“To Each His Own”: The camp gate at Buchenwald taken after liberation. The Buchenwald concentration camp was established at the beginning of July 1937 on the climatically harsh north slope of the 478-meter-high (1,568-feet-high) Ettersberg, a hill north of the city of Weimar. The camp was to hold up to 8,000 prisoners, mostly from central Germany (Thuringia, Hessen, the Ruhr, and parts of Saxony), and was to replace several camps such as Bad Sulza, Sachsenburg, and Lichtenburg, which were in the process of being dissolved. The immediate reason for the establishment of the camp just north of Weimar was the clay to be found in the area, which could be used for the manufacture of bricks. The first prisoners arrived at the camp on July 15, 1937. They were confronted with very difficult conditions: they had to clear the forest and construct the barracks and other buildings without excavators, cranes, tip carts, or tractors. These conditions, together with the completely inadequate ration...