FRAGMENTS | Walter Franz | Part II

Walter Franz captured photographs within the confines of the Dora Mittelbau labor camp, which was established in August 1943. Nestled in the Haaretz Mountains of central Germany, near the city of Nordhausen, the camp became a site where forced laborers, initially transferred from Buchenwald, toiled under harrowing conditions to produce V-2 missiles in subterranean factories.

During the initial phase, the prisoner population in Dora Mittelbau did not include any Jews. However, in the summer of 1944, the first groups of Jewish prisoners arrived at the camp, primarily from Auschwitz, with a significant portion hailing from Hungary.

Tragically, out of the approximately 60,000 workers who were brought to Mittelbau, nearly one-third succumbed to exhaustion, abysmal sanitation, and hunger, resulting in a staggering loss of life.