About Buchenwald
Buchenwald was one of the many Nazi concentration camps set up in and around Germany during and prior to World War II. Serving as a "detention center" for Jewish citizens as well as other peoples deemed threatening to Nazi culture, Buchenwald was a place of horror and torture.
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History
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The concentration camp known as Buchenwald was built by the Nazis in 1937, near Weimar, Germany. It was one of the largest of the concentration camps built by the Nazis, and housed Jews, Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, criminals and prisoners of war, among other groups. Political prisoners were also held here from many countries - from Italy to Belgium and many more.
Function
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Buchenwald was mostly used as a forced labor camp, as opposed to some of the other camps that were known as extermination camps. Prisoners who were kept here worked at factories producing weaponry for the Nazis, and were kept in deplorable conditions. Female prisoners were also kept here, although they were in a great minority.
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Features
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Although Buchenwald was not an extermination camp the way some other concentration camps were, many people still died while imprisoned here. The estimation is that out of around 250,000 people imprisoned in Buchenwald during its years in operation, 56,545 people died in the camp. That is a death rate of around 24 percent.
Significance
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The liberation of Buchenwald took place on April 11, 1945, when United States troops were able to free around 21,000 prisoners. Before the troops arrived, the Nazis had tried to remove many of the prisoners to other camps, and Communists had partially liberated the camp using weapons they had saved up since 1942.
Considerations
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Buchenwald was emptied, but this was not the end of the use of this camp. From 1945 to 1950 the Soviet Union used the former concentration camp as "Soviet Special Camp 2," and it housed political prisoners, including German war criminals. These prisoners were held without outside contact, and some were also imprisoned by mistake and trapped in this camp after World War II.
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Resources
- Photo Credit Wikipedia Commons
