Buchenwald Concentration Camp was one of the first and largest concentration camps within
Germany’s borders.
During it’s time in use and throughout the Second World War, over 56,000 people died
within the barbed wire fences, and 280,000 prisoners passed throughout the gates.
But it was a place where the guards were incredibly brutal, and also where prisoners were forced
to conduct back braking labour, and were given hardly any food.
Executions occurred on a daily basis, and when the camp was liberated in April 1945,
the Allied commander Dwight Eisenhower was disgusted by what he saw.
It was overseen by the SS who instilled a reign of terror onto the prisoners, and killings
took place often.
Even the commandant Karl Otto Koch was brought back into his camp as a prisoner and was executed
for embezzling money from the Nazis and the Third Reich.
Join us today as we look at the horrific torture of the prisoners of buchenwald.
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The SS created and set up Buchenwald Concentration camp at the start of July 1937, and it was
named after a beech tree forest which was near.
The camp was made after the area was cleared of trees, and it was designed to hold around
8,000 prisoners to begin with, but this number would grow significantly throughout the Second
World War.
Nearby to the camp was clay deposits which could be used to make bricks, and the prisoners
would be forced to do this work.
The first prisoners came to the camp on the 15th July 1937 and were tasked with clearing
the trees in the area, and setting up the camp infrastructures and the buildings such
as barracks.
Over the next few months, thousands of prisoners passed through the gates, which held the motto
‘Jedem Das Seine,’ meaning To Each his Own, tasking prisoners to work hard in a sense
to gain their freedom.
But the SS guards thought this motto meant that they were the master race, and with this
had the given right to destroy other races and to brutalise prisoners.
The first commandant of the camp was Karl Otto Koch, who was in charge from August 1937
to July 1941, and he along with his wife Ilse Koch ran the camp, and were notorious for
their evil treatment.
Ilse in particular was referred to as the Witch of Buchenwald, and she would target
prisoners for beatings and killings, and would inflict misery onto inmates on a daily basis.
The Koch’s had large building projects for their own benefits made at the camp, including
a large indoor horse riding structure, built by the prisoners, and they were worked so
hard that many died on the construction site.
Ilse Koch would ride in the morning and would then target prisoners to humiliate and beat.
But Karl Otto Koch would later be sacked at the camp as the commandant, as he was accused
of being corrupt, and also stealing money from the Third Reich for his and his wife’s
personal gain.
All the profits and wealth taken from the prisoners was supposed to go straight back
to Hitler and his government, but Karl Koch was accused of stealing this and pocketing
it for his own gain.
He was tried for this and was sentenced to death for disgracing the SS and was brought
back to Buchenwald where he was shot by a firing squad.
His wife Ilse would also be imprisoned, and after the war she was tried a number of times
for the fact she was a war criminal.
The Second Commandant of Buchenwald was Hermann Pister, who served until the camp was liberated,
and he was later tried and sentenced to death in the post war trials, but days before his
execution he died of a heart attack at Landsberg Prison.
Inside of Buchenwald, there were many brutal guards and overseers who would cause chaos
with prisoners.
Women were held inside Buchenwlad also, and a number of brutal female SS guards were brought
to Buchenwald from Ravensbruck to oversee them.
Many of the women who worked inside the camp were forced into the camp’s brothel, but
most of the female prisoners arrived in the final years of the camps operation.
They came from Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Ravensbruck, and they were kept in a separate
barrack.
Ilse Koch herself acted as the head supervisor at times of the women prisoners.
Inside of Buchenwald were also a number of Allied prisoners of war, and it held 168 airmen
for a few months from America, the UK, Canada, Australia and other lands.
These were men who had crashed in France, and they were sent there as it’s believed
they were in contact with the French Resistance and were considered spies by the Germans.
They had been held in Gestapo prisons and tortured before they were then sent to Buchenwald
on a long 5 day journey where they were starved.
The conditions at Buchenwald were very similar to camps such as Auschwitz, as physical abuse
occurred on a daily basis.
Prisoners were not just killed from the brutal work and living conditions, they were often
murdered.
At Roll call which lasted hours they were forced to stand for hours, deprived of food
and were beaten badly and many were executed being hanged from trees.
Prisoners were sometimes deliberately driven across the sentry line near the camps fences,
so guards could shoot prisoners with their rifles almost as target practice.
It was at Buchenwald where the first prisoner was hanged in public at roll call following
an escape attempt where an SS man was killed.
