Buchenwald
Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps on German soil, with 130 satellite camps and extension units. The camp was constructed in 1937 in a wooded area on the northern slopes of the Ettersberg, about five miles (8 km) northwest of Weimar in east-central Germany. Before the Nazi takeover of power, Weimar was best known as the home of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who embodied the German enlightenment of the eighteenth century, and as the birthplace of German constitutional democracy in 1919, the Weimar Republic. During the Nazi regime, "Weimar" became associated with the Buchenwald concentration camp.
The camp was established on July 16, 1937, when the first group of prisoners, consisting of 149 male persons, mostly political detainees and criminals, was brought to the site. The first female inmates were twenty political prisoners and one female SS guard who arrived in Buchenwald from Ravensbrück to serve in the camp's brothel in 1941. The majority of women prisoners, however, arrived in 1944 and 1945 from other camps such as Auschwitz, Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen. Most of these women were Jewish. The name "Buchenwald" was given to it by Heinrich Himmler on July 28, 1937.
The Witch of Buchenwald
Prisoners were confined in the northern part of the camp in an area known as the main camp, while SS guard barracks and the camp administration compound were located in the southern part. The main camp was surrounded by an electrified barbed-wire fence, watchtowers, and a chain of sentries outfitted with automatically activated machine guns. The jail, also known as the Bunker, was located at the entrance to the main camp. The SS carried out shootings in the stables and hangings in the crematorium area. The first commandant was Karl Otto Koch, who ran the camp from 1937 to 1941. His second wife, Ilse Koch, became notorious as "Die Hexe von Buchenwald" ("The Witch of Buchenwald"), for her cruelty and brutality. Koch had a zoo built by the prisoners in the camp for the amusement of his children.
Karl Otto Koch was imprisoned at Buchenwald by Nazi authorities for corruption, embezzlement, black market dealings and his exploitation of camp workers. He was tried and executed by the Nazi authorities at Buchenwald in April 1945, whilst Ilse was sentenced to 4 years after the war. Her sentence was reduced to two years and she was set free. Later, she was arrested again and was sentenced to life imprisonment by the post-war German authorities. She committed suicide in a Bavarian prison cell in September, 1967. SS - Oberfuhrer Hermann Pister (1942 - 1945) succeeded Karl Otto Koch as commander of the Buchenwald camp.
Kristallnacht
However, in 1938, in the aftermath of Kristallnacht ("Night of Crystal"--is usually referred to as the "Night of Broken Glass." It is the name given to the violent anti-Jewish pogrom of November 9 and 10, 1938). Instigated primarily by Nazi party officials and the SA , German SS and police sent almost 10,000 Jews to Buchenwald where they were subjected to extraordinarily cruel treatment. 600 prisoners died between November 1938 and February 1939.Aat the end of November the camp prison population exceeded 18,000. Of the Kristallnacht detainees 600 were killed, committed suicide, or died from other causes.
Beginning in 1941, a varied program of involuntary medical experiments on prisoners took place at Buchenwald in special barracks in the northern part of the main camp. Medical experiments involving viruses and contagious diseases such as typhus resulted in hundreds of deaths. In 1944, SS Dr. Carl Vaernet began a series of experiments that he claimed would "cure" homosexual inmates.
In accordance with an order issued on October 17, 1942, which provided for all Jewish prisoners held in the Reich to be transferred to Auschwitz, the Jews in Buchenwald, except for 204 essential workers, were sent to that concentration and extermination camp. In 1944, transports of Hungarian Jews began coming to Buchenwald from Auschwitz; after a short stay in the main camp most of them were distributed among the satellite camps, where they were put to work in the armament factories. Beginning on January 18, 1945, when Auschwitz and other camps in the east were being evacuated, thousands of Jewish prisoners arrived in Buchenwald. The Auschwitz evacuees included several hundred children and youths, and a special barrack, which came to be known as "Children's Block 66, " was put up for them in the tent camp. This block housed more than six hundred children and youths, most of whom survived.
During World War II, the Buchenwald camp system became an important source of forced labour. The prisoner population expanded rapidly, reaching 110,000 by the end of 1945. Buchenwald prisoners were used in the German Equipment Works (DAW), an enterprise owned and operated by the SS; in camp workshops; and in the camp's stone quarry. In March 1943 the Gustloff firm opened a large munitions plant in the eastern part of the camp. A rail siding completed in 1943 connected the camp with the freight yards in Weimar, facilitating the shipment of war supplies.
