Buchenwald

Buchenwald concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager or 'KZ' Buchenwald) was a Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg (Etter Mountain) near Weimar, Thuringia, Germany (at the time, Nazi Germany), in July 1937, and one of the largest such camps on German soil.

Camp prisoners worked primarily as forced labour in local armament factories. Inmates were Jews, political prisoners, homosexuals, Roma people, Jehovah's Witnesses, Sinti, religious prisoners, criminals, and prisoners of war (POWs) [1]. Up to 1942 the majority of the political prisoners consisted of communists, later the proportion of other political prisoners increased considerably. Among the prisoners were also writers, doctors, artists, former nobility, and an Italian Princess. They came from countries as varied as Russia, Poland, France, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Spanish Republic, Latvia and Italy. Most of the political prisoners from the occupied countries were people of the resistance.

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