Buchenwald concentration camp

Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil, following Dachau's opening just over four years earlier.Prisoners from all over Europe and the Soviet Union—Jews, Poles and other Slavs, the mentally ill and physically-disabled from birth defects, religious and political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Freemasons, Jehovah's Witnesses, criminals, homosexuals, and prisoners of war—worked primarily as forced labor in local armaments factories. From 1945 to 1950, the camp was used by the Soviet occupation authorities as an internment camp, known as NKVD special camp number 2.Today the remains of Buchenwald serve as a memorial and permanent exhibition and museum.HistoryThe SS constructed Buchenwald concentration camp in 1937. The camp was liberated by the U.S Army on 11 April 1945. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied Forces, later wrote, "Nothing has ever shocked me as much as that sight." Between 1945 and 1950, it was used by the Soviet Union as an NKVD special camp for Nazi prisoners. On January 6, 1950, the Soviet authorities handed over the Buchenwald camp to the East German Ministry of Internal Affairs.