WEIMAR, Germany – Some details about the Buchenwald concentration camp that President Barack Obama visited Friday. The president’s great-uncle, Charlie Payne, helped liberate the nearby Ohrdurf subcamp in 1945.
Approximately 250,000 prisoners were held at Buchenwald from its opening in July 1937 to its liberation in April 1945. An estimated 56,000 people were killed, including approximately 11,000 Jews.
The wrought-iron gate to the camp bears the sign “Jedem das Seine,” German for “To each his own.”
Buchenwald was originally intended to house a variety of groups, including people in the anti-Nazi resistance, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and ex-convicts. But after the anti-Jewish pogrom on Nov. 9, 1938 – known as “Kristallnacht” or “The Night of Broken Glass” – the camp also was used to hold thousands of Jews.
The camp was liberated by U.S. forces on April 11, 1945.
After the war, from 1945 to 1950, occupying Soviet forces used the camp to hold political prisoners.
In 1958 the East German government established the National Buchenwald Memorial. After German reunification in 1990 it was revised to reflect Buchenwald’s use as both a Nazi concentration camp and Soviet internment camp.