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Special Camp for Jewish and Polish Inmates

A special fenced-off area on the eastern edge of roll call square was the site of the first mass murder at Buchenwald in the winter of 1939/40, which was perpetrated through targeted neglect.

A group of prisoners in civilian clothes is standing on the roll call square. In front of them a uniformed man. Photo from front left.
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A group of Polish prisoners in civilian clothes stands on the roll call square, 1939. Photo: Identification service of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

©United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington
A group of Polish prisoners in civilian clothes is standing on the roll call square. They are mainly older men. Photo from front center right.
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A group of Polish prisoners in civilian clothes stands on the roll call square, 1939. Photo: Identification service of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

©United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington
Gray memorial stone with the inscription: "In October 1939, 2098 Polish patriots came to this special camp. 1650 died in 5 months. 123 were locked in a barbed wire cage where they froze to death and starved to death after 12 days. They suffered and died for the freedom of Poland." In German, Polish, and Russian. There is a small lantern in front of the stone.
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The memorial stone for the Polish Jewish special camp from 1939/40 is now near the camp gate and the crematorium, 2022. Photo: Lukas Severin Damm.

©Buchenwald Memorial

In early October 1939, the SS had a one-hundred-by-two-hundred-metre area fenced off with barbed wire next to roll call square. A wooden barracks and four large tents were set up as housing, and a stone-lined ditch was constructed as a latrine. Into this specially designated zone, the SS crammed over 1000 Jews from Vienna and 2000 Poles who had been arrested as potential resistance fighters. After an outbreak of dysentery, the SS shortened food rations and largely left these inmates to themselves. By the time this area was dismantled in February 1940, 1,000 men had died in the special camp. Most were Jews from Vienna. Directly next to the special camp, the SS has had previously packed 109 Polish inmates from the region surrounding Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) into a makeshift jumble of barbed wire and had allowed them to starve and freeze in front of everyone's eyes.

The numerous mortalities caused the camp leadership to enforce the construction of a camp crematorium next to roll call square.

A memorial stone erected in 1954 commemorates the special camp of 1939/1940 in German, Polish, and Russian.

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