The website lists 141 subcamps of the Buchenwald concentration camp. This number corresponds to the current state of research. Locations where prisoners were forced to work but where no on-site accommodation has been documented to date have not been included.
Characterised by Improvisation
No two subcamps were alike. They differed in size, occupancy, and duration of existence, as well as in terms of their location, accommodation, guard personnel, internal structure, living conditions, and forced labor. There were subcamps with fewer than ten prisoners and some with several thousand. Some existed for only a few weeks, others for months or years.
The characteristic feature of many subcamps was improvisation. Sometimes the SS crammed prisoners into factory halls, restaurants, school buildings, underground tunnels, or underground bunkers. Most subcamps were located in or on the outskirts of cities or small towns and thus in the midst of German society.
The Buchenwald camp administration ran most of the subcamps under code names, such as “Hans” for the subcamp in Hadmersleben, ‘Dora’ in Nordhausen, or ‘S 3’ for the camp complex near Ohrdruf.
The Buchenwald Subcamp System
Up until 1942, the SS established only a few subcamps. As a rule, external work details returned to the main camp in the evening after work. Exceptions were made only for SS purposes, such as construction work or services at SS locations. The first subcamps were established in 1939 in the vicinity of the main camp in Berlstedt and Tonndorf, with more following suit in 1940/41, now also at further distances. Most of these early camps existed only for a short time and held less than one hundred prisoners.
The establishment of SS construction brigades in the fall of 1942 marked the transition to the establishment of larger subcamps. The camp of SS Construction Brigade III in Cologne-Deutz became the starting point for the establishment of further subcamps in the cities of the Rhineland and Ruhr region, which had been severely affected by airborne warfare.
Most of the subcamps were established from 1943 onwards for the German armaments industry. The SS now focused the forced labor of the prisoners entirely on the requirements of the war economy. Countless companies and construction teams requested prisoners from the SS. By the end of 1943, there were already around a dozen subcamps. The following year saw a wave of new subcamps being established. In the second half of 1944 alone, over 70 new subcamps were set up. By mid-August 1944, the majority of all Buchenwald prisoners were in subcamps.
In September 1944, the Buchenwald concentration camp took over the administration of a number of subcamps belonging to the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women. This meant that, for the first time, large numbers of women were among the prisoners of Buchenwald concentration camp. By the spring of 1945, the number of women's subcamps had risen to 27. There, more than 28,000 women and girls were forced to work for German armaments companies.
In late October 1944, the SS also separated the Dora subcamp near Nordhausen and other subcamps in the southern Harz Mountains from the administration of the Buchenwald concentration camp and made them into the independent Mittelbau concentration camp. Despite this separation, the number of subcamps continued to grow. The Buchenwald subcamp system reached its widest scope in February/March 1945, when 89 men's and women's subcamps existed simultaneously. In total, the subcamps of the Buchenwald concentration camp stretched from the Rhine and Ruhr rivers in the west to the Elbe River in the east, covering nine of today's federal states. At times, they even extended as far as France, Belgium, and Poland. It was a camp cosmos that the SS had established solely for the purpose of forced labor.
