Cities & Culture

Buchenwald Memorial Site Weimar

Buchenwald near Weimar is the largest concentration camp memorial site in Germany. Its exhibitions, archive and library make it a powerful testimony to the Nazi atrocities.

The SS ran Buchenwald concentration camp on Ettersberg hill between 1937 and 1945, where more than a quarter of a million people from 50 countries were held prisoner in over 130 external camps. Over 56,000 of them, including 11,000 Jews, were murdered by the SS or died as a result of exhaustion, hunger, torture or medical experimentation. From August 1945 to 1950, the Soviet occupying forces used the site as a detention centre. After 1990, new research was conducted into the history of the site, which was then turned into a memorial.

The permanent exhibition, entitled "Buchenwald. Ostracism and Violence 1937 to 1945", was created with the help of survivors, historians, museologists and history education specialists. Biographies, testimonies and case studies portray the reality of life at Buchenwald concentration camp and shed light on the political and social factors that led to it being created in the first place and then accepted. Opening times: April to October: Tuesday to Sunday 10 am–6 pm, November to March: Tuesday to Sunday 10 am–4 pm

Explore the surroundings