Many prisoners were killed on a large scale, for example in 1940 many Roma were killed
by lethal injection as they suffered from an eye disease.
They were killed straight away, and also those who suffered from tuberculosis were killed
in the same manner.
Many prisoners were also taken to other facilities from Buchenwald to be killed inside of gas
chambers as part of the Action T4 program.
Inside of specially converted stables, around 8000 soviet prisoners of war were killed in
a firing range in the neck shooting facility.
These were killed outside the camps gates, and prisoners were not even allowed into the
camp or were recorded before they were slaughtered.
Also in autumn 1943, 36 Polish army officers were hanged.
Most of the executions took place inside the courtyard of the crematorium, and people were
often left out dead for days to send a message to other prisoners.
Medical experiments also were conducted at Buchenwald, and these led to many deaths also.
Various different vaccines for diseases such as Typhus, yellow fever, smallpox, typhoid
and other diseases were tested on prisoners.
These people were deliberately infected with the deadly diseases and were then given vaccines
many which did not work that resulted in death.
But inside the camp, conditions were incredibly harsh especially with regards to starvation,
malnutrition and disease.
The policy inside the camps was that inmates would work to death, and were exterminated
through labour.
This meant that people had to choose between working too hard, or being shot for not working
hard enough.
Guards were too happy to execute prisoners if they did not work.
In terms of punishment, whippings also took place and floggings did.
The Hangman of Buchenwald Walter Sommer was known for hanging prisoners off the trees
from their wrists with their hands behind their back, in the medieval torture of the
strappado inside of the forest, where screams would be heard.
He also ordered two Austrian priests to be crucified upside down.
Executions also were conducted inside roll call yards as well as in the secret neck shooting
facility, and firing squads.
Other experiments away from medicine were conducted, and prisoners were used as human
test subjects for white phosphorus which was used in incendiary bombs, and prisoners had
wounds inflicted with this substance.
But the SS when the came was shut down left many of the records of the killings and also
the prisoners who were inside the barbed wire fences.
They left accounts documenting the death of many, and these documents aren’t the most
accurate as many who were executed were never admitted into the camps records, and instead
were listed as ‘transferred to the gestapo,’ which meant executed.
It was said that 8483 Soviet POWs were executed in the stable facility execution chamber with
the shot at the base of the head.
But in total it’s estimated that 56,545 prisoners were killed.
This is probably lower than actual, but over 33,000 were documented in records left by
the SS, 8,400 shootings occurred, 1100 hangings occurred and 13,500 prisoners were killed
during evacuations.
This means that around a quarter of all of the inmates at Buchenwald were killed.
The camp was liberated in April 1945, and it took a number of days for the liberation
to take place.
This was due to how large the site was.
The camp’s underground resistance sent a morse code message saying, ‘To the Allies,
to the Army of General Patton.
This is Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
SOS.
We request help.
They want to evacuate us.
The SS wants to destroy us.’
A response was sent telling them to Hold out, and the Staff of the Third Army said they
would rush to their help.
As the Americans approached, the Gestapo planned to blow up any evidence of the camp, including
prisoners but the administrators of Buchenwald had already fled and ran.
But at 3:15pm on the 11th April 1945, soldiers from the 6th Armoured Division arrived at
Buchenwald, and the soldiers were given a heroes welcome.
What was found in the camp was documented by many news reports.
One said, ‘I asked to see one of the barracks.
It happened to be occupied by Czechoslovaks.
When I entered, men crowded around, tried to lift me to their shoulders.
They were too weak.
Many of them could not get out of bed.
I was told that this building had once stabled 80 horses.
There were 1,200 men in it, five to a bunk.
The stink was beyond all description.
They called the doctor.
We inspected his records.
There were only names in the little black book, nothing more.
Nothing about who these men were, what they had done, or hoped.
Behind the names of those who had died, there was a cross.
I counted them.
They totaled 242.
242 out of 1,200, in one month.
As we walked out into the courtyard, a man fell dead.
Two others, they must have been over 60, were crawling toward the latrine.
I saw it, but will not describe it.
After liberation, the task came to put those guards and members of staff at Buchenwald
to justice.
The Buchenwald trial took place, and 30 SS guards were brought to trial in 1947.
Almost all of the defendants were found guilty, and 22 were sentenced to death, but only 9
death sentences were carried out for the crimes of Buchenwald.
It was a camp where there was much horror and evil, and Buchenwald’s conditions scarred
the memory of the prisoners until the day they died.
It was where guards were immensely brutal and evil, and where death lurked around every
single corner.
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