Additional information
Literature
The catalogue to the permanent historical exhibition "Das sowjetische Speziallager Nr. 2 1945–1950" as well as an annotated selection of further publications can be found here.
Gate building
of the former Buchenwald Special Camp, 1950. The cast-iron camp gate with the SS inscription “Jedem das Seine” (“To Each His Own”) is concealed behind the board fence, a typical feature of the special camp.
Map of Soviet Special Camp No. 2,
drawn after an original.
Soviet Special Camp No. 2 1945-1950
The so-called Special Camp 2 Buchenwald was one of the altogether ten camps and three prisons located in the Soviet-occupied zone and used by the occupying power for the internment of Germans. The Soviet Security Service took charge of the still-existing structural facilities of Buchenwald Concentration Camp beginning from August 1945 and initially committed persons from the region. Primarily local functionaries of the NSDAP, but also adolescents and victims of denunciation were interned. All contact to the outside was prohibited, and no trials of an even remotely legal nature took place.
In the winter of 1946-47 more than 7,000 of the 28,000 inmates died as a result of hunger-related diseases. The camp was dissolved by the Soviets in February 1950, shortly after the founding of the GDR.
