Two guards at the Buchenwald concentration camp, show were captured and beaten by prisoners the day it was liberated, 1945

Two guards at the Buchenwald concentration camp, show were captured and beaten by prisoners the day it was liberated, 1945

Located in Central Germany, the Buchenwald concentration camp was one of the largest camps in Germany, and it was operated from 1937 to 1945. The camp had 139 subcamps. It was initially built to imprison suspected communists, however, it soon became a death camp for anyone who was not considered to have ideal characteristics for a future German empire. 
Jews, Poles and other Slavs, the mentally ill and physically disabled, political prisoners and Romani people as well as homosexuals were all tortured and killed there. Roughly 54,000 died there, with nearly 300,000 people being imprisoned throughout its entire operation. 
Some of the atrocities at the camp were so unbelievably brutal, that some of the camp operators and guards were arrested for cruelty. A place, that's purpose was to kill people, was investigated for being overly cruel to prisoners. Wrap your head around that. An example of a person who was arrested for such brutality was Ilsa Koch, who gained the name of "The bitch of Buchenwald". 
The camp was liberated in 1945. It was then used by the Soviets as their prison camp and it was run by the NKVD. Roughly 7,000 people would die there while it was under Soviet control.
The guards above got off lightly this was the extent of their beatings. Some guards in indifferent camps were beaten, stomped and bludgeoned to death by prisoners. If my memory serves me correctly, I read that on one occasion, a guard was even lit on fire and roasted to death.