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SS Housing

In the SS area there were the accommodations barracks, service buildings, sanitary facility, and leisure facilities for the guards of the concentration camp and the SS personnel of the camp administration.

View of one of the accommodation barracks, with a balcony and a well-tended garden, in the SS area of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. A car is parked below the balcony. — Residential barracks in the SS area, 1944. Photo: Unknown.

©National Archives, Washington

The area was quickly constructed in the months after the camp was established, before the inmate camp was constructed.

In early 1945, some 1,000 members of the SS and Wehrmacht soldiers lived here. The latter formed a large portion of the guard details. An additional 2,000 members of the SS Totenkopfsturmbann "Mittelbau" organized and guarded the subcamps. They were housed near them.

Not all the members of the SS lived in communal housing. Particularly those of higher rank lived in private quarters in Nordhausen and its surroundings. Some of them cultivated familial or friendly relationships with the local population.

The former SS barracks were torn down in the late 1940s along with the rest of the camp. Two posts on the street leading to the parking lot mark the former entry to the SS area.