On this day in 1937, the Buchenwald concentration camp began its operations.Located just five miles northwest of Weimar, Germany on Ettersberg Hill, Buchenwald served as one of its largest within Germany’s pre-World War II borders. Prior to the camp’s construction, it had been the home of the Weimar Republic and the residence of noted German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. According to Holocaust historian James Young, the camp’s location was deliberately chosen for the purpose of erasing the area’s cultural legacy, allowing the Nazis to reframe the region how they saw fit. Over the next seven years it would be the site of over 56,000 deaths — 11,000 of those being Jews — and between 250 to 280,000 inmates. These prisoners performed forced labor for the purpose of factory production.Many of Buchenwald’s first inmates were political prisoners. It was initially opened strictly for male prisoners in July 1937; women were not admitted until 1943, when the war was well underway. Jews began arriving at Buchenwald in 1938 following Kristallnacht. Over 250 Jews died from injuries incurred at the time of their arrest or from introductory abuse at the camp. The German SS also imprisoned Jehova’s Witnesses, Roma, the mentally and physically handicapped, and deserters of the German military. As the camp continued to develop, the SS would hold prisoners-of-war (POWs) from various countries, resistance fighters, previously high-ranking officials of governments, whose countries were then occupied by Nazi Germany, and forced laborers from foreign countries. Beginning at the end of the summer in 1941, and continuing up until 1943, the SS Kommando 99 murdered 8,000 Soviet POWs, shooting them at an SS stable adjacent to the camp. The SS often shot prisoners in the stables and hanged other prisoners in the crematorium area. As one of the largest concentration camps, Buchenwald’s main camp had 88 subcamps under its operation. Similar to death camp procedures, the SS would carry out selections in an effort to weed out the weaker and disabled laborers. Those that fell under this category were sent to facilities, like Sonnenstein, as well as other areas, where euthanasia was carried out. “At these facilities, euthanasia operatives gassed them as part of Operation 14f13, the extension of euthanasia killing operations to ill and exhausted concentration camp prisoners. SS physicians or orderlies used phenol injections to kill other prisoners unable to work.”