The Ernst Thälmann Memorial and the entire design of the square also commemorate the more than 56,000 people who died in the former Buchenwald concentration camp. The memorial and the entire square design were inaugurated in 1958. Ernst Thälmann (1886-1944) was chairman of the KPD and a member of the Reichstag from 1924 to 1933. He was murdered in Buchenwald in 1944.