Buchenwald Concentration Camp Opens

SS authorities open the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany. The first prisoners arrive on July 15, 1937.

Together with its many satellite camps, Buchenwald eventually becomes one of the largest concentration camps in Nazi Germany. At Buchenwald, the Nazi regime imprisons political opponents and dissenters; Jehovah’s Witnesses; people whom the Nazis label as “asocials” or “professional criminals”; Roma and Sinti (derogatorily called “Gypsies”); and others. In November 1938, in the aftermath of Kristallnacht (often referred to in English as the "Night of Broken Glass"), German police sent almost 10,000 Jewish men to Buchenwald where the camp authorities subjected them to extraordinarily cruel treatment and hundreds died.