Little Camp - Buchenwald Memorial

Simon Toncman standing in front on the right, undressed. He holds a jacket in front of the lower half of his body. To the left, other prisoners are lying in shelf-like scaffolding. All are looking into the camera. The men are, as far as can be seen, completely emaciated. Some are wrapped in thin blankets and use metal bowls as headrests. — 1/3

Liberated prisoners in Block 56 of the Buchenwald Small Camp, 1945. Photo: Harry Miller, U.S. Signal Corps. ©National Archives, Washington.

Prisoners of the Small Camp sit and stand close together in front of the open gate of a horse stable barrack. This is Block 51. Behind it, the stone buildings of Blocks 46 and 41. — 2/3

Photo taken secretly in the small camp. Blocks 46 and 41 of the main camp can be seen in the background of the stable barracks (Block 51), June 1944. Photo: Georges Angéli.

©Buchenwald Memorial

Remains of eating utensils displayed in a metal cage. Smaller finds like cups etc. were placed on the cage. — 3/3

Recent findings near the site of the little camp, 2022. Photo: Lukas Severin Damm.

©Buchenwald Memorial

Cordoned off from the main camp, this zone included twelve windowless horse stalls originally planned for the Wehrmacht, which lacked sanitary facilities. Instead of beds there were simply four-level, shelf-like boxes constructed from raw wood. Each of these stalls was originally intended for about 50 horses. In the Little Camp, however, about one thousand, and sometimes even two thousand people had to stay here. In 1944, the SS had five additional tents erected.

The Little Camp originally served the purpose of setting inmates apart for forced labour in the subcamps of Buchenwald. In early 1945 it became an overcrowded place, where people wasted away and died. In less than one hundred days, some six thousand people died here before the camp was liberated. Most of them were Jewish inmates who had been brought to Buchenwald with transports from Auschwitz and Groß-Rosen.

The remains of paths and foundations that have now again been made visible bear testimony to how improvised and primitive the living conditions were in the Little Camp.