About a third of these prisoners died from exhaustion en route or shortly after arrival, or were shot by the SS. The underground resistance organization in Buchenwald, whose members held key administrative posts in the camp, saved many lives. They obstructed Nazi orders and delayed the evacuation. On April 11, , in expectation of liberation, starved and emaciated prisoners stormed the watchtowers, seizing control of the camp. However, it is estimated that between 12, and 15, died during the marches from the camp.
The US Army liberated 21, prisoners from Buchenwald. Explore our other dates to remember. Now, at least, he will know what he is fighting against.
Evidence of what they were fighting against struck like an avalanche in the following days. Buchenwald was the first of the major concentration camps of Greater Germany to be liberated. Established in on the northern side of the Ettersberg, a hilly, forested area, it was only four miles northwest of the famed Thuringian city of Weimar, a locale associated with the great German writers Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller.
During my visit to Buchenwald in June , I, like so many others, was amazed by the beauty of the surrounding region and the heritage of humanism linked to Weimar. And, yet, a short distance away stood a SS-run concentration camp where 56, men, women, and children were murdered or died from maltreatment, exposure, starvation, or illness. Originally planned to primarily isolate political opponents from German society, the Nazis deported some 10, Jews to Buchenwald after Kristallnacht in November Once war began, large numbers of Polish and Soviet POWs, resistance fighters from many parts of Europe, and forced laborers swelled the ranks of the Buchenwald.
As the Red Army drove deeper into Poland in the winter of , inmates from Auschwitz-Birkenau were transported to the camp. Before the Americans closed in on the area, overcrowding, disease, and food shortages created a state of emergency among the prisoners. A massive evacuation effort by the SS preceded the arrival of the Americans on April They left behind some 21, human beings.
About 4, were Jews and of them children. Listening clandestinely to radio reports, inmates realized the Americans were close. They had done everything they could do to hinder the evacuation. When Commandant Hermann Pister and the last of the SS fled late in the morning of the 11th, the prisoners distributed weapons long hidden from the Germans including rifles, machine guns, and hand grenades and took control of the watchtowers.
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