Stables & Riding Academy
The pigs in the SS stables received better feed, compared to the food of the prisoners.
— Peter Zenkl, former Buchenwald inmate, Testimony in the Buchenwald Trial from mid April 1947.
The Buchenwald camp guidebook says that 8,000 Soviet Prisoners of War were executed in Buchenwald. They were killed according to the Commissar Order (Kommissarbefehl) issued by the supreme command of the Germany army. These executions under the Commissar order were carried out by a special detachment known as Kommando 99 in Buchenwald.
The execution site was the horse stable, a brick building, 55 meters long, which was next to the Riding Hall where Commandant Koch and his wife Ilse rode their horses indoors, while the SS orchestra played military marches.
In the horse stable a measuring device of the type used in a doctor's office was put on the wall. A narrow slot in the device allowed the executioner to shoot the prisoner in the neck from a booth behind the wall. According to the guide book "military marches sounded through the building" to drown out the noise of the shots. The dead bodies were removed in large galvanized containers, an example of which is on display in the pathology lab next to the crematorium.
