On 20 July 1944 an assassination attempt was made against Adolf Hitler. The dictator survived, but his regime had already prepared a list of several thousand names, to be used in the event of an escalation in political tension on the home front, and the name of Kurt Adams was on it. In the context of the wave of arrests known as "Aktion Gitter", on 24 August 1944 Kurt Adams was arrested at Greiz, where he was staying with relatives while recuperating from a serious operation earlier in the year. He was taken to Gera nearby. Four days later he was taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp, which was already overcrowded, with approximately 84,000 detainees. On his arrival he was immediately recognized by other inmates, whose reactions to his arrival identified him to the guards. He was separated out and placed in a sub-camp where the condition of the accommodation, food and hygiene were massively worse than in the main camp. He quickly weakened and became ill: from later reports provided by fellow detainees he appears to have caught pneumonia, and was taken, on 15 September 1944, to the camp hospital where he received treatment and his condition may have improved. However, he was soon discharged back to the camp. The family received two more letters from him, in the second of which, dated 26 September 1944, he wrote that he was getting better. However, on 5 October 1944 he lost consciousness, and he died, probably of meningitis, on 7 October 1944.