Kristallnacht: a nationwide pogrom, november 9-10, 1938

of the former Buchenwald Special Camp, 1950. The cast-iron camp gate with the SS inscription “Jedem das Seine” (“To Each His Own”) is concealed behind the board fence, a typical feature of the special camp.

The so-called Special Camp 2 Buchenwald was one of the altogether ten camps and three prisons located in the Soviet-occupied zone and used by the occupying power for the internment of Germans. The Soviet Security Service took charge of the still-existing structural facilities of Buchenwald Concentration Camp beginning from August 1945 and initially committed persons from the region. Primarily local functionaries of the NSDAP, but also adolescents and victims of denunciation were interned. All contact to the outside was prohibited, and no trials of an even remotely legal nature took place.

AERIAL VIEW OF BUCHENWALD CONCENTRATION CAMP FOLLOWING LIBERATION, END OF APRIL 1945. PHOTO: U.S. AIR RECONNAISSANCE. NATIONAL ARCHIVES WASHINGTON

In July 1937, the SS has the forest cleared on the Ettersberg near Weimar and builds a new concentration camp in its place. The purpose of the camp is to combat political opponents, persecute Jews, Sinti and Roma, and permanently ostracize “strangers to the community” – among them homosexuals, homeless persons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and ex-convicts – from the “body of the German people”. It is not long before Buchenwald has become a synonym for the Nazi concentration camp system.

After the war begins, people are deported to Buchenwald from all over Europe. Altogether more than 250,000 persons are ultimately imprisoned in the concentration camp on the Ettersberg and its 136 subcamps. The SS forces them to perform labour for the German armament industry.

By the end of the war, Buchenwald is the largest concentration camp in the German Reich. More than 56,000 die there as the result of torture, medical experiments and consumption. Over 8,000 Soviet prisoners of war are shot to death in a killing facility erected especially for that purpose. Members of the resistance form an underground organization in the camp in the effort to curb SS violence. The “Little Camp” nevertheless becomes the “hell of Buchenwald”. The enfeebled inmates continue to die by the thousands right up until the camp’s liberation.

When the Americans reach Buchenwald and its subcamps in April 1945, the supreme commander of the Allied Forces, Dwight D. Eisenhower, writes: "Nothing has ever shocked me as much as that sight."
Buchenwald:
History & Overview

Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps established by the Nazis. The camp was constructed in 1937 in a wooded area on the northern slopes of the Ettersberg, about five miles northwest of Weimar in east-central Germany. Before the Nazi takeover of power, Weimar was best known as the home of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who embodied the German enlightenment of the eighteenth century, and as the birthplace of German constitutional democracy in 1919, the Weimar Republic. During the Nazi regime, “Weimar” became associated with the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Buchenwald first opened for male prisoners in July 1937. Women were not part of the Buchenwald camp system until 1944. Prisoners were confined in the northern part of the camp in an area known as the main camp, while SS guard barracks and the camp administration compound were located in the southern part. The main camp was surrounded by an electrified barbed-wire fence, watchtowers, and a chain of sentries outfitted with automatically activated machine guns. The jail, also known as the Bunker, was located at the entrance to the main camp. The SS carried out shootings in the stables and hangings in the crematorium area.

Most of the early inmates at Buchenwald were political prisoners. However, in 1938, in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, German SS and police sent almost 10,000 Jews to Buchenwald where they were subjected to extraordinarily cruel treatment. 600 prisoners died between November 1938 and February 1939.

Beginning in 1941, a varied program of involuntary medical experiments on prisoners took place at Buchenwald in special barracks in the northern part of the main camp. Medical experiments involving viruses and contagious diseases such as typhus resulted in hundreds of deaths. In 1944, SS Dr. Carl Vaernet began a series of experiments that he claimed would “cure” homosexual inmates.

Also in 1944, a “special compound” for prominent German political prisoners was established near the camp administration building in Buchenwald. Ernst Thaelmann, chairman of the Communist Party of Germany before Hitler's rise to power in 1933, was murdered there in August 1944.

