August Kroneberg - Mittelbau-Dora Memorial

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Inmate Registration Card of August Kroneberg from the Buchenwald Concentration Camp
(Arolsen Archives)

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Certificate of the SS camp physician at Buchenwald on Kroneberg's fitness for work and transport to Dora, 27 August 1943
(Arolsen Archives)

August Kroneberg, born 1885 near Nordhausen, was a member of the SPD and the Leipzig Carpenters Union. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, he had to go underground, but was caught in 1939 and sent to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. He was on the first transport to Dora on 28 August 1943.

As the kapo for the carpentry commando, he was in charge of constructing the above-ground barracks. He and other political inmates formed and led a secret resistance group, but he was caught and put in the camp prison in early 1945.

When the camp was evacuated he ended up in Bergen-Belsen. He was liberated by British troops, then returned to Leipzig. Despite being a member of the SED, the ruling party in the GDR, he was denounced as an “enemy of the working class.” He was only rehabilitated shortly before his death in 1969.