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.
Ilse Koch was a German war criminal who committed atrocities while her husband Karl-Otto Koch was commandant at Buchenwald. Though Ilse Koch had no official position in the Nazi state, she became one of the most infamous Nazi figures at war's end for allegations that she had selected tattooed prisoners for death in order to fashion lampshades and other items from their skins.
Dachau was the first concentration camp built by Nazi Germany, opening on 22 March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents which consisted of: communists, social democrats, and other dissidents. It is located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory northeast of the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 mi) northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria, in southern Germany. After its opening by Heinrich Himmler, its purpose was enlarged to include forced labor, and, eventually, the imprisonment of Jews, Romani, German and Austrian criminals, and, finally, foreign nationals from countries that Germany occupied or invaded. The Dachau camp system grew to include nearly 100 sub-camps, which were mostly work camps or Arbeitskommandos, and were located throughout southern Germany and Austria. The main camp was liberated by U.S. forces on 29 April 1945.
Nazi concentration camp badges, primarily triangles, were part of the system of identification in German camps. They were used in the concentration camps in the German-occupied countries to identify the reason the prisoners had been placed there. The triangles were made of fabric and were sewn on jackets and trousers of the prisoners. These mandatory badges of shame had specific meanings indicated by their colour and shape. Such emblems helped guards assign tasks to the detainees. For example, a guard at a glance could see if someone was a convicted criminal and thus likely of a tough temperament suitable for kapo duty.
Gross-Rosen was a network of Nazi concentration camps built and operated by Nazi Germany during World War II. The main camp was located in the German village of Gross-Rosen, now the modern-day Rogoźnica in Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Poland; directly on the rail-line between the towns of Jawor (Jauer) and Strzegom (Striegau). Its prisoners were mostly Jews, Poles and Soviet citizens.
The Kovno Ghetto was a ghetto established by Nazi Germany to hold the Lithuanian Jews of Kaunas during the Holocaust. At its peak, the ghetto held 29,000 people, most of whom were later sent to concentration and extermination camps, or were shot at the Ninth Fort. About 500 Jews escaped from work details and directly from the ghetto, and joined Soviet partisan forces in the distant forests of southeast Lithuania and Belarus.
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.
Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accepted definition of the term, and it has been applied variously to Jews who survived the war in German-occupied Europe or other Axis territories, as well as to those who fled to Allied and neutral countries before or during the war. In some cases, non-Jews who also experienced collective persecution under the Nazi regime are also considered Holocaust survivors. The definition has evolved over time.
Identification of inmates in German concentration camps was performed mostly with identification numbers marked on clothing, or later, tattooed on the skin. More specialized identification in Nazi concentration camps was done with badges on clothing and armbands.
Abraham Judah Klausner was a Reform rabbi and United States Army captain and chaplain who became a “father figure” for the more than 30,000 emaciated survivors found at Dachau Concentration Camp, 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Munich, shortly after it was liberated on April 29, 1945. He also cared for thousands more left homeless in camps as the victorious Allied Forces determined where they should go.
The Boys of Buchenwald is a 2002 documentary film produced by Paperny Films that examines how the child survivors of the Buchenwald concentration camp had to integrate themselves back into normal society after having experienced the brutality of the Holocaust. The documentary features interviews with the survivors, including Elie Wiesel.
During the Holocaust, children were especially vulnerable to death under the Nazi regime. According to estimations, 1.5 million children, nearly all Jewish, were murdered during the Holocaust, either directly or as a direct consequence of Nazi actions.
The Bullenhuser Damm School is located at 92–94 Bullenhuser Damm in the Rothenburgsort section of Hamburg, Germany – the site of the Bullenhuser Damm Massacre, the murder of 20 children and their adult caretakers at the very end of World War II's Holocaust – to hide evidence they were used as human subjects in brutal medical experimentation.
Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners, including children, by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps in the early to mid 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Chief target populations included Romani, Sinti, ethnic Poles, Soviet POWs, disabled Germans, and Jews from across Europe.
Stefan Jerzy Zweig is an author and cameraman. He is known as the Buchenwald child from the novel by Bruno Apitz, Naked Among Wolves. He survived the Buchenwald concentration camp at age four under protection from his father and other prisoners.
During the Holocaust, death marches were massive forced transfers of prisoners from one Nazi camp to other locations, which involved walking long distances resulting in numerous deaths of weakened people. Most death marches took place toward the end of World War II, mostly after the summer/autumn of 1944. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, from Nazi camps near the Eastern Front were moved to camps inside Germany away from the Allied forces. Their purpose was to continue the use of prisoners' slave labour, to remove evidence of crimes against humanity, and to keep the prisoners from bargaining with the Allies.
Paul Richard Averitt was an American soldier serving as a member of the US Army 92nd Signal Corps Battalion. He was one of the first photographers taking pictures at Dachau concentration camp during its liberation on April 29, 1945.
Judith Hemmendinger is a German-born Israeli researcher and author specializing in child survivors of the Holocaust. During World War II, she was a social worker and refugee counselor for the Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE), a French Jewish children's aid organization based in Geneva, and from 1945 to 1947, she directed a home for child survivors of Buchenwald in France. She has authored books and papers on the Holocaust experiences and later lives of child survivors. She was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 2003.
During World War II, the German Luftwaffe staffed dozens of concentration camps, and posted its soldiers as guards at many others. Camps created for the exploitation of forced labor for armaments production were often run by the branch of the Wehrmacht that used the products. The Wehrmacht also posted about 10,000 soldiers to concentration camps because of a shortage of guards in mid-1944, including many from the Luftwaffe.
