Forgotten Horrors: The Nazi sub-camp system

  In mid-November 1943, prisoners from Buchenwald were brought a barracks complex in Bad Arolsen (Arolsen). Waffen SS soldiers had been based there from 1935 and in January 1944 the Leadership School of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (WVHA) also began operations there. The first prisoners were brought to the site to perform conversion tasks in the building as they had relevant skills. Some prisoners were employed at the SS clothing depot in Arolsen. Others worked in the tailor shop, a carpentry workshop, in the electrical and automotive workshops, a kitchen and canteen, the SS barbershop, and as gardeners and cleaners. The prisoners were held in the eastern wing of a former tool and machine hall, equipped with three-tiered bunk beds. There was also an infirmary and a sanitary area in the building. In January 1944, the total number of prisoners reached 80, but by September it had increased again to 123. The SS rotated the prisoners through the camp, meaning that a ...

The Apolda subcamp was established in mid-February 1945, utilising a large bakery belonging to the “Thüringen" consumer cooperative, which had, since September 1939, supplied bread daily to Buchenwald. Eight prisoners were assigned to work there by the SS. They were accommodated on an upper floor of the bakery but nothing else is known about this. The prisoners were specially selected because they were trained bakers, possibly even master bakers. They were aged between 42 and 64 and had been incarcerated because they were all Jehovah’s Witnesses. They had all suffered years of imprisonment for this reason. Martin Bertram from Frankfurt am Main, Otto Hörnig from Lützen (near Leipzig), and Otto Berthold from Oberlungwitz in Saxony, had first arrived at Buchenwald in 1937. These eight prisoners remained at the bakery until they were liberated by US soldiers on 12 th April 1945. They did not work at the baking ovens but instead at baking tables alongside other bakers. No deaths wer...