In the autumn of 1940, at the initiative of Chief of the Security Police and the SD Reinhard Heydrich, a concentration camp for male youths between the ages of 16 and 21 was opened in the buildings of the state workhouse (Landeswerkhaus) in Moringen near Göttingen. The first youths were interned in August after having been classified by state institutions for youth, the Reichskriminalpolizei, and welfare practitioners for closed corrective training as “burdensome hereditary criminals” (erblich kriminell belastet) or “ethically and morally degenerate” (sittlich und moralisch verwahrlost). The Jugendkonzentrationslager in Moringen was the first of the so-called youth protection camps (Jugendschutzlager), which were generally welcomed by the social welfare authorities. Formerly the site of an early Nazi men’s camp in 1933 and an early women’s camp from 1933 to 1938, the Moringen Jugendschutzlager was administratively and conceptually related to similar camps established in 1942 for fem...