Buchenwald Concentration Camp was one of the largest camps established by the Third Reich,
and around 280,000 prisoners would pass through the gates there.
But there were around 130 sub camps and satellite sites that belonged to the Buchenwald complex,
and in these the inmates would be forced to work for SS industries.
Many of these sub camps were small, but one of the largest was Ohrdruf, a forced labour
site which was known for immense brutality and suffering.
When the Americans liberated the site, they were incredibly shocked by what they saw,
with many corpses lying all around the site outside the barracks.
It was one site of many during the Second World War where the Nazis and the SS carried
out horrific crimes and imposed such suffering onto the prison population there.
Inside they also found gallows and other objects which were used to torture and kill prisoners
on a daily basis.
Join us today as we look at the Horrific executions of the prisoners of Ohrdruf Concentration
Camp.
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Ohrdruf concentration camp was established towards the end of World War 2 in November
1944, as the war was very much turning against the Germans.
It was found in Ohrdruf south of the city of Gotha in Thuringia in Germany.
It was created initially as a forced labour camp which was overseen by the SS Main Economic
and Administrative Office, and then it was adopted by Buchenwald as one of it’s sub
camps.
Throughout its time in operation, over 56,000 prisoners died inside of Buchenwald itself,
and it was a place where there was a huge and alarming lack of food, and the guards
would inflict such suffering onto the inmates.
Executions were conducted there through shooting and also hangings to strike fear into the
hearts of prisoners, but Ohrdruf was one of the larger sub camps belonging to the complex.
The camp used huts which were built in 1940 for Wehrmacht soldiers, and they used other
facilities nearby, and it was designated code name Aussenlager S III.
It had a north and south camp, and also a tent camp where prisoners were housed, and
the site used forced labour to help the railway infrastructure in the area.
A huge construction project was designed along with building a huge communication centre
in the basement of the Muhlberg Castle in the local town of Ohrdruf.
The prisoners were forced to connect the castle to the main railroad junctions and lines,
and they were also ordered to dig the tunnels into the nearby mountains which were planned
to be an emergency bomb shelter for the train.
This communication centre never was finished as the war came to a close, and the Americans
advanced.
But by late 1944, 10,000 prisoners were housed inside of Ohrdruf, and they were kept there
until the end of the war.
The prison population grew as by March 1945 there were 20,000 people sent there, and these
were mostly Russian, Polish and other prisoners of war from occupied lands.
But the problem with the camp was that coupled with the brutal hard labour conditions, the
camp was a disgusting lice ridden site where many people were dying each day.
The conditions were disgusting, and there were no beds inside the huts, and prisoners
were only given straw which was often covered in blood to sleep on, and lice would spread
disease here.
Prisoners were sometimes not always housed inside the huts, and some were held inside
of stables, tents and destroyed buildings that were falling into disrepair.
All of this left prisoners susceptible to death and disease, but also they were given
little clothing which would protect them from the cold, as the winter of 1944 was bitterly
freezing.
Prisoners would get hypothermia and this would all to the death toll.
Despite there being no gas chambers at Ohrdruf unlike sites such as Auschwitz, the plan by
the SS guards was to work the prisoners to death and use the extermination through labour
policy to inflict such suffering.
The work day was extended to 14 hours a day, and this was very heavy work in which prisoners
were forced to build roads, railways and tunnels often in the freezing cold, and they were
also forced to march long distances to the work sites each day, and were given very little
food and clothing to help them.
Accidents were also common, and there were hardly any toilets and wash basins, and also
there was no medical facilities meaning that if a prisoner got sick they would simply succumb
to their death.
But this is ultimately what the SS guards wanted there.
In January 1945, more guards were sent from Auschwitz, and as the war was coming to an
end, the prisoners were put to task doing a more sinister job for the Nazis.
They were ordered to begin construction on an underground headquarters for the government
as it was looking very likely that Berlin would fall, but this would have been where
Hitler and other prominent Nazis would have commanded the war from if they had evacuated
the city.
Many of the tunnels dug by the prisoners have still not been discovered, and many think
that the Germans may have been using the facilities the POWs were building as a test site for
the Nuclear bomb, or to test other rockets such as the V2 or other wonder weapons.
BrThose who were unable to work were taken by the SS to other camps where it was planned
that they would be exterminated and killed.
When the Americans and the Allies were advancing towards Ohdruf, there were mass evacuations
that occurred at the camp, and almost all of the prisoners were sent to Buchenwald on
a death march.
During this, the Hitler Youth and the SS massacred around 1000 prisoners, with their bodies being
buried inside of mass graves which were then opened and then burned by the SS to try and
hide the crimes.
The SS killed most of the prisoners of the North camp who were considered to ill to walk,
and they were taken to the parade ground under the false pretence that they were going to
bed fed.
Whilst expecting food they were then all shot dead by the SS, and the bodies of the prisoners
were left lying in the open.
It’s believed that around 3000 prisoners were killed through exhaustion and also execution
on the gallows there, and ultimate 7000 prisoners were killed at the Ohrdruf concentration camp.
The camp was liberated by the American 4th Armoured Division on the 4th April 1945, and
also by the 89th Infantry Division.
It was the first camp which was liberated by the Americans, and when they entered the
camp they saw true horror.
They came across huge piles of bodies, many which had been covered in lime in an attempt
to dissolve them, but others were charred because the SS attempted to burn them.
General Eisenhower was summoned days later to view the camp along with General Patton
and Bradley.
He described what he saw as, ‘... the most interesting—although horrible—sight that
I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha.
The things I saw beggar description.
While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one
ruse or another had made their escape.
I interviewed them through an interpreter.
The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were
so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick.
In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation,
George Patton would not even enter.
He said that he would get sick if he did so.
I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence
of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations
merely to 'propaganda.’’
Another soldier described what he saw saying, ‘We walked into a shed and the bodies were
piled up like wood.
There are no words to describe it, the smell was overpowering and unforgettable.’
Eisenhower was greatly affected with what he saw and he wanted answers.
General Patton described it as one of the most appalling sights he ever saw and he stated
that, ‘In a shed ... was a pile of about 40 completely naked human bodies in the last
stages of emaciation.
These bodies were lightly sprinkled with lime, not for the purposes of destroying them, but
for the purpose of removing the stench.
When the shed was full—I presume its capacity to be about 200, the bodies were taken to
a pit a mile from the camp where they were buried.
The inmates claimed that 3,000 men, who had been either shot in the head or who had died
of starvation, had been so buried since the 1st of January.
When we began to approach with our troops, the Germans thought it expedient to remove
the evidence of their crime.
Therefore, they had some of the slaves exhume the bodies and place them on a mammoth griddle
composed of 60-centimeter railway tracks laid on brick foundations.
They poured pitch on the bodies and then built a fire of pinewood and coal under them.
They were not very successful in their operations because there was a pile of human bones, skulls,
charred torsos on or under the griddle which must have accounted for many hundreds.”
Ohdruf Concentration Camp was a shocking site for the Allied liberators, and as it was the
first site liberated by the Americans, more horror of the system established by the Third
Reich would be uncovered.
It belonged to a network of camps in which more evil and execution occurred within the
fences, and it was a place which despite only being open a number of months, resulted in
the deaths of thousands of inmates and prisoners.
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