Art, obsession, and identity
Buchenwald concentration camp was one of the first and largest concentration camps operated by the Nazis during the Second World War. Liberated by the Americans in 1945, the camp exposed some of the most horrific crimes committed by the Third Reich.
To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the camp's liberation, click through this gallery and be reminded of one of the darkest chapters in human history.
Buchenwald was one of the biggest of the Nazi concentration camps established on German soil. Set up in 1937, it housed prisoners from all over Europe and the Soviet Union. Pictured are newly arrived Polish prisoners undressing before they are washed and shaved.
Prisoners at Buchenwald included Jews, Poles, the mentally ill, physically disabled, Roma, and Jehovah's Witnesses. Repeat offenders, German military deserters, and prisoners of war were also interned.
As well as being stripped of their dignity, new arrivals at Buchenwald were relieved of all personal possessions. This included jewelry and other valuables, including gold rings.
The population of Buchenwald increased rapidly after Kristallnacht in November 1938. Also known as the Night of Broken Glass, Kristallnacht was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi regime that saw Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues destroyed in an orgy of violence. Thousands of Jewish men aged 16–60 were subsequently arrested and incarcerated.
Living conditions at the camp were appalling. Most inmates worked as slave laborers at nearby work sites in 12-hour shifts.
Inside the main camp there was a notorious punishment block, known as the Bunker. This is where prisoners who violated camp regulations were punished and often tortured to death. Pictured are Polish prisoners awaiting execution.
In the camp infirmary, sick but able-bodied patients had to take care of their comrades immobilized in bunks in unsanitary conditions rife with disease.
The camp was run with rigid discipline. Jewish prisoners in particular were subjected to extraordinarily cruel treatment. Although there were no gas chambers at Buchenwald, hundreds perished each month from disease, malnutrition, exhaustion, beatings, and executions.
The bulk of the prisoners were starved and worked to the point of death in nearby stone quarries or local armaments factories. Women and children numbered among those imprisoned at the camp.
Beginning in 1941, physicians and scientists carried out a program of medical experimentation on prisoners at Buchenwald. Doctors and technicians tested the effects of viral infections and vaccines against contagious diseases such as typhus, typhoid, cholera, and diphtheria. These resulted in hundreds of deaths.
Of the 280,000 prisoners who passed through the camp and its 139 subcamps, an estimated 56,000 perished. Most of the corpses were disposed of in crematoria.
In early April 1945 just prior to the arrival of US forces, nearly 29,000 prisoners were evacuated from Buchenwald on a death march on which one in four died. On April 11, the camp was liberated by the Americans.
The liberators were met with scenes of absolute horror. The dead lay everywhere. Camp survivors, rake-thin, could barely walk. The stench was unbearable. Pictured is Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower and generals George S. Patton, Omar Bradley, and their staff looking upon the dead bodies of prisoners executed by SS Schutzstaffel guards before the arrival of the US Third Army.
Inmate officials were on hand to greet the liberating American troops. Members of SS personal who had not managed to escape were quickly identified and rounded up.
American politicians and military officials toured the camp. Journalists were on hand to record what they saw and what was revealed. In addition, the US army filmed the weak and emaciated survivors of Buchenwald to document Nazi crimes against humanity.
As the scale of the crimes committed at Buchenwald became apparent, German civilians, under military police escort, were forced to see for themselves the atrocities that had taken place inside the camp.
Among the things they saw were blackened bones in the crematorium and the skeletal survivors. Within the grounds the Americans had set up a viewing table displaying paintings on human skin and lampshades made of human skin. Justice would eventually catch up with those responsible for carrying out such diabolical deeds.
The first commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp was SS Colonel Karl-Otto Koch, who served from 1937 until 1941. His wife Ilsa, seen here with their son Artwin, was also at Buchenwald, though she had no official position in the Nazi state. However, her name would become synonymous with the cruelty and depravity carried out at the camp.
As the Americans prepared to bring Buchenwald's Nazi overlords to trial, former inmates were adjusting to a life of freedom. Here, US soldiers are seen leading children to a sanitary station shortly after their liberation.
This youngster, a six-year-old war orphan with a Buchenwald badge on his sleeve, waits for his name to be called during roll call at the camp for departure to a new life in Switzerland.
In April 1947, the Buchenwald war crime trial began. It was conducted by the United States Army as a court-martial in Dachau, Germany, then part of the American occupation zone.
Hermann Pister, the man who replaced Karl-Otto Koch as commandant of Buchenwald, was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging. However, before the sentence could be carried out, Pister died in Landsberg Prison of a heart attack on September 28, 1948.
Ilse Koch, wife of Karl-Otto Koch, was one of the most infamous Nazi figures at the war's end and was referred to as the "Kommandeuse of Buchenwald."
During her trial, she admitted to selecting tattooed prisoners for death in order to fashion lampshades and other items from their skins. Showing no remorse for her actions, Ilse Koch (whose husband incidentally had been executed in 1944 by the SS for fraud, corruption, and murder) was sentenced to life imprisonment. She took her own life behind bars in 1967.
Hans-Theodor Schmidt, adjutant of the commandant and legal officer at Buchenwald, was sentenced to death by hanging.
Nazi physician Waldemar Hoven was convicted of conducting experiments on Buchenwald inmates and as one of the organizers of the euthanasia program Aktion T4, which led to the murder of an estimated 300,000 disabled people. He was hanged in 1948.
The trial also heard eye-witness accounts from camp survivors, including Eugen Kogon. A well-known Christian opponent of the Nazi Party, Kogon later became a noted historian.
One of the most high-profile Holocaust survivors was Elie Wiesel. A Nobel laureate, Wiesel authored 57 books including 'Night,' a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. He's pictured here on the right next to the vertical post at Buchenwald.
The suffering continued at Buchenwald after the war. Between August 1945 and March 1950, the camp was the site of Soviet NKVD special camp Nr. 2. Besides former Nazis, anti-communist dissidents found themselves treated in much the same way as previous internees. According to Soviet records, 28,455 people were detained, 7,113 of whom died. The inscription on the entrance gate to Buchenwald concentration camp reads: Jedem das Seine ("To each his own").
The former site of Buchenwald todays serves as a Holocaust memorial. It has a museum with permanent exhibitions about the history of the camp.
Sources: (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) (Britannica) (Holocaust Encyclopedia)
See also: Remembering the liberation of Auschwitz
The horror that was Buchenwald
Commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the notorious Nazi concentration camp
LIFESTYLE WWII
Buchenwald concentration camp was one of the first and largest concentration camps operated by the Nazis during the Second World War. Liberated by the Americans in 1945, the camp exposed some of the most horrific crimes committed by the Third Reich.
To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the camp's liberation, click through this gallery and be reminded of one of the darkest chapters in human history.