Buchenwald concentration camp

at the memorial site Buchenwald, in 1983]]

**Buchenwald concentration camp** was a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.  In German, the camp was called *Konzentrationslager (KZ) Buchenwald.*  It was built in Germany in 1937, and stayed open until 1945.  Buchenwald was one of the first and largest labor camps built in Germany.

The Nazis sent people from all over Europe and the Soviet Union to Buchenwald.  There, they were prisoners and did forced labor in weapons factories.

After the Allies won World War II, the Soviet Union took over Buchenwald and some other parts of Germany.  From 1945 to 1950, they used Buchenwald as an internment camp.  They called it NKVD Special Camp Number 2.  (The NKVD was the Soviet police organization that ran the camp.)  On January 6, 1950, the Soviets handed over Buchenwald to the East German Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Today, what is left of Buchenwald is a memorial.  There is also a museum there.

## History
The Nazis built Buchenwald on the *Ettersberg* (Etter Mountain), near Weimar, Germany, in July of 1937.  They named the camp *Buchenwald,* which means "beech forest" in English.  On the camp's main gate, they wrote *Jedem das Seine* ("Each to their own”).

Between April 1938 and April 1945, about 238,380 people were sent to Buchenwald.  These prisoners included people from many different countries.  They also included many Allied prisoners of war (POWs).  Over 56,000 prisoners died at Buchenwald.

## People
### Camp commandants
#### Karl-Otto Koch (1 August 1937–July 1941)
 after capture (1945)]]
Buchenwald’s first commandant (camp leader) was Karl-Otto Koch.  He ran the camp from 1937 to July 1941.  His second wife, Ilse Koch, became well known as *Die Hexe von Buchenwald* ("the witch of Buchenwald") for the terrible ways she treated the prisoners.  Koch made the prisoners build a zoo at Buchenwald, with a bear pit (*Bärenzwinger*).

Eventually, Koch was put in prison at Buchenwald himself.  At first, two Nazi officials named Prince Waldeck and Dr. Morgen accused Koch of encouraging murder.  Later, Koch was also charged with corruption, embezzlement, black market dealings, and using the camp's workers to meet his own needs. Other camp officials were also charged, including Ilse Koch.

Karl Koch was tried and sentenced to death.  He was executed by a firing squad on April 5, 1945.  This was just one week before American soldiers arrived and took over Buchenwald.

After the war, Ilse Koch was sentenced to four years in jail.  At first, her sentence was cut down to two years and she was set free.  However, after this, she was arrested again and sentenced to life in prison by the new German government.  She killed herself in jail in September 1967.

### Allied airmen
When the Nazis captured soldiers from Western Allied countries, they almost always sent them to prisoner of war camps, not concentration camps.  However, they did keep a group of 168 airmen (flyers) at Buchenwald for two months. These men were from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Jamaica.  They got to Buchenwald on August 20, 1944.

These airmen's planes had crashed in France, which Nazi Germany controlled.  The airmen were sent to Buchenwald, not a POW camp, because the Nazis said they were spies and "terror bombers."

After the war, one airman remembered arriving at Buchenwald:

The airmen were treated and abused in the same way as the other prisoners at Buchenwald.  Two airmen died there.  Then, in October 1944, the airmen were sent to Stalag Luft III, a regular POW camp.  The airmen who were accused of being "terror bombers" were going to be executed at Buchenwald after October 24.  They were saved by officers of the Luftwaffe (the German air force), who visited Buchenwald.  When they got back to Berlin, these officers made sure the airmen were sent to a regular POW camp, and not executed.  In another experiment, Nazi doctors wanted to see how much of a certain poison was needed to kill a person.  They gave four Russian POWs the poison.  When the POWs did not die, they were "strangled in the crematorium" and then "dissected" (cut apart to study their bodies).  This number includes:
* Deaths according to SS records: 33,462
* Executions by shooting: 8,483
* Executions by hanging: 1,100 (estimate)
* Deaths during evacuation transports (moving prisoners to other camps by train or forced marches): 13,500 (estimate)

Two days later, the Nazis started trying to evacuate (move everybody out of) Buchenwald.  They made thousands of prisoners go on forced marches toward other camps that the Americans had not yet reached.

After learning this news, Communist inmates attacked the camp's watchtowers and killed the guards who were still at the camp.  They used guns they had been collecting since 1942 (one machine gun and 91 rifles).

United States soldiers arrived at Buchenwald on April 11, 1945 at 3:15 P.M.  (The clock at the entrance gate is now permanently set to this time). The soldiers were given a hero's welcome.

Later that day, United States soldiers took over Langenstein, one of Buchenwald's smaller camps.  There, they freed over 21,000 prisoners.
 is in the second row from the bottom, seventh from the left.]]

On Thursday, April 12, 1945, some journalists arrived at Buchenwald.  The journalists included Edward R. Murrow, whose radio report about seeing Buchenwald  was broadcast on CBS and became one of his most famous:

## Soviet Special Camp Number 2 
Between 1945 and February 10, 1950, the camp was run by the Soviet Union.  They used it as a prison camp called Special Camp Number 2.

The Soviet Union held 28,455 prisoners, including 1,000 women, at Special Camp Number 2.  Soviet records say that 7,113 of these prisoners died.

On January 6, 1950, the Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs, Sergei Nikiforovich Kruglov, decided that the East German Ministry of Internal Affairs would take over all of the NKVD special camps, including the one at Buchenwald.

A second monument was also built in 1958, near where prisoners had been buried together in mass graves.

### Books about Buchenwald
Some people who survived being imprisoned at Buchenwald have written about what happened to them.  These people include:
* Jorge Semprún, *Quel beau dimanche!* (*"What a Beautiful Sunday!"*)
* Ernst Wiechert, *Der Totenwald* (*"Forest of the Dead"*)
* Léon Delarbre (who wrote and also drew scenes of what life was like in Buchenwald) 
* Edmond Vandievoet, *I Escaped from a Nazi Death Camp* (Vandievoet was one of the few prisoners who escaped from Buchenwald) 
* Elie Wiesel, *La Nuit* (*Night*)

### Visit from President Obama and Chancellor Merkel
On June 5, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Buchenwald.  Elie Wiesel and Bertrand Herz, two survivors of Buchenwald, went with them.  During the visit, President Obama said at as a child, he had heard stories about Buchenwald from his great-uncle, who was part of the 89th Infantry Division.  This Division was the first group of American soldiers to reach the Ohrdruf forced labor camp, one of Buchenwald's smaller camps.

## Photos of Buchenwald

Image:Buchenwaldgate.jpg|Camp gate
Image:Buchenwaldcamp.jpg|Main camp area
Image:Buchenwaldchimney.jpg|Crematorium
Image:Buchenwaldcrem.jpg|Inside the crematorium
Image:Buchenwaldroom.jpg|The "Corpse Cellar"
Image:Buchenwaldrus.jpg|Russian graveyard
Image:Buchenwaldcells.jpg|Cells
Image:Buchenwaldmemorial.jpg|Memorial

## Related pages
* Nazi concentration camps
* The Holocaust
* World War II

## References