1937
July 15
The first 149 inmates arrive at the Ettersberg (i), transported here from Sachsenhausen
Concentration Camp. In the weeks that follow, the SS (i) dissolves the Sachsenburg
and Lichtenburg Concentration Camps and brings the inmates – members of
the resistance, Jehovah's Witnesses, previously convicted criminals and a few
homosexuals – to the new camp. They are put to work clearing the forest,
laying sewerage pipes and power lines, building roads, caserns, houses, garages
and a barrack camp. Karl Koch is the camp commander.
July 28
The new concentration camp "K.L. Ettersberg" is renamed "K.L.
Buchenwald / Post Weimar" in response to objections raised by the NS Cultural
Community of Weimar.
August 14
The twenty-three-year-old labourer Hermann Kempeck of Altona is found hanged.
His is the first death to take place in Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
Year-end
There are 2,561 inmates in the camp on the Ettersberg (i). Since the summer, 48
inmates have died and been cremated at the Weimar Municipal Crematorium.
1938
February
The "Bunker (i)" – as the detention cell wing of the gate building
is referred to by the inmates – receives its first prisoners. Under SS (i)
jailor Martin Sommer it becomes the camp centre of torture and killing.
April
The mass arrest of the so-called work-shy begins: Thousands of persons who have
refused an employment position, are homeless or have no legal residence are
committed to concentration camps.
May 1
The SS (i) introduces the sub-group "Jews" to all inmate categories. No
midday meal is served because radishes have allegedly been stolen from the vegetable
garden.
May
Camp Commander Karl Koch establishes the daily water ration per barrack at four
bucketsful. The camp construction period is accompanied by the chronic shortage
of water.
June 4
The labourer Emil Bargatzky is hanged on the gallows in front of the assembly
of inmates. This is the first public execution to take place in a German concentration
camp.
Mid June
More than a thousand Jews are housed in a sheep stall and in the shell construction
of the inmates' kitchen, without beds, benches or tables. The SS (i) has a zoo built
along the outside of the barbed-wire fence enclosing the inmates' camp.
June 26
During a "barrack search," SS (i) men ravage the barracks, smash window
panes, tear off window sills, slit open more than two hundred straw sacks and
cut up sheets and blankets. According to the official journal kept by the officer
in charge of the protective custody camp, three Jews die on this day. In the
journal entry, one inmate ID number is followed by the remark: "Collapsed
in front of the barrack and died."
September
The first Austrians arrive at the camp on transports from Dachau. Among them
are many prominent Jews from the fields of art, education and science.
October
The number of inmates exceeds 10,000 for the first time.
November
After the anti-Jewish pogroms, 9,845 Jews are crowded into a barbed-wire fold,
brutally mistreated and robbed. Two hundred fifty-five of them die in the process.
December
The writer Fritz Löhner (pseudonym: Beda) and the composer Hermann Leopoldi,
both Austrian Jews in custody in Buchenwald, write the "Buchenwald Song."
December 21
The Social Democrat Peter Forster is executed on the gallows on the muster ground.
Year-end
The number of inmates in the camp has reached 11,028. Among the 771 persons
to have died in the camp in 1938, 408 were Jews.
1939
February
The first typhus epidemic breaks out as a result of overcrowding and the continuing
shortage of water. The camp is placed under quarantine.
April 1
The Special Registry Office "Weimar II" is established within the
camp command / administration complex; its work consists primarily of registering
deaths.
April 19/20
Inmates are released as a consequence of the "mercy campaign" on the
occasion of Hitler's birthday.
July 18
After more than a year in the "Bunker (i)," the Protestant minister Paul
Schneider dies in the infirmary as a consequence of medical treatment.
September 6
The rations for Jews are reduced to four hundred grams of bread and one litre
of soup per day. Despite the threat of death posed by the machine guns of the
SS (i) on the muster ground, the Jehovah's Witnesses unanimously refuse to report
for military service.
