Editing Buchenwald concentration camp (section)

==Victims==

===Causes of death===
[[File:Buchenwald Executions 13143.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.2|On 26 April 1942, twenty Polish prisoners were hanged in retaliation for the killing of a German overseer. Pictured awaiting execution.]]

A primary cause of death was illness due to harsh camp conditions. Like all concentration camps, prisoners at Buchenwald were deliberately kept in a state of [[starvation]], many while performing [[Forced labor in Nazi concentration camps|grueling forced labor]],<ref name="Quarry">{{cite web |title=Quarry |url=https://www.buchenwald.de/en/geschichte/historischer-ort/konzentrationslager/steinbruch |website=Buchenwald Memorial}}</ref> making consequent illnesses prevalent. Malnourished and suffering from disease, many were literally "worked to death" under the ''Vernichtung durch Arbeit'' policy ([[extermination through labor]]), as inmates only had the choice between slave labor or inevitable execution. Many inmates were killed by [[Nazi human experimentation|human experimentation]] or fell victim to arbitrary acts perpetrated by the SS guards. Other prisoners were simply murdered,<ref name="Quarry"/> primarily by shooting and hanging. As part of [[Action 14f13]], prisoners deemed too weak or sick to work were sent to [[Sonnenstein Killing Facility]], where they were murdered with [[carbon monoxide]] gas.

[[Martin Sommer|Walter Gerhard Martin Sommer]] was an SS-''[[Hauptscharführer]]'' who served as a guard at the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald. Known as the "Hangman of Buchenwald", he was considered a depraved sadist who reportedly ordered [[Otto Neururer]] and [[Mathias Spannlang|Mathias Spanlang]], two Austrian priests, to be [[Cross of St. Peter|crucified upside-down]]. Sommer was especially infamous for hanging prisoners from trees by their wrists, which had been tied behind their backs (a torture technique known as [[strappado]]) in the "singing forest", so named because of the screams which emanated from this wooded area.<ref>{{cite book |title=The resistance in Austria, 1938–1945|first=Radomír|last=Luža|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|year=1984|isbn=0-8166-1226-9}}</ref>{{sfn|Stein|2005|p=302}}

[[Summary execution]]s of Soviet POWs were also carried out at Buchenwald. At least 1,000 men were selected in 1941–42 by a task force of three [[Dresden]] [[Gestapo]] officers and sent to the camp for immediate liquidation by a gunshot to the back of the neck, the infamous ''Genickschuss''.

The camp was also a site of large-scale trials for [[vaccine]]s against [[Typhus|epidemic typhus]] in 1942 and 1943. In all 729 inmates were used as test subjects, of whom 154 died.{{sfn|Spitz|2005|p=199}} Other "experimentation" occurred at Buchenwald on a smaller scale. One such experiment aimed at determining the precise fatal dose of a poison of the [[alkaloid]] group; according to the testimony of one doctor, four Soviet POWs were administered the poison, and when it proved not to be fatal they were "strangled in the crematorium" and subsequently "dissected".{{sfn|Spitz|2005|pp=209–210}} Among various other experiments was one which, in order to test the effectiveness of a balm for wounds from [[incendiary bomb]]s, involved inflicting "very severe" [[white phosphorus]] burns on inmates.{{sfn|Spitz|2005|pp=213–214}} When challenged at trial over the nature of this testing, and particularly over the fact that the testing was designed in some cases to cause death and only to measure the time which elapsed until death was caused, one Nazi doctor's defence was that, although a doctor, he was a "legally appointed executioner".{{sfn|Spitz|2005|p=209}}

===Number of deaths===
{{Main|Number of deaths in Buchenwald}}
[[File:German atrocities. Germany, Poland &amp; Czechoslovakia - NARA - 292596.jpg|thumb|Corpses found in the camp after liberation]]

The SS left behind accounts of the number of prisoners and people coming to and leaving the camp, categorizing those leaving them by release, transfer, or death. These accounts are one of the sources of estimates for the number of deaths in Buchenwald. According to SS documents, 33,462 died. These documents were not, however, necessarily accurate: Among those executed before 1944, many were listed as "transferred to the Gestapo". Furthermore, from 1941, Soviet POWs were executed in mass killings. Arriving prisoners selected for execution were not entered into the camp register and therefore were not among the 33,462 dead listed.{{sfn|Bartel|1961|p=64, lines 12–23}}

One former Buchenwald prisoner, Armin Walter, calculated the number of executions by the number of shootings in the spine at the base of the head. His job at Buchenwald was to set up and care for a radio installation at the facility where people were executed; he counted the numbers, which arrived by telex, and hid the information. He says that 8,483 Soviet prisoners of war were shot in this manner.<ref>Bartel 1961, p. 203, lines 18–38.</ref>

According to the same source, the total [[Number of deaths in Buchenwald|number of deaths at Buchenwald]] is estimated at 56,545. This number is the sum of:
* Deaths according to material left behind by the SS: 33,462<ref>Includes male deaths in satellite camps.</ref>
* Executions by shooting: 8,483
* Executions by hanging (estimate): 1,100
* Deaths during<!--NOT "at"--> evacuation transports (estimate): 13,500<ref>{{harvtxt|Bartel|1961|loc=p. 87, line 17–18}} reports that somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 prisoners died on evacuation transports in March and April 1945.</ref>

This total (56,545) corresponds to a death rate of 24 percent, assuming that the number of persons passing through the camp according to documents left by the SS, 240,000 prisoners, is accurate.<ref>Bartel 1960, p. 87, line 8.</ref>