July 15: Buchenwald

The Buchenwald (beechwood) concentration camp was established on this date in 1937, near the home of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in east-central Germany, and received its first 300 prisoners the next day. Buchenwald grew into one of the largest camps within Germany’s borders and incarcerated at least 250,000 people from all over Europe in the course of eight years, of whom more than 56,000 were murdered, including 11,000 Jews. It was a labor camp, not an extermination camp, but inmates were worked to death, summarily executed, and experimented upon by Nazi doctors. Eighty-eight subcamps within Germany, including “euthenasia” facilities, were under Buchenwald’s supervision. Among its prisoners were Jews, political activists, prisoners of war (including Americans), Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and “asocials,” all of whom were identified by distinctive clothing patches. There was a strong underground resistance organization in Buchenwald, with members in key administrative posts, which helped many prisoners avert death.

“In Buchenwald, human tattooed skin was placed in Block 2 . . . called the ‘pathological block.’ . . . They skinned prisoners, then they tanned the skin. . . . Human skin was also used to make book covers.” —Nuremberg Trial testimony

Edward R. Murrow’s report on the Liberation of Buchenwald, April 16, 1945