Buchenwald concentration camp

11 April 1945: the SS leaves

As U.S. armored units approached the Ettersberg near Weimar on 11 April 1945, the SS command ordered its personnel to leave Buchenwald, and most guards abandoned the camp around midday.

Tanks of the U.S. 4th Armored Division's 37th Tank Battalion defeated the remaining SS defences and passed through the SS area during the afternoon.

The first American tanks passed the camp itself without stopping.

Taken from inside

Fearing a last-minute massacre, the organised prisoner underground had distributed hidden weapons. Armed resistance groups occupied the gate and watchtowers, raised a white flag, took control of the camp and captured 76 SS personnel.

At 3:15 p.m. the prisoner camp senior, Hans Eiden, used the loudspeaker to announce that the SS had fled and that the prisoners were free.

Approximately 21,000 left alive

Reconnaissance troops from the U.S. 4th and 6th Armored Divisions entered later that afternoon and encountered approximately 21,000 surviving prisoners, more than 900 of them children and adolescents. The 6th Armored Division, part of Patton's Third Army, is the U.S. Army's recognised liberating unit.

The Buchenwald Memorial describes the liberation as coming "from outside and inside": U.S. armour defeated the remaining SS forces while armed prisoners seized the camp itself.

The prisoner committee administered the camp before transferring control to the U.S. Army two days later, and hundreds of weakened survivors died after 11 April.