Alderney (1st SS Construction Brigade)

On 22 February 1943, the 1^st SS Construction Brigade (I. SS-Baubrigade), which was made up of 1,000 prisoners, was withdrawn from Düsseldorf and Duisburg. It was transferred to the Wehrmacht-occupied British Channel Island of Alderney, where it arrived on 5 March. Concentration camp prisoners had been used in SS construction brigades since autumn 1942 to clear rubble, recover bodies and defuse bombs after Allied bombing raids on cities in western and north-western Germany. These prisoners were usually under the command of the concentration camp authority closest to their place of deployment.

The 1^st SS Construction Brigade on Alderney, in the satellite camp known as "Sylt", was under the authority of Neuengamme concentration camp. In anticipation of an Allied invasion, the prisoners were forced to construct fortifications on the island for the Wehrmacht High Command and Organisation Todt, a Nazi engineering group. On 24 June 1944, the work commando was "evacuated". At the time of evacuation, only 636 of the original 1,000 prisoners were still at the satellite camp. 100 prisoners had died on the island, while most of the others had been declared "unfit for work" and transported to Neuengamme main camp. The evacuation resulted in an odyssey through France. The construction brigade was eventually deployed on the Belgian/French border to build rocket launchers. A short time later, the prisoners were transferred to the Sollstedt satellite camp of Buchenwald concentration camp. They were placed under the authority of Buchenwald on 22 September 1944.

The first commander of the satellite camp was SS-Hauptsturmführer Maximilian List, who was replaced in March 1944 by SS-Obersturmführer Georg Braun. Kurt Klebeck, the deputy to the commander, was responsible for feeding and housing the prisoners.