During the Second World War, Kamp Vught was the only SS concentration camp outside Nazi Germany and the area annexed by Nazi Germany. The SS needed space because the transit camps in Amersfoort and Westerbork could no longer handle the increasing flow of prisoners. Unlike other 'foreign' camps, Vught camp was set up on the model of other camps in Nazi Germany. The camp also fell directly under the command of the SS headquarters in Berlin.
Statistics
In 1942 the construction of Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch, as Kamp Vught was officially called, started. When the first starving and exhausted prisoners arrived from Amersfoort in January 1943, the camp was not yet finished. The prisoners had to finish that themselves. The miserable conditions already claimed the lives of several hundred people in the first months. In total, about 32,000 people were imprisoned in the camp for a short or longer period of time between January 1943 and September 1944. In addition to 12,000 Jews, Vught also housed political prisoners, resistance fighters, Sinti and Roma ('Gypsies'), Jehovah's witnesses, vagrants, black marketers, criminals and hostages. Of these, at least 749 children, women and men died in the camp from hunger, disease and abuse. Of these, 329 prisoners were executed at the execution site just outside the camp. Each prisoner was given a colored triangle on his or her prisoner suit. Jewish prisoners were given a yellow triangle, political prisoners and resistance fighters a red triangle, criminals a green one, the 'criminals' (illegal butchers and black traders) a black triangle and Sinti and Roma a brown triangle. In other countries homosexuals were given a pink triangle (in the Netherlands homosexuals were not specifically prosecuted).
Economy
The main function of the concentration camps was the systematic repression of all population groups identified as opponents of the regime. In addition, in the later years of the war, supporting the German (war) industry became increasingly important. Camp Vught therefore had, among other things, an aircraft scrap yard and workshops of Philips, where products such as squeeze cats and radios were made. The plane wrecks were brought in by train, over a railway line that extended into the camp. The foundation of this railway is still visible in the moat, to the right of the reconstructed barracks. The management of Philips only decided to set up the workshop after long hesitation. The Philips leadership succeeded in considerably improving the situation of the prisoners who worked there, but in the end the transport of the Jews among them could not be prevented.