Oath of Buchenwald:

“The destruction of Nazism, down to its roots, is our motto. To build a new world of peace and freedom is our ideal.”

~ Joint Pledge, Memorial Service for the dead of Buchenwald, April 19, 1945

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From its foundation in July 1937 up until April 11th, 1945 an estimated total of almost 280,000 prisoners were incarcerated or funneled through the concentration camp of Buchenwald, the youngest being only two and a half years old.1

Subjected to forced labor, torture, medical experiments, beatings, malnutrition, lethal injections and execution by shooting, 56,545 of these prisoners would not survive these horrors, about 1,600 of them adolescents and children.1

As US forces advanced, from April 7th to April 10th, 1945, the SS began sending 28,000 prisoners from the main camp and several thousands from the subcamps on death marches.2

With the advance of the 6th Armored Division of the Third United Stats Army on April 11th, 1945, the SS guards fled and the inmates were finally able to take control of the camp and the watch towers.2

Only about 21,000 prisoners lived to see their liberation.2

The death toll is not final.

This project was made possible thanks to the close collaboration with the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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Sources: 1 Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation; 2 USHMM - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum