the History of Buchenwald

Entrance to Buchenwald; Fotograf Francis D. Killin; nach dem 11.04.1945; Fotoarchiv Buchenwald

 

The first prisoners arrived at Ettersberg, near Weimar, on the 15 July 1937. This was the largest concentration camp in the German Reich until 1945. The prisoners included resistance fighters, people with criminal records, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and, from 1938, an increasing number of Sinti, Roma and Jews. The number of prisoners increased rapidly with the outbreak of the war. The SS murdered the weak with injections and sent the sick to euthanasia killing centres. The mass murder of Soviet POWs began. The camp was increasingly geared to the needs of the German war economy, and prisoners - mainly from Poland and the Soviet Union - were rented out to the armaments industry.

In the months leading up to its liberation, Buchenwald became a death zone, with some 6,000 Jewish prisoners dying between January and April 1945 alone. American troops liberated the camp on 11 April 1945. In total, more than 275,000 people from all over Europe were imprisoned at Buchenwald, of whom only about one in three survived.

Today it commemorates the fate of the political prisoners.

 

 

The Memorial

Fotograf Ernst Schäfer; Juli 1958; Fotoarchiv Buchenwald

 

The Buchenwald Memorial, visible from afar, is the burial site of thousands of concentration camp inmates and is now the largest memorial to a Nazi concentration camp in Europe. The monumental complex was built on the south side of Ettersberg Mountain as a national memorial of the GDR until 1958.

After descending to the three mass graves, the 'Night of Fascism', the design of the memorial leads visitors back up to the huge bell tower; the 'Light of Freedom'. The architects used the motif of resurrection, rooted in Western tradition, to interpret the suffering and death of the concentration camp prisoners as a struggle and victory under the leadership of the Communists.