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In 1943 Dora became the center for Nazi rocket productions. The SS organized Dora to build, in tunnel factories, the V-1 and V-2
rockets. Later subcamps emerged to manufacture weapons and war supplies. Dora was not far away from Buchenwald, another
labor-exploited camp. Instead of constructing its own crematorium, Dora shared the same one with Buchenwald during its early
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Dora consisted only rows of shabby barracks. It had no hospital and no gas chamber because there was no need for them. Working
the prisoners to death was the best way to eliminate the undesirables. The dead bodies were first sent to Buchenwald, then the
Germans built the crematorium in 1944 to avoid the trip to Buchenwald.
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The development of Dora paralleled to the development of the V-2 rocket and V-1 flying bomb. The Nazis kept Dora as a secret camp
to hide their secret production. Rocket experimentation began in Germany after World War I with the testing of rocket automobiles.
As the Allies bombed the rocket production site, the Nazis opened Dora to continue the project.
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The need for an extensive labor force satisfied by the unlimited prisoners from the camp. The prisoners lived in the tunnels where they
slept on cots and wooden bunks in dank. Food was scarce and so thus water. Prisoners procured drinking water from the leaks in
the water pipes. With thousands of inmates packed in those unimaginable conditions, tuberculosis and other diseases took their
lives easily.
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