Above: Buchenwald, 11 April 1945. American soldiers of the U.S. 9th Armored Infantry Battalion, from the 6th Armored Division, part of the U.S. Third Army, march into Buchenwald upon liberation of the camp. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Provenance: Virginia Longest. Source Record ID: Collections: 1992.9. Click to expand.

Above: Survivors of Buchenwald scrounge for food after liberation. The original caption reads, "A group of prisoners preparing extra nourishment. They are given black bread and horse meat hash from the central mess." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Provenance: Lee T. Stinchfield. Click to expand.

During the war's last months in 1945, camp prisoners were either evacuated to other locations by their German and SS captors, or shot, or merely left abandoned locked in their disease- and death-ridden prisons.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum writes that "As Soviet forces entered German-occupied Poland, the Germans evacuated thousands of prisoners from Nazi German concentration camps. After long, brutal marches, more than 10,000 weak and exhausted prisoners from Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen, most of them Jews, arrived in Buchenwald in January 1945. By February, the number of prisoners in Buchenwald reached 112,000.

Between July 1937 and April 1945, the SS imprisoned some 250,000 persons from all countries of Europe in Buchenwald. Exact mortality figures for the Buchenwald site can only be estimated, as camp authorities never registered a significant number of the prisoners. The SS murdered at least 56,000 male prisoners in the Buchenwald camp system. Some 11,000 of them were Jews." (Source: "Buchenwald." Holocaust Encyclopedia | United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Accessed December 25, 2022. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/buchenwald.)

Above: Buchenwald concenration camp, Germany, April 1945. A few young survivors. This photograph was taken soon after liberation showing young camp survivors from Buchenwald's "Children's Block 66," a special barracks for children. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Provenance: Lee T. Stinchfield. Click to expand.

Although precise numbers will never be known, the Buchenwald concentration camp saw 56,000 inmate deaths. This number was the third-most during the Holocaust behind Mauthausen which had approximately 90,000 and Auschwitz saw at least 1.1M murdered. (Wachsmann, 2015. p. 628)

Multimedia: Video, Web, Photo, and Discussion
Video: Liberating Buchenwald | Websites: Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Center - Buchenwald | Buchenwald Visitor Site Germany |  United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | Erwin Leydekkers' Photo Albums: The Holocaust

Recommended further reading
In 2015 Farrar, Straus and Giroux published KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, one of the latest and most comprehensive works on concentration camps during the Holocaust. The author, Nikolaus Wachsmann, professor of modern European history at Birkbeck College, University of London, does an excellent job of placing the plight of camp inmates and victims at Buchenwald (and other camps) in overall context of the War. Purchase this work on Amazon