September 27
A special camp is set up on the muster ground. Among its first inmates are 110
Poles whom the SS (i) herd into a wire entanglement where they die of hunger and
cold within a few weeks.
October
Following the outbreak of war, 8,500 men are committed to the camp, including
approximately 700 Czechs, hundreds of Romani from Burgenland (Austria), over
2,200 Poles and more than 1,000 Viennese Jews. In the special camp on the muster
ground, the SS (i) crowd over 3,000 Poles and Jews into tents. The special camp
becomes the site of a form of death which – brought about by intentional
starvation, terror and neglect – bears the attributes of mass murder.
November 1
The camp is placed under quarantine following the outbreak of a dysentery epidemic.
November 9
The SS (i) take revenge on the Jews in the camp for the attempt made on Hitler's
life the previous evening in Munich. Twenty-one Jews are killed in the quarry
by an execution commando unit. All of the Jews in the camp are deprived of food
for three days.
November
In retaliation for the theft of a pig from the stalls on the north-western edge
of the camp, all inmates are compelled to go hungry for several days.
Year-end
There are now 11,807 inmates in the camp. The inmate death toll for 1939 amounts
to 1,235.
1940
Beginning of the year
This winter hundreds of inmates, particularly Burgenland Romani and Viennese
Jews, fall victim to the cold and forced labour or are killed by means of lethal
injections. The construction of the crematorium commences alongside the muster
ground.
February
The special camp on the muster ground is dissolved. Nearly half of its inmates
have died.
April 3
Ernst Heilmann, a member of the German Reichstag (national parliament) and chairman
of the Social Democratic parliamentary group in the Prussian Landtag (state
parliament), is killed by a lethal injection.
May
Camp Commander Koch has an indoor riding arena built for his wife.
July
Two hundred thirty-two Dutch hostages are committed to the camp.
August 22
Six hundred forty Poles are committed via the state police headquarters in Posen.
September
The order is given to remove the gold fillings from the corpses before cremation.
The camp crematorium has been in operation since the summertime.
Year-end
The camp population now numbers 7,440. In the course of the year, 1,772 have
died.
1941
February 20
Three hundred eighty-nine Dutch Jews are committed to Buchenwald Concentration
Camp.
May/June
The SS (i) transfers the Dutch Jews as well as the majority of the Sinti and Romani
to Mauthausen Concentration Camp near Linz, where they perish in the quarries.
July 5 and 12
Two transports of Polish and Jewish inmates arrive from Dachau Concentration
Camp. They are in poor physical condition. Those with tuberculosis are isolated
from the remaining camp inmates and killed by means of lethal injections.
July 13 and 14
On two transports of the killing operation "14 f 13 (i)," as it is referred
to in the camp records, the SS (i) sends 187 sick and disabled inmates to the Sonnenstein
"euthanasia (i)" killing facility near Pirna, where they are gassed to
death.
September
The first Soviet prisoners of war to arrive in the camp are killed by the SS (i)
in the shooting range of the Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke (DAW (i)). A shooting
facility is later set up in a former SS (i) stable to the west of the camp. In the
two years that follow, SS (i) Commando Unit 99 kills approximately 8,000 Soviet
prisoners of war by shooting them in the neck.
October 18
A transport comprising 2,000 Soviet prisoners of war arrives. The SS (i) sets up
a POW camp in the western part of the camp.
November
A commission of "euthanasia (i)" appraisers selects inmates for extermination.
Year-end
Camp Commander Koch is transferred to Lublin. There are 7,911 inmates and 1,903
Soviet prisoners of war in the camp. One thousand five hundred twenty-two men
have died in the camp in 1941. The Soviet prisoners of war killed by shooting
in the neck do not appear in any camp records.
1942
January
Hermann Pister assumes the office of camp commander. In Barracks 44 and 49,
experiments on inmates are begun using test vaccines of the Behring-Werke (Behring
Works) in Marburg/Lahn, the Robert-Koch-Institut of Berlin and the Institut
für Fleckfieber- und Virusforschung des Oberkommandos des Heeres Krakau
(Institute for Typhus and Virus Research of the Chief Command of the Krakow
Army). One hundred forty-five inmates are artificially infected; 5 die in the
course of the experiment.
