During the Second World War, the Third Reich used concentration camps to carry out horrific
acts of murder and depravity.
There were many guards who worked inside of the camps and members of staff who after the
conflict were executed for their brutality.
There were thousands of members of the SS who were complicit in the mass murder of millions,
but a shockingly low number of war criminals were ever brought to trial.
Inside of the Nazi Regime, Hitler and his government sought to massacre and exterminate
those who the Nazis regarded as inferior and as a burden to society.
They did this in many different ways, with the most common method of killing being the
gas chambers of shooting.
Gas chambers were used inside of concentration camps and millions of innocent people were
tricked into going into them believing they were having a shower.
Also shooting was used by the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi death squads to massacre civilians
after advancements were made by the German Army.
The death squads were responsible for millions of killings, and still today many of their
crimes have not been uncovered.
But inside of one concentration camp, there was an execution facility which was used to
conduct scores of killings of Soviet Prisoners of war.
Join us today as we look at the Genickschussanlage, or the neck shooting facility.
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When the Nazis opened the concentration camps, they must have worked out that one day they
would become instrumental to the mass killing of the Holocaust.
They opened up many different camps, with the largest death complex being Auschwitz
where over 1 million people were killed within the barbed wire fences.
Buchenwald concentration camp was opened in July 1937 and it was one of the first and
largest of the concentration camps within Germany.
Prisoners came here from all over Europe, and in particular the Soviet Union as the
fighting on the Eastern Front continued following the German invasion of the Union named Operation
Barbarossa.
There were Jews, Polish prisoners and other people from the Balkans housed inside Buchenwald
as well as physically and mentally ill people.
At Buchenwald 280,000 people would pass through the gates of the camp, and over 56,000 were
killed inside.
The Genickschussanlage or the Neck Shooting Facility was the official name of a facility
found inside of Buchenwald concentration camp and other sites across the Third Reich.
It was a facility used for surprise executions in which the victim would be tricked into
going into the execution chamber, and they would not know where they were going.
The Nazis used this deceit to carry out much of their killing inside of the camps.
But whilst inside of the room, the victim was placed into a position where they were
then shot from behind.
Through a hole in a wall which led to a neighbouring room, the executioners would fire a bullet
into the neck of the victim.
The surprise element of the execution was key for the Nazis, and the facilities were
usually equipped with a number of devices which could help the facade.
For example inside the execution chamber was height measuring devices or other instruments.
With this, the prisoner would be told to stand under the height measuring device, before
their height was taken.
The prisoner under the measuring device would then fix the height themselves, but behind
them was an opening in the wall where an executioner would be stood with his gun pointed through.
These execution facilities were used across many different execution camps, and they were
used to carry out death sentences but also to massacre large groups.
After the shot would ring out, the guards would then take the body out of a back entrance
and it would be taken to the crematoria to be burned.
In particular at Buchenwald, following 1941 the Neck shooting facility was used to execute
mostly soviet prisoners of war.
These had been transported to Buchenwald with the only reason as to kill them and execute
them.
These prisoners were brought from other concentration camps, and were then taken to a former horse
stable.
This had been converted into what looked like a medical examination room, where soviet pows
were convinced that they were going to have a medical exam before being allowed into the
camp.
The Soviet POWs were then placed in front of the measuring device which was attached
to the wall as mentioned earlier, before they were then measured.
However this was nothing and of no use, when through a hole in the wall they were executed
by gunshot.
The Nazis even went to the length to paint the floor brown to make sure that new prisoners
did not see the bloodstains, and to hide the fact it was an execution chamber.
They did not want the next prisoner and victim to know what was happening.
The prisoners who were brought to Buchenwald purely for their execution which was planned
to take place immediately.
Because of this they were not even admitted into the camp, and were not given numbers
or even recorded on the camps records.
The execution chamber in this camp, and the neck shooting facility claimed the lives of
8000 soviet prisoners of war, but throughout the third reich other neck shooting facilities
did exist.
But what was shocking about the neck shooting facility was the deceit and the lengths that
the Nazis went to trick prisoners into their deaths.
This would also happen with the gas chambers as prisoners were told that they were going
to have a shower, but they would never get out.
The neck shooting facility was practically a firing range in which a lone executioner
would fire straight into a target from close range, killing them immediately.
Thousands were killed in this way, and today it’s considered a forgotten part of the
Second World War and the concentration camps.
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