Sömmerda

Members of the Boys were slave labourers in the Sömmerda labour camp in Germany, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Buchenwald concentration camp was operated by Nazi Germany. The camp had 139 subcamps.

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

History

The first transport of prisoners to Sömmerda consisted of 1,216 Hungarian Jewish women from the Gelsenberg subcamp, which had been dissolved after a bombing raid.

A further 84 women who had been injured in the attack and taken to hospital were also transferred to Sömmerda in the following months.

A total of nine women died in Sömmerda, and according to eyewitnesses, several small children born in the camp were murdered by the SS.

Dissolution

On April 4, 1945, the women were forced on a death march by the SS.

One group was liberated by the US Army on April 13, 1945 near Glauchau in Saxony. A second group had to continue marching towards the Theresienstadt Ghetto for almost a month before they were liberated by Soviet troops near Eger (Cheb) on May 9, 1945.

Aftermath

The former factory site is now an industrial park. The camp site is covered in residential buildings.

In April 2004, a memorial plaque was put up on Weissenseer Strasse next to a death march stele that has no connection to the subcamp.