1. Experiences at Buchenwald

2. Experiences at Buchenwald
The ideological purpose of Buchenwald was to submerge the individual in a group identity; not only to imprison and intimidate inmates but to dehumanise them. But the experiences of people in camps such as Buchenwald were complicated and varied. Different people reacted differently to the circumstances they faced, What seemed simple distinctions between perpetrators and victims were not simple at all; nor was the apparently joyous experience of liberation in 1945.
Experiences reflected the changing context of the camp at Buchenwald. From 1937 to 1941, the Third Reich was at peace, or was flushed with the ‘success’ of victories in a European war. From the end of 1941 to 1945, the Reich experienced Total War, with increasing economic hardships and intensified ideology that culminated in the Holocaust. By May 1945, all organisation of the camp system had collapsed , as was revealed by the appalling conditions and mass deaths uncovered by the liberation. Experiences changed again when the camp was re-opened as a Soviet special camp.
Acknowledgements
This source collection is made by Chris Rowe with the support of Buchenwald Memorial and Mateo Martinez.
This collection is part of the unit “Internment without a trial: Examples from the Nazi and Soviet regimes” that is developed in the Multi-Facetted Memory project. More information

4. Czech prisoners arriving at Buchenwald, 1939
Czechs who have arrived from a transport from Pilsen. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington)

6. Viennese Jews arrive at Buchenwald
Viennese Jews who have been deported standing on the muster ground in civilian clothing in October 1939 (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington)

8. New prisoners at registration
Registration of Jewish men on November 1938 (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, New York)

10. Roll call, November 1938
Arrested Jews standing for roll call in blocks. One third of those imprisoned in Buchenwald, were of Jewish origin. The mass arrests was a result of the nationwide pogroms of the Night of the Broken Glass - attacks on Jewish businesses and people throughout Germany on November 9-10, (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington)

12. Roma/Sinti prisoners (Autumn 1939 or Spring 1940)
Roma/Sinti from Burgenland, Austria are compelled to stand for roll call on the occasion of a visit from a high/ranking SS officer. Buchenwald was initially established as a detention centre for political prisoners, such as German communists or social democrats. After July 1938, German and Austrian Roma/Sinti prisoners were imprisoned in the camp, as well. (Photo: SS, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington)

14. Disabled prisoners, June 1938
Five disabled persons in inmate’s uniform. The triangular badges identify them as Jews. The ‘law’ in the Third Reich looked down upon disabled people, labeling them ‘life unworthy of life’ and highlighting them as a burden to society. In Nazi usage, “euthanasia” referred to the systematic killing of the mentally and physically disabled. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington)

16. Example of registration of prisoners
Special Index Card used for inmates of the Pogrom Camp In this case Hermann Nathan was taken into custody according to "Jew Action” dated on that same day by the Kassel Authorities and was transferred to Buchenwald one day later. His stay was short as he was released on December 7th 1938, he was married with two children. His religion is given as "mos" meaning he is a son of Moses. (No known copyright restrictions)

18. Disinfection of inmates of the Polish-Jewish Special Camp on the muster ground, autumn of 1939.
Buchenwald Concentration Camp Records Office. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington)

20. The dining hall in the SS casino at Buchenwald.
Date: 1939
Source:
Copyright:
Postcard published by the Waffen SS (Sammlung Gedenkschtaette Buchenwald)

22. Commandant Koch with his son at Buchenwald Zoo, situated close to the concentration camp.  Oktober 1939
Public Domain

24. Italian guest at the Buchenwald Falkenhaus, greeted by among others the Gauleiter of Thuringia, and the camp commandant, Karl Koch. 1940
Gedenkstätte Buchenwald

26. The first snow at Buchenwald, December 1940
The first snow at Buchenwald, December Artwin Koch with his parents in front of the camp commandant’s building.
From an album of photographs assembled by Karl and Ilse Koch fortheir son, Artwin. Karl Koch had the album put together by prisoners in the camp’s book-binding workshop. The album was used by the American prosecution team as evidence in the Buchenwald Trial which took place in Dachau in The album is held today in the National Archives in Washington. (Public Domain)

28. Werner Fricke with his wife and friends in 1941
SS-Hauptscharführer Werner Fricke, head of the Weimar Buchenwald Registrar’s Office II from 1939 to 1945, with his wife and friends in front of their new house in the SS colony II near Kleinobringen. (Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar)

30. The prisoners library
A number of pictures were made to the order of the Lagerkommandant and they contain a comprehensive recording of the premises of the camp. The pictures were made by prisoners from the photo department. (End of 1943) (Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation, Besançon)

32. Inmates at work at the Records Office; to the right the Jehovah’s Witness Karl Siebeneichler in the end of 1943
The department’s most important task is to produce photos for the inmates’ personal data card file. (Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation, Besançon)

34. Buchenwald: from left to right, the laundry building, the Goethe Oak and the kitchen. June, 1944
Date: June 1944
Source:
 Copyright:
Some inmates drew strength from the idea that Goethe once sat under this tree. From 1943 there were some foreign prisoners working in the photography department. They had limited access to a collection of cameras. In June 1944 Geoges Angéli secretly took eleven photos, mostly in the Small Camp His motive was to provide testimony for what had happened in the camp. Angéli considered it to be an act of resistance. He hid the photographs, so they survived the destruction of the photography department in August The photos were displayed in small exhibitions organised by the FNDIRP, of which Angéli is a member. The true meaning and origin of the photos was not publicly known until the 1990s. (Sammlung Gedenkschtaette Buchenwald)

