Urbes Camp Forced Laborers

Holocaust · Forced Laborers · Prisoners · Alsace · France · Hungary

by Nolan Altman

According to the Commune d'Urbes website (urbes-alsace.fr), “Urbes is a French commune located in the administrative district of Haut-Rhin and, since January 1, 2021, in the territory of the European Collectivity of Alsace, in the Grand Est region. This town is located in the historical and cultural region of Alsace.”

On August 25, 1944, 465 Jewish detainees from the concentration camp at Flossenberg were assigned to manufacture diesel engines for Luftwaffe aircraft in the Urbes tunnel.  The camp was known as the Urbès Camp or alternatively as the "Daimler-Benz Juden" or "Produktionshaftlinge".  The workers interned and were trained by Daimler-Benz itself for the work of assembling aircraft engines intended for the Luftwaffe.  The intended use of the planes was the ghetto of Rzeszow or Reichshof (Poland).  In July, they were transferred to the camp at NatzweilerStruthof via various camps including Plaszow, Wieliczka and Auschwitz. Finally, after their transfer to Flossenbürg, they were sent to Colmar, under the name of “Kommando A-10 Daimler-Benz GmbH”, then in Wesserling-Urbès.

The workforce included 444 Poles, 11 Germans, 9 Soviets, and1 Czech.  Three individuals died in the Urbès Camp.  Their final transfer to the camp in Sachsenhausen took place October 12, 1944.

For more information and photos, please see the material online at urbes-alsace.fr

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We’d like to thank Eric Feinstein, a JewishGen volunteer for finding this information. The original source of the material was Mr. René Chevrolet, who submitted the list of names to the Struthof Memorial in 2012.

We’d also like to thank Mike Kalt, Html Volunteer, for placing this description online, and to Nolan Altman, Director of Special Projects and Coordinator of the Holocaust Database, for his continued devotion and dedication to JewishGen's important work.

June, 2021

This collection can be searched by via the JewishGen Holocaust Collection, or the JewishGen Unified Search.