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An Overview of Buchenwald Concentration Camp

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An Overview of Buchenwald Concentration Camp
Jacob Holstein
4/23/10 Pd: 6
Buchenwald

Buchenwald was a concentration camp during the holocaust. It was not cool. People died. Yup. Sucks doesn’t it? MmmmHmmm. Well I’m bored. Got to finish this paper though. So I’ll keep writing. About Buchenwald. And stuff relating to……Buchenwald. There was some stuff that happened at Buchenwald. But I can’t remember anything about it. I did some research and now I have some info on the topic. With all of its outercamps, Buchenwald was one of the biggest concentration camps inside the German borders. The camp was built in 1937 in a forest area on the northern hills of the Ettersberg, about five miles northwest of Weimar. SS authorities opened Buchenwald for men in July 1937. Women were not part of Buchenwald until late 1943 or early 1944. Prisoners were kept in the northern part known as the main camp, while SS barracks and the camp administration building were positioned in the southern part. An electric barbed wire fence, guardtowers, and a line of guards with machine guns, surrounded the main camp.The detention area was at the entry way to the main camp. The SS often shot in-mates in the stables and hanged other prisoners at the crematorium. Most of the earlier prisoners at Buchenwald were political leaders. However, in 1938, German SS and police sent almost 10,000 Jews to Buchenwald where the camp authorities treated them very cruelly upon arrival. 255 of them died as a result of their torture when they first came to the camp. Jews and political prisoners were not the only Buchenwald prisoners, although the “politicals,” given their long-term presence at the site, helped with the structure of the prisoner system. The SS also housed criminals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, and military deserters at Buchenwald. Buchenwald was one of the only concentration camps that held “work-shy” individuals, people who the regime identified as not being able too, or wouldn’t, find work. In the later in the

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