
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