1937 - 1943

In July 1937 the SS had the forest cleared on the Ettersberg near Weimar to make way for the construction of a new concentration camp. The facility was to aid in the suppression of political opponents, the persecution of Jews and Sinti and Roma gypsies, and the permanent exclusion of Gemeinschaftsfremde (“strangers to the community”) – among them homosexuals, homeless, Jehovah’s Witnesses and persons with criminal records – from the deutscher Volkskörper (“body of German people”). Buchenwald soon became a synonym for the National Socialist concentration camp system. Once the war had started, people were deported to Buchenwald from all over Europe. Altogether more than 250,000 persons were imprisoned in the concentration camp on the Ettersberg and its 136 subcamps. The SS forced them to perform labour for the German armament industry.