Establishment of the Camp

In the summer of 1937, the SS initiated the building of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp on Ettersberg Mountain outside the city limits of Weimar. It served as a replacement for the smaller central German camps of Lichtenburg, Sachsenburg, and Bad Sulza. A new camp, designed for long-term use, was needed for the planned racist reconstitution of German society. Buchenwald alone was designed for 8,000 male inmates. The first arrived at the Ettersberg construction site on July 15, 1937. By the end of the year, their number had reached over 2,500. Among them were members of the resistance, previous convicts, Jehovah's Witnesses, and a few individuals persecuted for their homosexuality. The inmates had to perform heavy labour to build the camp themselves. The first camp commander, Karl Otto Koch, was infamous for his brutality. From the very beginning, the camp was associated with the city of Weimar in a variety of ways.