Chirac marks France's darkest secret

ONE of France's most terrible secrets of the Second World War, the existence of a concentration camp on its soil, was commemorated yesterday by Jacques Chirac.

During the Second World War, 25,000 people were murdered in horrific conditions at Natzweiler-Struthof, the only Nazi concentration camp built in France. Even today, few French are aware that it ever existed.

More than 60 years after the camp in Alsace in eastern France was liberated by American troops, the president opened a memorial at the site.

"Always remember," Mr Chirac said. "Fight relentlessly against those who in France or in the world promote hatred, racism, anti-Semitism, intolerance." He added the "rigour of the law" should always be applied to those "who try to deny the horror of what happened".

About 52,000 people were sent to Natzweiler-Struthof from 25 countries, including France, Norway, Poland, Russia, the Netherlands and Germany. Many suspected resistance fighters were sent there - the Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) prisoners - so-called because their families were not notified of their arrest, they simply disappeared into the night and fog.

An unknown number were gassed or died during medical experiments involving treatment for typhus and yellow fever. Thousands more died from harsh conditions, cruel treatment and lack of food.

Among those killed at the camp were two courageous British women, Vera Leigh, 41, a dress designer and Diana Rowden, 29, a Paris-based journalist. Both were members of Churchill's Secret Army as Special Operations Executive agents who had been flown into France to aid the French resistance.

Captured and tortured by the Nazis they were transported to Natzweiler-Struthof on 6 July, 1944 and executed later the same day by lethal injection.

The camp was located in the Vosges mountains in the French region annexed by the Nazis as an integral part of Germany. Before the war, the area had been a popular winter sports destination.

In 1942, the sadistic SS Oberfuhrer Josef Kramer arrived from previous postings at Dachau and Auschwitz to head Natzweiler-Struthof and apply with unprecedented zeal the Nazi programme Vernichtung durch Arbeit (Extermination through Work).

Kramer left the prisoners in no doubt as to their fate."He told us: 'Here you are in a concentration camp, you march and you die.' He showed us the chimney (of the crematorium) and said 'You came in by the door? It's by that chimney that you will leave here - as smoke'," one survivor said.