| Buchenwald |
| Established: July 15, 1937 Liberated: April 11, 1945 by Americans** Survivors: about 20,000 at liberation Total Inmates: 240,000* Inmates at one time: 2,500-86,000* Subcamps: 84 |
| * Estimated Average. |
| Buchenwald was the first concentration camp to fall into Western Allies' hands with a full inmate population. On April 16, 1945, the population of the camp was 20,000 former inmates. Of the 20,000 about 4,000 were Jewish and 850-1,000 were boys aged 3 to 17 years old. Approximately 8,000-10,000 inmates, or half of the survivors, needed medical attention on April 27, 1945. Signs above the entrances to Buchenwald read: Recht oder Unrecht - Mein Vaterland (My Country, Right or Wrong) and "To Each His Due." ** Prisoners liberated the camp through an armed revolt before the Western Allies reached the camp. More than 8,000 Soviet prisoners of war were murdered in the stables in Buchenwald. Buchenwald was considered to be a massive penitentiary, not an extermination camp. Inmates of the camp referred to it as the "camp of the slow death." Most of the inmates were Germans until 1941, when politicals, communists and Jews outnumbered the criminals. In Buchenwald, prisoners played sports such as soccer, handball and volleyball. The Nazis thought the games were good for prisoner morale. Buchenwald was one of the largest labor exploitation centers in all of Europe - prisoners were often worked to death in military and civilian factories. In 1944 alone, the SS made a profit of 6,624,229 marks from the prisoners hired out to the arms industry. Buchenwald never posessed a gas chamber, prisoners were killed through injections, shootings, beatings and torture, hangings, poisonings, stranglings, tramplings and through the "natural causes" of starvation, illness, and exhaustion. Medical experiments were also conducted at Buchenwald. (See Medical Experiments) |
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