In the night from 19th to 20th April, 1945 (just before liberation), a few hundred prisoners were rounded-up by the SS. About 1000 Frenchmen were locked in one of the huts. Other KZ prisoners had to assemble in front of the kitchen. The reason for this measures can not be found with certainty. Some facts speak for SS plans, to escape with these prisoners in the darkness. But it’s also possible, that they had to be used as hostages in case of arrival of British troops or that they were bound to be shot, as did happen in other camps.
When an air raid warning was sounded and the guards went to the bunkers (which the POWs were forbidden to use), the starving priosners did use this occasion to look for food in the kitchens. So the returning guards opened fire with machine guns. About 300 men were killed during this massacre. Soon after midnight, the SS left the camp with many hundred prisoners. Also some of the members of the guards and the HQ company left.

A former member of the HQ company gives a completely different account of this event in an interview from 1976:
(...) This was told to me by the officer after the war..... When 3 days before the end of the war the KZ prisoners did arrive here, complete chaos did reign and the food stores in the kitchen were nearly exhausted, form the inmates of some huts and mostly from the KZ prisoners, the last stores were demanded. And this officer did try, to convince these mutineers, they weren’t many, about 10 to 20, who wanted to plunder the food, to refrain from their plans. Then they did storm through a window and then the German soldiers, after firing many, many warning shots without effect, got the order, to shoot to kill.
So four to six persons were killed, otherwise the food supply for the whole camp would have bee in danger if not completely impossible. So the officer couldn’t do anything but ordering to open fire, thereby preventing the plunder of the kitchen. That’s the only thing happening here, which wasn’t completely legal, but it was caused not by the Camp’s Command, but by the inmates themselves. Except of this, nothing did happen here, in the contrary....(....)