Buchenwald was a Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or suspected communists were among the first internees.
Karl-Otto Koch was a mid-ranking commander in the Schutzstaffel (SS) of Nazi Germany who was the first commandant of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. From September 1941 until August 1942, he served as the first commandant of the Majdanek concentration camp in occupied Poland, stealing vast amounts of valuables and money from murdered Jews. His wife, Ilse Koch, also took part in the crimes at Buchenwald.
Mittelbau-Dora was a Nazi concentration camp located near Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany. It was established in late summer 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, supplying slave labour from many Eastern countries occupied by Germany, for extending the nearby tunnels in the Kohnstein and for manufacturing the V-2 rocket and the V-1 flying bomb. In the summer of 1944, Mittelbau became an independent concentration camp with numerous subcamps of its own. In 1945, most of the surviving inmates were sent on death marches or crammed in trains of box-cars by the SS. On 11 April 1945, US troops freed the remaining prisoners.
Hermann Hackmann was a German war criminal, Nazi SS captain in two extermination camps during World War II. He was a roll call officer at KL Buchenwald, and lead guard in charge of the so-called protective custody at Majdanek concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. Described as a brutal man with a cynical sense of humour, Hackmann was tried three times. The first time, he was prosecuted for murder and embezzlement and sentenced to death by SS Judge Georg Konrad Morgen in connection with the Koch trial. However, Hackmann's sentence was later commuted to a prison term. He spent at least five months as a regular prisoner in Dachau concentration camp before being transferred to a penal battalion.
A kapo or prisoner functionary was a prisoner in a Nazi camp who was assigned by the Schutzstaffel (SS) guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks.
The Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials were a set of trials of SS concentration camp personnel following World War II, heard by an American military government court at Dachau. Between March 29 and May 13, 1946, and then from August 6 to August 21, 1947, a total of 69 former camp personnel were tried. Among them were some of the former guards at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp system and August Eigruber, a former Gauleiter of Upper Austria.
Emil Carlebach was a German Landtag member, writer and journalist. He was born and died in Frankfurt am Main.
Josias, Hereditary Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont was the heir apparent to the throne of the Principality of Waldeck and Pyrmont and a general in the SS. From 1946 until his death, he was the head of the Princely House of Waldeck and Pyrmont. After World War II, he was sentenced to life in prison at the Buchenwald Trial for his part in the "common plan" to violate the Laws and Usages of War in connection with prisoners of war held at Buchenwald concentration camp, but was released after serving about three years in prison.
Otto Förschner was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and a Nazi concentration camp commander. After serving with the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front, Förschner worked as a senior official at the Buchenwald concentration camp (1942-1943) and later served as the commandant of Mittelbau-Dora (1943-1945) and Kaufering (1945). Following the German defeat, he was convicted of war crimes by US occupation authorities at the Dachau trials and was hanged in May 1946.
Georg Johannes Rickhey was a German engineer and the general director of Mittelwerk GmbH in Dora-Mittelbau.
The Dora Trial, also the "Dora"-Nordhausen or Dachau Dora Proceeding was a war crimes trial conducted by the United States Army in the aftermath of the collapse of the Third Reich. It took place between August 7 and December 30, 1947, on the site of the former Dachau concentration camp, Germany.
Ernst Heinrich Schmidt was a German physician and member of the SS, who practised Nazi medicine in a variety of German concentration camps during World War II. He was tried in 1947 and 1975 for complicity in war crimes, but was acquitted both times.
Hans Kurt Eisele was a German SS-Hauptsturmführer and concentration camp doctor.
Ludwig Eiber is a German historian and author. He is widely acknowledged as an expert on the post-World War II Allied war crimes trials of the Nazis. In particular, he has expertise in the Dachau trials.
Werner Alfred Berger was a German SS-Oberscharführer and served as a commander in the KZ Buchenwald concentration camp.
Edwin Maria Katzenellenbogen, also spelled Katzen-Ellenbogen was a Jewish American eugenicist and physician in the concentration camp of Buchenwald. Born in 1882 in Galicia, he attended a Polish Jesuit high school, and was a practicing Catholic. In 1905 he graduated as a doctor from Leipzig University. He emigrated to the United States that year, where he was naturalized. Katzenellenbogen worked as a eugenicist for the Carnegie Institution. At one point, he was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. Katzenellenbogen married Aurelia Pierce, the daughter of a Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice, whom he later divorced.
Approximately 30,000 Jews in Germany and Austria were deported within the region or the country after the Kristallnacht of 9/10 November 1938. They were deported to the concentration camps Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen by the NSDAP organizations and the police in the days after the pogrom. This put pressure on the deportees and their relatives in order to speed up the only seemingly voluntary emigration from their homeland and to "Aryanize" Jewish assets. The vast majority of the detainees were released by the beginning of 1939. Around 500 Jews were murdered, committed suicide or died as a result of ill-treatment and refused medical treatment in the concentration camps.
Edith Raim is a German historian who studies the Nazi era. She grew up in Landsberg am Lech and first became interested in the topic after watching Holocaust as a child. Being a student of Anton Posset she started under his guidance the historical reappraisal of the concentration camp complex Kaufering, a sub-camp of Dachau concentration camp. Her 1991 dissertation at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich was titled Die Dachauer KZ-Aussenkommandos Kaufering und Mühldorf: Rüstungsbauten und Zwangsarbeit im letzten Kriegsjahr 1944/45 and concerned the Dachau subcamps of Kaufering and Mühldorf.
The Dachau camp trial was the first mass trial of the Dachau trials, a series of trials against war criminals held by the United States Army on the premises of the Dachau concentration camp. The main trial took place from 15 November to 13 December 1945. Forty people were charged with war crimes in connection with the Dachau concentration camp and its subcamps. The trial ended with 40 convictions, including 36 death sentences, of which 28 were carried out. The official name of the case was United States of America vs. Martin Gottfried Weiss et al. - Case 000-50-2. The main trial served as a "parent case" for 123 subsequent cases. In the subsequent trials, all crimes that were established in the main trial were taken as proven, significantly shortening their duration relative to the parent case. The Dachau trials consisted of 6 total parent trials, each with their own subcases, and were held between 1945 and 1948. In total, there were 489 Dachau trials, of which 394 were held within the confines of the camp itself.
Dachau is a 72-page investigation report by the 7th US Army on Dachau, one of the concentration camps established by Nazi Germany. The report details the mass murder and mass atrocities committed at Dachau by the SS and other personnel. Following the liberation of the camp by the 7th US Army on 29 April 1945, the report was prepared during the following one or two weeks and published in May. In addition to a preface, the report contains three independent reports which partly overlap thematically. Although it contains some errors, the report is considered one of the first studies on the Nazi concentration camps.