February
The first Buchenwald sub-camp (i) is established in an armament factory, the Gustloff-Werke (i)
of Weimar. Before living quarters are built on site in the fall of 1943, the
inmate labourers make the trip from the Ettersberg (i) to the factory and back daily.
March
The SS (i) has 384 Jewish inmates killed in the gas chamber of the "euthanasia (i)"
killing facility in Bernburg.
May 11
The Buchenwald SS (i) publicly hangs 20 Polish inmates near Poppenhausen in Thuringia
as an "atonement measure."
July
Three hundred handicapped persons and 51 clergymen are transferred from Buchenwald
to Dachau Concentration Camp. The construction of the rifle factory for the
Fritz Sauckel Plant of the Wilhelm-Gustloff-NS-Industriestiftung on the road
to Weimar begins. At mid-year the mass committal of Soviet forced-labour convicts
to the camp begins. By early 1943 their number reaches approximately 4,500.
August
The SS Department of Economic Administration (i), which oversees the administration
of the concentration camps, orders the delivery of the hair shorn from the heads
of the inmates for the production of felt and textiles. In the typhus experimentation
station, now located in Barrack 46, a new series of experiments on inmates is
undertaken. The camp doctor proposes that the registration of the deaths of
Soviet inmates be reduced to a minimum.
October
Four hundred five Jews are sent to Auschwitz. The expansion of the crematorium
is concluded and the second new crematory oven manufactured by the Topf &
Söhne Company of Erfurt goes into operation.
Year-end
The SS (i) has a disinfection building erected and the barrack town expanded by
the addition of a quarantine camp (the "Little Camp (i)"). At this point
in time there are 9,517 inmates in the camp. In 1942, 2,898 inmates have died
– an average of 1 in 3.
1943
January
The Little Camp (i) receives its first prisoners.
March
The armament factory adjacent to the camp, the so-called Gustloff-Werke II (i),
begins production with an inmate work force. The construction of a railway line
to Weimar gets underway, a project the inmates are compelled to finish within
a mere three months. Large sub-camps (i) are established at the Erla-Maschinenwerk
GmbH (i) (Erla Machine Factory) in Leipzig, the Junkers Flugzeugwerke (Junkers Aircraft
Works) in Schönebeck and the Rautalwerke (Rautal Works) in Wenigerode,
where Buchenwald inmates are forced to work in the armament industry. Large
transports of Polish inmates arrive from Auschwitz and Majdanek.
April
The thirteenth experimentation series on inmates takes place in Block 46, this
time with typhus medication manufactured by the Hoechst Company. Over half of
the test subjects die a painful death during the experiment, which lasts until
the end of May.
May
Members of the French government, including the former Minister-Presidents Édouard
Daladier, Paul Reynaud and Léon Blum, are interned in the SS (i) falcon yard.
Léon Blum remains there until April 1945.
June
The first major transport of Frenchmen arrives from the Compiègne transit
camp in Northern France.
August
In preparation for the planned production of rockets, the sub-camp (i) "Dora,"
an underground facility, is established in Nordhausen. During the first six
months of the tunnel excavation work, 2,900 inmates lose their lives. The first
large transports from the Ukraine arrive in Buchenwald.
Year-end
The overall number of inmates has increased to 37,319. Among them are 14,500
Russians, 7,500 Poles, 4,700 Frenchmen and 4,800 Germans and Austrians. Nearly
half of them are in sub-camps (i). Three thousand five hundred sixteen inmates die
in the Buchenwald camp complex in the year 1943.
1944
January
Three hundred forty-eight Norwegian students arrested at the University of Oslo
in 1943 arrive in Buchenwald. In January and February the SS (i) transfers 1,888
sick and feeble inmates from the Dora sub-camp (i) to the Majdanek concentration
and extermination camp.
