Transports to the Soviet Union

Transports of Special Camp internees to the Soviet Union remained the exception. A total of around 5,000 internees were taken to the Soviet Union as labourers.

At the end of 1946, the heads of the Special Camps were instructed to select 27,000 inmates for reconstruction work in the Soviet Union. Due to the poor health of the Special Camp prisoners, however, only about one-fifth of them were considered fit for work. Just under 1,100 male prisoners who were fit for work were sent by train from Buchenwald to Karaganda (Kazakhstan) on February 8, 1947. The journey was arduous. Some prisoners fell ill and were sent back to the Special Camps in the Soviet Occupation Zone.

In the Soviet labour camps, the prisoners were mainly tasked with constructing roads and building houses. The working and living conditions were extremely harsh. By 1950, most of the prisoners had returned to Germany. Some received a sentence in Karaganda and were transferred to Gulag labour camps.

Sketch of the route from Buchenwald to Karaganda, drawn by Hans Wagner, 1996. ©Buchenwald Memorial

“Equipped” with wooden bowls and wooden spoons, we were then led to the camp's railway station. Freight cars were waiting there. They were equipped with double-decker wooden bunks for 48 people and a potbelly stove. The narrow window hatches of the cars were secured with barbed wire from the outside. For toilet purposes, a narrow wooden chute that could be closed with a wooden slider was installed next to the car door."

Report by two former internees, Rudolf Butters and Herwarth Metzel, on their transport to Karaganda, 2004.

(Rudolf Butters und Herwarth Metzel, Jedem das Seine. Von Buchenwald nach Kasachstan – ein Tatsachenbericht, Selb-Oberweißenbach 2004)

Pelzmütze von Günther Ochs, um 1947
Fur hat of Günther Ochs, arund 1947. ©Buchenwald Memorial

The prisoners were given new clothes for their transport to the Soviet Union, including fur hats. These gave the transport its nickname: the “Fur Hat Transport.”

The Kazakh steppe in the region of Karaganda, 1980s. ©Buchenwald Memorial

The former prisoner Rolf Hohlfeld, who was transferred from Buchenwald to Karaganda in 1947, traveled to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. During his trip, he visited the Karaganda region and photographed his surroundings.