Buchenwald is a concentration camp, which, thanks to a well-functioning system of massacres, has become one of the most famous evidence of the crimes of the Nazi regime in Europe. He was not the first either in the world or in Germany itself, however, it was the local leadership that became the pioneers in the field of conveyor killings. Another famous camp at Auschwitz only became fully operational since January 1942, when the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) set out on a total physical extermination of Jews. But much earlier this practice came to Buchenwald.
The concentration camp was marked by its first victims in the summer of 1937. In early 1938, a torture chamber for prisoners was first created here, and in 1940, a crematorium, which proved its effectiveness as a means of mass extermination. The bulk of the prisoners were Hitler's political opponents (in particular, the leader of the German Communists - Ernst Thälmann), dissidents who dared to disagree with the NSDAP in the late thirties, all kinds of inferiorities, according to the Chancellor, and, of course, Jews. In the summer of 1937 the first settlement in Buchenwald took place. The concentration camp was located on the land of Thuringia, near Weimar. For the entire time of its existence, for eight years, until April 1945, about a quarter of a million people passed through its barracks, of which 55 thousand were destroyed or starved by physical labor. This was Buchenwald - a concentration camp, a photo of which subsequently shocked the whole world.
Experiments on people
Among other things, as noted by Buchenwald, the concentration camp was also famous for experiments on people. With the full approval of the top Nazi leadership, in particular the Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmer, people were intentionally infected with dangerous viruses for experimental testing of vaccines. Prisoners of Buchenwald were infected with tuberculosis, typhus and a number of other diseases. Very often, this ended not only in the death of the experimental, but also in the infection of their neighbors in the barracks and, as a result, in severe epidemics that claimed the lives of thousands of prisoners. In addition, experiments were conducted in the camp regarding the pain threshold of a person, his extreme degree of endurance, the possibility of survival in extreme conditions, when local doctors simply watched
people dying in artificially created conditions: in water, cold, and so on.
Exemption
Buchenwald (concentration camp) was released in April 1945. On April 4, American forces liberated one of the satellite concentration camps, Ordruf. Long-term training of prisoners made it possible to form an armed resistance force directly on the camp. The uprising began on April 11, 1945. In its course, the prisoners managed to break the resistance and take control of the territory. Several dozen Nazi guards and SS men were captured. On the same day, American formations approached the camp, and two days later the Red Army.
Post-war use
After Buchenwald was captured by the Allied forces, the concentration camp was used by the Soviet People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) for several years as a camp for Nazi internees.