Buchenwald Concentration Camp (28 Photos)
It is said that from 1937 to 1945 more than 250,000 people from more than 50 countries passed through the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes, religious and political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, criminals, homosexuals, and prisoners of war – worked primarily as forced labor in local armament factories.
The Nazis constructed Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany in 1937. Placed over the camp’s main entrance gate, was the slogan Jedem das Seine (literally “to each his own”, but figuratively “everyone gets what he deserves”). The Nazis used Buchenwald until the camp’s liberation in 1945.
From 1945 to 1950, the camp was used by the Soviet occupation authorities as an internment camp, known as NKVD special camp number 2.
Although Buchenwald was technically not an extermination camp, it was a site of an extraordinary number of deaths.
A primary cause of death was illness due to harsh camp conditions, with starvation – and its consequent illnesses – prevalent. Malnourished and suffering from disease, many were literally “worked to death”.
In October 1950, it was decreed that the camp would be demolished. The main gate, the crematorium, the hospital block, and two guard towers escaped demolition. All prisoner barracks and other buildings were razed. Foundations of some still exist and many others have been rebuilt.
Here’s a look round the camp as it stands today plus a couple of inserts from photo archives from when the camp was actively used.
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