Buchenwald, located on the Ettersberg mountain 10 kilometers outside Weimar, opened in May 1937. at its peak, the camp held about 80,000 inmates. An illegal resistance organization, the International Camp Committee (ILK), began recruiting among the prisoners in 1943. On April 11, 1945, the ILK staged an armed uprising, and arrested the SS personnel who had not fled as Allied forces advanced deep into Germany. Two days later, the United States army arrived. Buchenwald was the only concentration camp to be liberated by its inmates. next >>

Below: Anti-fascist resistance leader Hermann Jahn sent this letter to his wife Hedwig on May 20, 1938. He survived his seven-year incarceration and became the mayor of Erfurt after liberation in 1945, but Buchenwald had broken his health and he died in 1946 at age 51.

Parcel waybill with the blue linear return cachet of the Buchenwald crematorium and the red circular mark of the Waffen-SS command at Buchenwald accompanied a shipment of ashes to a Jewish cemetery in Vienna. Only three examples of the crematorium marking have been recorded.

Official stamps front and back paid postage for a three-kilogram parcel mailed May 29, 1942.