87 Subcamps
Buchenwald administered at least 87 subcamps located across Germany, from Duesseldorf in the Rhineland to the border with the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in the east. Prisoners in the satellite camps were put to work mostly in armaments factories, in stone quarries, and on construction projects. Periodically, prisoners throughout the Buchenwald camp system underwent selection. The SS staff sent those too weak or disabled to continue working to the Bernburg or Sonnenstein euthanasia killing centers, where they were killed by gas. Other weakened prisoners were killed by phenol injections administered by the camp doctor. In the eight years of its existence, from July 1937 to March 1945, a total of 238,980 prisoners from thirty countries passed through Buchenwald and its satellite camps; of these, 43,045 were killed or perished in some other fashion there (the figure includes Soviet prisoners of war
As Soviet forces swept through Poland, the Germans evacuated thousands of concentration camp prisoners from western Poland. After long, brutal marches, more than 10,000 weak and exhausted prisoners from Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen, most of them Jews, arrived in Buchenwald in January 1945.
In early April 1945, as American forces approached the camp, the Germans began to evacuate some 28,000 prisoners from the main camp and an additional 10,000 prisoners from the subcamps of Buchenwald. About a third of these prisoners died from exhaustion en route or shortly after arrival, or were shot by the SS. Many lives were saved by the Buchenwald resistance, whose members held key administrative posts in the camp. They obstructed Nazi orders and delayed the evacuation.
Prisoners Storm Watchtowers
On April 11, 1945, starved and emaciated prisoners stormed the watchtowers, seizing control of the camp. Later that afternoon, American forces entered Buchenwald. Soldiers from the Third U.S. Army division found more than 20,000 people in the camp, 4,000 of them Jews. Approximately 56,000 people were murdered in the Buchenwald camp system, the majority of them after 1942. In 1947, thirty - one members of the Buchenwald camp staff were tried for their crimes by an American court. Two of the accused were sentenced to death, and four to life imprisonment.
After the liberation, between 1945 and 1950 the camp was administered by the Soviet Union and served as a Special Camp No. 2 of the NKVD ((Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del listen or People's Commissioner for Internal Affairs). Initially used for housing German war criminals, with time it was converted into a standard detention site for political prisoners and opposition to Soviet rule.
-x.jpg)
Between 1945 and 1950, 28,455 prisoners, including 1,000 women, were held by the Soviet Union at Buchenwald. Prisoners consisted of political prisoners, Nazi perpetrators, Hitler Youth leaders and members, as well as a large number people imprisoned due to identity confusion and arbitrary arrests.
Many thousands of prisoners (estimates range from 12,000 to over 22,000) would die at the camp while in the Soviet Union's control. The dead were buried in mass graves by the rail yard and no notification was sent to family members upon death.
On January 16, 1950 the camp was passed to the civilian authorities of the GDR (German Democratic Republic), and included 2,415 prisoners. In October 1950, it was decreed that the camp would be torn down. The main gate, crematorium, the Hospital Block and two guard towers escaped demolition. All prisoner barracks and other buildings were demolished. Foundations of some of the buildings still exist and many others have been rebuilt
A very short list of well-known inmates
Konrad Adenauer, Former mayor of Cologne, later first Chancellor of West Germany
Jean Améry, Austrian writer of Jewish descent
Robert Antelme, French writer
Léon Blum, French politician, former head of the French government
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, protestant theologician
Rudolf Breitscheid, former member of the SPD
Robert Clary, French actor, Corporal Louis LeBeau on the TV series Hogan's Heroes
Édouard Daladier, French politician, former Head of the French government
Albin Grau, Film producer (Nosferatu, 1922)
Paul-Emile Janson, Belgian politician, former Prime Minister of Belgium
Léon Jouhaux, French trade unionist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Imre Kertész writer, 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature recipient
Israel Meir Lau, Former Chief Rabbi of Israel
Mafalda Maria Elisabetta of Savoy Princess of Italy, daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III
Ernst Thälmann, leader of the Communist Party of Germany
Elie Wiesel, French-American writer, 1986 Nobel Peace Prize recipient