Buchenwald was a Nazi concentration camp established in 1937 in Thuringia in eastern Germany to incarcerate Jews, political prisoners, homosexuals, and Jehovah's Witnesses. It was liberated by the United States Army on 12 April 1945. Although Buchenwald was not an extermination camp, it is estimated that around 56,000 inmates of the camp perished. Between 1945 and 1950 Buchenwald was run as a prison camp for opponents of the Soviet regime in East Germany.