Conference: KL Natzweiler-Struthof

Up there on the mountain was one of the deadliest Nazi concentration camps of the Second World War, with more than 17,000 deaths for 52,000 deportees: KL Natzweiler. Less vast and less well known than Dachau, Buchenwald and Mauthausen, the Natzweiler-Struthof camp, built in 1941 in annexed Alsace, is the only Nazi concentration camp in France today. Guillaume d'Andlau, Director of the European Centre of Deported Resistance Members (Centre européen du résistant déporté) from 2019 to 2023, has immersed himself in this site, which challenges, questions and reminds us of the fragility of democracy and of mankind. Driven by the complexity and duality of the site, and moved by his encounters with the last witnesses to the honour, Guillaume d'Andlau shares with us the keys to understanding KL. He tells the story of the camp as part of the wider story of the concentration camp system, as well as the more intimate personal and collective stories of the deportees. Words for evils, a multi-dimensional approach that facilitates the appropriation of the camp and calls for reflection, whether alone, in a group, internally or publicly.