On April 14th 1945, the bodies of the prisoners who had been murdered at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany during World War II were laid out in a pile in the wasteland within the camp.

　　On April 14th 1945, the bodies of the prisoners who had been killed in the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany during World War II were laid out in a heap in the wasteland within the camp. There were many piles of bodies with no clothes on. The Buchenwald concentration camp, which was established in a forest near Weimar in 1937, is located about 8km northwest of Weimar, Germany. In the end, it came to control 88 smaller camps, and Buchenwald became one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. The camp held Jews, Poles, Slavs, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, political prisoners, Roma, criminals, Jehovah's Witnesses, prisoners of war, and others. For several years after the camp was established, there were no female prisoners until the end of 1943 or the beginning of 1944.

　　At its peak in February 1945, the number of prisoners in Buchenwald concentration camp reached 112,000. The prisoners worked as forced laborers in 12-hour shifts in munitions factories, quarries, and various camp workshops around Weimar. Although there were no poison gas chambers in the camp, hundreds of people died from illness, malnutrition, exhaustion, beatings, and executions. Between July 1937 and April 1945, the SS had 250,000 people interned at Buchenwald.

　In early April 1945, American soldiers approached Buchenwald. German soldiers forced the prisoners to march from the main camp to various sub-camps. Many prisoners died on the way from exhaustion. Anticipating their liberation, some prisoners stormed the guard tower to take control of the concentration camp. Other prisoners fought tirelessly to protect the approximately 900 Jewish boys in the camp.

　　Many of the German guards and officers fled before the approaching Allied forces. On April 11, 1945, the 83rd US Infantry Division entered Buchenwald and found more than 21,000 prisoners in the camp. It was one of the three main camps under the command of the Central Administration of the Concentration Camp, along with Dachau (near Munich) and Sachsenhausen (Berlin). In 1945, it held 47,500 prisoners from 30 countries. Of these, 20,000 were still alive when it was liberated in April 1945. It is estimated that 6 million people died in all the concentration camps.