March
The number of sub-camps (i) increases to twenty-two. Of the altogether 42,000 inmates,
half work for the war industry. An investigation concludes that eighty-one percent
of the inmates in the parent camp (i) on the Ettersberg (i) – i.e. 18,990 of 21,500
persons – are chronically undernourished, and 1 in 10 suffers from open
tuberculosis. The SS (i) transfers 1,000 sick inmates from the Dora sub-camp (i) to
Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp.
April
A transport of Sinti and Romani, among them many adolescents, arrives from Auschwitz.
May
Between May and July, 8,000 Hungarian Jews who have been singled out from the
extermination process in Auschwitz are brought to Buchenwald and a number of
sub-camps (i) to perform hard labour on the SS (i) construction teams, where they perish
as a consequence of the merciless conditions.
August 15
Due to evacuation (i) treks from camps in the West which have been dissolved or
are close to the front, the parent camp (i) now accommodates 31,491 persons. Thousands
live in tents or have no roof over their heads whatsoever. The sub-camps (i) hold
a further 43,500 inmates.
Mid August
Within the framework of the arrest operation "Gitter"/"Gewitter"
which follows the assassination attempt on Hitler, the Gestapo commits 742 former
holders of parliamentary seats and well-known members of political parties of
the Weimar Republic (i) to the camp.
August 18
The chairman of the KPD (i), Ernst Thälmann (i), is shot to death in the crematorium.
August 20
A transport from Paris brings 167 Allied airmen who have been shot down over
France. They are committed to the Little Camp (i), where they remain until October.
August 24
Allied bombers attack the armament factories and SS (i) facilities located near
the parent camp (i), destroying them for the most part. Because of the fact that
the inmates are ordered to remain near the factory, 2,000 are wounded and 388
die.
August 28
An extermination transport comprising 74 Jewish women and children leaves the
Hugo Schneider AG (i) Leipzig sub-camp (i) in the direction of Auschwitz. A Jewish girl
is born in the sub-camp (i) affiliated with the Hugo Schneider Company in Leipzig;
she dies on August 31. In August/September, the SS (i) administration of Buchenwald
takes charge of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp sub-camps (i) in which thousands
of female inmates are imprisoned.
September 26
Two hundred Sinti and Romani children and adolescents are sent from Buchenwald
to Auschwitz for extermination.
Late September / early October
One thousand nine hundred fifty-three members of the Danish police force are
brought to Buchenwald. Sixty of them die in the Little Camp (i) before the group
is transferred elsewhere at year-end.
October 6
Following a selection of sick Jewish inmates from the sub-camps (i) of the Braunkohle-Benzin
AG (i) (Brown Coal and Petroleum Company) in Rehmsdorf and Magdeburg, the SS (i) sends
1,188 Jews to Auschwitz for extermination. By December, a number of further
extermination transports from other camps have taken Jewish men, women and children
as well as Sinti and Romani to their deaths.
Late October
The Dora sub-camp (i) and its external detachments obtain the status of an independent
concentration camp – "Mittelbau (i)-Dora Concentration Camp."
December
The number of Jewish inmates in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp increases
to 15,500 by year-end due to the dissolution of Plaszów Concentration
Camp and the forced-labour camps in Czestochowa and Piotrków. More than
one third of the 87,000 persons imprisoned in the men's and women's camps of
Buchenwald are under the age of twenty-one.
Year-end
63,048 men and 24,201 women are in confinement in Buchenwald and its sub-camps (i).
The inmate death toll for 1944 is 8,644.
1945
January
In view of the advancing Red Army, the SS (i) dissolves the still-existing labour
and concentration camps in occupied Poland and sends the inmates on devastating
evacuation (i) marches. Forty-two hundred Jews from Czestochowa arrive on January
18 and 20, 7,350 primarily Jewish inmates from Auschwitz between January 22
and February 5, and a further 7,800 primarily Jewish inmates from Gross-Rosen
between February 10 and March 5. Those who reach Buchenwald alive are marked
by exhaustion, hunger and cold; many of them are mortally ill. Hundreds of corpses
lie in open railroad freight cars.