36. The dentists' treatment room for the SS authorities in Buchenwald at the end of 1943
(Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation, Besançon)

38. Execution of inmates, May 11th, 1942
Polish inmates before their public execution in a forest near Poppenhausen, Thuringia. The 19-year-old Polish slave laborer Jan Sówka awaits execution by hanging for the murder of a German policeman. In April 1942, a Polish forced laborer was beaten unconscious by a German policeman named Albin Gottwald. Two Polish men took revenge on Gottwald and stabbed him to death on a forest path near Poppenhausen. One of the two Poles, Jan Sówka was captured. On 11 May 1942, nineteen prisoners from Buchenwald concentration camp were taken to the place in the woods where Gottwald’s body had been found., to be punished for the act committed by Sówka and his accomplice. The German soldiers built three gallows. The execution of the nineteen Polish prisoners began at 10:50 where the prisoners were hanged one after another. Finally, Sówka was hanged after being forced to witness the deaths of the others. Hundreds of Polish forced laborers were rounded up and forced to watch the executions. (United State Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington )

40. Forced labour
Inmates clearing rubble after air raid on the ground of the Gustloff Works. Photo made after August 24, 1944

42. Inmates of Buchenwald marching back to the camp from the sub-camp at the Gustloff-Works, 1944.
Buchenwald was primarily a forced labour camp. The prison population grew rapidly to support wartime industries in nearby sub-camps (Sammlung Gedenkstätte Buchenwald)

44. Personal card for a detainee
8 March 1944

46. Exclusion within exclusion: the Little Camp. June 1944
This quarantine zone was separated from the rest of the camp. The accommodation consisted of windowless stable barracks and tents. (Sammlung Gedenkschtaette Buchenwald)

48. At the end of the camp road there was a brothel in which women from Ravensbruck Concentration Camp were forced to work as prostitutes from 1943 onward. Non-Jewish inmates are permitted to purchase a visit to the brothel as a reward for good work. (June 1944). (Sammlung Gedenkschtaette Buchenwald)

50. Medical experiments (June 1944)
Inmates in front of Block 46, where medical experiments were carried out on inmates 9 Sammlung Gedenkschtaette Buchenwald)

52. Death Marches (January 18 1945)
A drawing by Walter Spitzer, showing a death march from Auschwitz arriving at Buchenwald Nearly 60,000 prisoners wee forced on death marches from the Auschwitz camp system; more than 15,000 died during the marches. 

54. Almost liberated, 2 April 1945
Near the end of the war, the Allied armies closed in on the Nazi concentration camps. The Soviets approached from the east, and the British, French, and Americans from the west. The Germans began frantically to move the prisoners to camps deeper inside Germany; the SS authorities did not want prisoners to fall into enemy hands alive to tell their stories to the liberators. Prisoners were forced to march long distances in bitter cold, with little or no food, water, or rest. Those who could not keep up were shot. On April 2, shortly before the camp was liberated, the Nazis began a mass evacuation of more than prisoners from Buchenwald and its sub-camps. About 8,000 died during the march. Before the march began, the Nazis burnt down the barracks and the SS shot dead between 60 and 70 prisoners who were too weak to start the march.

56. Children at Buchenwald (after 11 April 1945)
Children whose parents were killed in Buchenwald were taken care by the other inmates of the camp.

58. Evidence of brutality
Many of the slave laborers had died from malnutrition when U.S. troops of the 80th Div. entered the camp. 16 April When Buchenwald was liberated on April 11, 1945, the US soldiers uncovered shocking scenes and evidence of the camp’s brutality. They found bodies of starved and exhausted victims as well as emaciated survivors. (Public Domain)

60. Weimar citizens visiting the camp after liberation (16.04.1945)
Citizens of Weimar standing before a trailer filled with bodies in the inner yard of the crematorium facility. These civilians were compelled to visit the site by the American commander Lorenz Schmuhl, to witness evidence of the atrocities committed there. (Schmuhl can be seen standing to the left of the trailer, wearing a steel helmet and light-colored jacket).

62. 1st of May1945
Labour Day Parade on the camp road (Sammlung Gedenkschtaette Buchenwald)

64. Nazi loot from Buchenwald victims.
These are a few of the thousands of wedding rings removed from their victims in order to salvage the gold. 1st U.S. Army troops discovered these rings along with other valuable article such as watches, precious stones, eyeglasses and gold teeth fillings, in a cave adjoining the Buchenwald camp. 5 May 1945 (Public domain)

66. Prisoners welcome the liberators
American soldiers walk around Buchenwald. May 27th (National Archives, Washington/public domain)

68. Four weeks after liberation (May 1945)
17-21 year old young people from Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia.
Since their liberation they had the best nutrition possible provided by the Americans; but, even after four weeks, the Hungarian boy sitting in the middle was still so weak that he had to be carried to his place to take this picture. (Stadtarchiv Reutlingen, Fotosammlung)

69. This collection is part of the unit “Internment without a trial: Examples from the Nazi and Soviet regimes”