During World War II, the Buchenwald camp system became an important source of forced labor. The prisoner population expanded rapidly, reaching 110,000 by the end of 1945. Buchenwald prisoners were used in the German Equipment Works (DAW), an enterprise owned and operated by the SS; in camp workshops; and in the camp's stone quarry. In March 1943 the Gustloff firm opened a large munitions plant in the eastern part of the camp. A rail siding completed in 1943 connected the camp with the freight yards in Weimar, facilitating the shipment of war supplies.

Buchenwald administered at least 87 subcamps located across Germany, from Duesseldorf in the Rhineland to the border with the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in the east. Prisoners in the satellite camps were put to work mostly in armaments factories, in stone quarries, and on construction projects. Periodically, prisoners throughout the Buchenwald camp system underwent selection. The SS staff sent those too weak or disabled to continue working to the Bernburg or Sonnenstein euthanasia killing centers, where they were killed by gas. Other weakened prisoners were killed by phenol injections administered by the camp doctor.

As Soviet forces swept through Poland, the Germans evacuated thousands of concentration camp prisoners from western Poland. After long, brutal marches, more than 10,000 weak and exhausted prisoners from Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen, most of them Jews, arrived in Buchenwald in January 1945.

In early April 1945, as American forces approached the camp, the Germans began to evacuate some 28,000 prisoners from the main camp and an additional 10,000 prisoners from the subcamps of Buchenwald. About a third of these prisoners died from exhaustion en route or shortly after arrival, or were shot by the SS. Many lives were saved by the Buchenwald resistance, whose members held key administrative posts in the camp. They obstructed Nazi orders and delayed the evacuation.

On April 11, 1945, starved and emaciated prisoners stormed the watchtowers, seizing control of the camp. Later that afternoon,American forces entered Buchenwald. Soldiers from the Third U.S. Army division found more than 20,000 people in the camp, 4,000 of them Jews. Approximately 56,000 people were murdered in the Buchenwald camp system, the majority of them after 1942.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/buchenwald.html

The name Winston Churchill is recognised across the globe as a major political influence throughout World War 2. Born on 30 November 1874, Churchill was a British politician (a member of the Conservative party) and a statesman who was well known for his leadership and the now famous speeches that he made to the people of the United Kingdom during the events of World War 2. Serving as Prime Minister twice (1940–45 and 1951–55),

However, many people may not be aware that Churchill, a noted statesman and orator, was also an officer in the British Army, a writer, a historian and an artist.

With an impressive background, it could be said that Churchill was always destined for greatness – however, very few people could have predicted his epic rise from political ‘wilderness’ in the 1930s to eventually take the lead in warning the nation about the intentions of Nazi Germany and in the campaigning for rearmament.

Appointed First Lord of the Admiralty upon the initial outbreak of World War 2 – Churchill became Prime Minister following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on 10 May 1940. Over the years to follow, his steadfast refusal to consider surrender, defeat or compromise made him a formidable figure – and perhaps the perfect leader for the nation during the early part of World War 2, when Britain stood alone in its active opposition to Hitler and Nazi Germany plans.
Perhaps best noted for his morale-boosting radio broadcasts and speeches, Winston Churchill led Britain as Prime Minister until complete victory over Nazi Germany had been obtained.

Perhaps surprisingly, following Churchill’s pivotal role in World War 2, he was defeated in the 1945 election – however, he remained leader of the opposition for many years and continued to have a huge impact on world affairs. Then, in the General Election of 1951, Churchill held the office of Minister of Defence – a task that ran from October 1951 to January 1952 and in October 1951, he once again became Prime Minister. His second reign as Prime Minister ended in his resignation in April 1955.

After leaving his position as Prime Minister, Churchill spent considerably less time as an active member of parliament until he eventually stood down during the 1964 General Election. As a “back-bencher” and advancing in years, Churchill then spent the majority of his remaining years at his home in Hyde Park Gate, in London.

At this point, it was reported that Churchill suffered from depression as his mental and physical faculties began to suffer. However, one thing is for sure, Winston Churchill will remain a key figure in the events of World War 2 and his work over the years continues to be celebrated by many.