Nordhausen (dpa/th) - In the memorial grove for the victims of Nazi terror in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Nordhausen, one of the birch trees planted there has been cut down. Police said the damage was discovered early Sunday morning. A total of 53 birch trees were planted in the memorial grove in 2011 to keep the memory of the prisoners alive.

The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, set up in 1943, was notorious for the forced labor in tunnels where the prisoners had to produce rockets and other armaments under the most inhumane conditions. One in three of the approximately 60,000 prisoners did not survive.

Just a few days ago, seven memorial trees for concentration camp victims were cut down by unknown persons at the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial in Weimar. Shortly thereafter, near Schöndorf, a district of Weimar near the camp, two trees were snapped down and parts of the bark were removed from three other trees.