Little Camp (Buchenwald Concentration Camp)

Little Camp (Buchenwald Concentration Camp). . , On this site was the infamous “Little Camp”. Separated by only a barbed-wire fence from the Main camp, its inmates were subjected to the greatest suffering of all those at Buchenwald. Begun in late 1942, its first inmates were Polish, Russian, French and Dutch prisoners. By January 1945, the Little Camp became known as the Jewish Camp because most of its prisoners were Jews, including children whose parents had been murdered by the Nazis. Most of the Jews were transferred here from Auschwitz and other concentration camps in Eastern Europe. In 1945 a large percentage of the deaths at Buchenwald occurred I the Little Camp, which imprisoned as many as 20,000 inmates at a time. Conditions were barbaric. Windowless stables with dirt floors intended to house 50 horses at times contained nearly 2,000 people. There was no running water, no sanitation, and virtually no heat in the stables. Some inmates lived in tents. Thick mud was everywhere. Rations were only a percentage of those given inmates in the Main Camp. Drinking water was often not provided. With only one latrine, many inmates were forced to use their food bowls as night latrines. By 1945, an every-present stench of human excrement pervaded the site. Corpses lay about in the open as the death toll increased daily.The Little Camp was a place of deepest despair for those left there to be forgotten and to die from cold, starvation, dehydration, debilitating labour, torture and rampant epidemics of diseases that went untreated. In the last days before liberation more than half of those selected for death marches and railway transports that resulted in tens of thousand of deaths were inmates from the Little Camp. After liberation, although, the main camp was preserved and various memorial established, the Little Camp was totally obliterated and allowed to be overgrown with trees and brush. The site was neglected by the East German authorities until 1990. Some of the survivors settled in the United States; they and their descendants have supported the create of this memorial., (French and German marker text not transcribed)