February
The Buchenwald complex is the largest remaining concentration camp. At the end
of February there are 112,000 persons, including 25,000 women, behind the barbed-wire
fences of the parent camp (i) and its eighty-eight sub-camps (i). A third of the imprisoned
men and women are Jews. From January on, the Little Camp (i) located on the northern
edge of the Buchenwald barrack town serves as a catch basin for mass transports.
Thousands are sent on from there to Mittelbau (i)-Dora Concentration Camp and the
Buchenwald sub-camps (i). The number of dying, sick and weak inmates remaining in
the Little Camp (i) increases by the day. Special-status inmates are imprisoned
in the cellar of an SS (i) casern, among them Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Members of
the families of the officers and politicians involved in the assassination attempt
on Hitler are interned in the isolation barrack adjacent to "Fichtenhain
Special Camp," where they remain until April.
March/April
The SS (i) keeps the forced labour system in operation until the very end. The sub-camps (i)
are not evacuated until the front is in the immediate vicinity. The SS (i) slaughters
all inmates unable to walk and carries out massacres in Leipzig, Gardelegen
and Ohrdruf.
Early April
On the evening of April 6, there are 47,500 inmates in the camp on the Ettersberg (i),
including 22,900 in the barracks of the Main Camp and 18,000 in the stables
of the Little Camp (i). On the grounds of the DAW (i), the SS (i) has already herded 6,600
Jews together for evacuation (i). Camp Commander Pister issues the evacuation (i) order.
April 7 to 10
Twenty-eight thousand inmates from the Main and Little Camp (i)s on the Ettersberg (i)
are sent off by rail or driven on foot in the direction of the Dachau and Flossenbürg
Concentration Camps and the Theresienstadt ghetto. Thousands die along the way.
April 11
On April 11, the Sixth Armored Division of the Third U.S. Army reaches Buchenwald
Concentration Camp. The SS (i) flees, but before the fighting is over inmates of
the camp resistance occupy the towers and take charge of order and administration
in the camp. Twenty-one thousand inmates experience their liberation and the
arrival of the U.S. Army. Between the beginning of 1945 and April 11, 13,969
people have died in Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Hundreds more perish in the
initial weeks following liberation as a consequence of the conditions of their
imprisonment. The number who have died on the evacuation (i) marches can only be
roughly estimated at between 12,000 and 15,000.
April 13
At an assembly of German and Austrian Social Democrats in which French, Polish,
Belgian, Czech, Danish and Dutch Socialists also take part, Hermann L. Brill
reads the "Manifesto of the Democratic Socialists of the Former Buchenwald
Concentration Camp." This is the most important programmatic document composed
in Buchenwald for the early post-war period.
April 16
By order of the American commander, one thousand citizens of Weimar are forced
to tour the camp, where the traces of mass death and horror are still clearly
visible.
April 19
International mourning ceremony for the victims of the camp. The survivors take
the vow later known as the "Oath of Buchenwald."
May to August
The survivors leave the camp in groups.
July/August
The camp is placed under the control of the Soviet military administration.
The so-called "Special Camp No. 2" is established.
Between July 1937 and April 1945,
altogether 250,000 persons from all countries
of Europe were imprisoned in Buchenwald. The number of victims is estimated
at approximately 56,000. Of these deaths, 34,375 are registered in the camp
records. The Soviet prisoners of war executed by shooting in the back of the
neck were not registered, nor were the Gestapo inmates executed in the Buchenwald
crematorium (estimated at 1,100), the persons who arrived dead in Buchenwald
on "evacuation (i) transports" from camps in the East in the spring of
1945 nor the victims of the "evacuation (i) marches" of April 1945 (estimated
at 12,000 to 15,000). Approximately 11,000 Jews were among the dead. |
