Buchenwald Concentration Camp - Soviet Special Camp 2

Soviet Special Camp 2

Further information: NKVD special camps

After liberation, between 1945 and 10 February 1950, the camp was administered by the Soviet Union and served as a Special Camp No. 2 of the NKVD. It was part of a "special camps" network operating since 1945, formally integrated into the Gulag in 1948. Another infamous "special camp" in Soviet occupied Germany was the former Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen (special camp No. 7).

Between August 1945 and the dissolution on 1 March 1950, 28,455 prisoners, including 1,000 women, were held by the Soviet Union at Buchenwald. A total of 7,113 people died in Special Camp Number 2, according to the Soviet records. They were buried in mass graves in the woods surrounding the camp. Their relatives did not receive any notification of their deaths. Prisoners comprised alleged opponents of Stalinism, and alleged members of the Nazi party or Nazi organization, others were imprisoned due to identity confusion and arbitrary arrests. The NKVD would not allow any contacts of prisoners to the outside world and did not attempt to determine the guilt of any individual prisoner.

On January 6, 1950, Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs Kruglov ordered all special camps, including Buchenwald, to be handed over to the East German Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Read more about this topic:  Buchenwald Concentration Camp

Famous quotes containing the words soviet, special and/or camp:

    “The tremendous outflow of intellectuals that formed such a prominent part of the general exodus from Soviet Russia in the first years of the Bolshevist Revolution seems today like the wanderings of some mythical tribe whose bird-signs and moon-signs I now retrieve from the desert dust.”
    —Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

    “Navarette, a Chinese missionary, agrees with Leibniz and says that “It is the special providence of God that the Chinese did not know what was done in Christendom; for if they did, there would be never a man among them, but would spit in our faces.””
    —Matthew Tindal (1653–1733)

    “Grandfather, you were the pillar of fire in front of the camp and now we are left in the camp alone, in the dark; and we are so cold and so sad.”
    —Noa Ben-Artzi Philosof (b. 1978)