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 the Altreich. 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 participated in the crimes at Buchenwald.
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 and was referred to as the "Kommandeuse of Buchenwald".
Dachau was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany and the longest-running one, 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 (Kovno) 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 Jewish and Soviet partisan forces in the distant forests of southeast Lithuania and Belarus.
Emil Carlebach was a German Landtag member, writer and journalist. He was born and died in Frankfurt am Main.
Identification of inmates in Nazi 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.
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 prisoners by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps mainly between 1942 and 1945. There were 15,754 documented victims, of various nationalities and age groups, although the true number is believed to be more extensive. Many survived, with a quarter of documented victims being killed. Survivors generally experienced severe permanent injuries.
Stefan Jerzy Zweig was a Polish-German 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 to bargain 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 was a German-born Israeli researcher and author who specialised 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 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.
From Where They Stood, also known as À pas aveugles, is a 2021 Holocaust documentary by French documentarian Christophe Cognet that scrutinizes photographs taken clandestinely by prisoners at the Dachau, Auschwitz, Mittlelbau-Dora and Buchenwald Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The photographs were smuggled out of the camps and developed during the war or afterwards.
