Neckarelz

Members of the Boys were slave labourers in the Neckarelz labour camp, a subcamp of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.

Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp was operated by Nazi Germany. The camp had 64 subcamps.

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

In March 1944, the primary school in the village of Neckarelz, was converted into the concentration camp known as Neckarelz I. Neckarelz II its sister camp was also were set up around an underground ammunition factory that went by the code name  “Goldfish”.

The Neckarelz camp came into existence in the spring of 1944, as a result of the decision to relocate the Daimler-Benz Engine Plant in Berlin underground. The factory had been bombed in March 1944. The gypsum mine near Obrigheim/Neckar was chosen as the new location.

The first 500 men were housed in the Neckarelz elementary school. The prisoners were used as construction workers.

Dissolution & Liberation

The camp was dissolved and the prisoners sent on a death march to Dachau.

On April 2, 1945 American troops occupied the Neckar Valley.

Aftermath

After the war, the site of Neckarelz I was once again used as a school – today it is the Clemens Brentano Elementary School.

There is a memorial in the school grounds.