Buchenwald / Nazi Remembrance | Remembering subcamps of the concentration camp: “Buchenwald was everywhere”

Steles on the grounds of the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial, which remind us of the interconnectedness of the labor and extermination camps during the time of the Nazi dictatorship Photo: AFP/Jens Schlueter Anyone who hears the word Buchenwald usually first thinks of the former concentration camp on the Ettersberg near Weimar. But an association that wants to keep the memory of the atrocities committed there alive now wants to raise even greater awareness that there was also a huge system of satellite camps. Nowadays, their locations are usually no longer remembered. The association therefore had the website of the “Buchenwald was everywhere” project revised and wants to make a contribution to strengthening the memory of such subcamps. The current version of this page shows "that perpetrator locations are disappearing, that they are being built over and being forgotten," said Kolja Lohf, who redesigned it for the Buchenwald support association, on Friday at its presentation in Weimar. The website has recently been online.

The project also shows that the power of those who brought death, torture, hunger and disease to tens of thousands of people from Ettersberg has long since reached not only in what is now Germany, but even as far as France, Belgium and Poland. The henchmen of the Nazi regime, who worked out of the Buchenwald concentration camp, not only determined life and death on the grounds of the main camp. They also had an influence on what happened in the approximately 140 satellite camps.

And there were even Buchenwald external locations in other European countries. In Kortemark in Belgium, for example. Or in Doullens in France and in what was then Lauenburg, today's Lebork in Poland. There were also locations in Bad Arolsen, Lippstadt and Rothenburg - all three cities are outside Thuringia. Few people today are likely to be aware of how complex the system of Buchenwald subcamps was. The main camp was built by prisoners under the supervision of the SS from 1937 onwards.

»The project shows that perpetrator sites are disappearing, that they are being built over and are being forgotten.«

According to the support association's research, there are only 48 former locations of subcamps that commemorate the crimes committed there in the form of plaques or memorials. Dedicated individuals often take care of these places. In many other cases, however, there is no longer any reminder of it. On the newly designed website you can find detailed information about all known locations, which also included more than 20 women's camps such as those in Duderstadt, Aschersleben and Stadtallendorf.

There were often economic motives for establishing the satellite camps. The prisoners there often had to do forced labor for the arms industry under the worst conditions. "In almost all cases, it was the case that the companies came to the SS - and not the other way around," says the chairman of the board of the support association, János Varga. The Buchenwald subcamp system is also proof that the horror of the camps could not have gone unnoticed by many Germans during the time of Nazi rule. Because the prisoners were usually housed in the immediate vicinity of the companies where they had to work, says Varga. Sometimes they also slept on the respective factory premises. "But there are also cases in which the SS rented the local gym, for example."

The project and the redesign of the website should also help to support the work of those who worked locally to remember the subcamps during times of the right-wing shift, said Varga. It should help to connect committed people, make them more visible and show them that they are not alone.

Other media have corporations or billionaires behind them. We have the nd.Genossenschaft and readers like you. That makes us independent and that’s exactly how we want to remain. But it also means: without you the calculation won't work. We need 300,000 euros by the end of the year.

You can donate directly here, one-time or regularly, so that nd stays.