Opening Hours Practical Info What is where? Apps Public Tours further language offers Accessibility FAQ

Liberation

A dozen prisoners armed with rifles surround SS men sitting in a field
Liberated inmates guarding captured SS men around the camp. Photo: Paul Bodot, 11 April 1945. ©Association Française Buchenwald-Dora, Paris

Beginning in the morning of April 11, 1945, armoured divisions of the Third U.S. Army advanced towards the east from the area near Gotha. At 10:00 am, all SS men were ordered to leave the camp. The International Camp Committee mobilized its resistance fighters and began to distribute hidden weapons. Around noon, the commanding SS officers fled. The guards abandoned the watchtowers. Around 2:30 pm the tanks of the Fourth Armoured Division rolled through the SS complex without stopping. The SS fled. Armed inmates took control of the camp and overpowered the last remaining SS soldiers. By 4:00 pm they had taken control of the camp. Buchenwald was freed from within and without. About one hour later, scouts from the Fourth and Sixth Armoured Divisions were the first American soldiers to reach the camp. 21,000 inmates were liberated on that day, among them some 900 children and youth.

Since the camp was founded in July 1937, more than a quarter of a million people from over 50 countries had been deported to Buchenwald concentration camp or one of its satellite camps: 249,570 men and boys and 28,230 women and girls aged between two and 86. Around 56,000 of them did not survive the deportation to Buchenwald concentration camp.


var _paq = window._paq = window._paq || []; /* tracker methods like "setCustomDimension" should be called before "trackPageView" */ _paq.push(['trackPageView']); _paq.push(['enableLinkTracking']); (function() { var u="https://matomo.buchenwald.de/"; _paq.push(['setTrackerUrl', u+'matomo.php']); _paq.push(['setSiteId', '1']); var d=document, g=d.createElement('script'), s=d.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; g.async=true; g.src=u+'matomo.js'; s.parentNode.insertBefore(g,s); })();