The SS accounts of prisoners coming to and leaving the camp provide one source for the estimate of the number of deaths in Buchenwald.
[1] One former prisoner of Buchenwald, Armin Walter, made a calculation of the number of executions by shooting in the back of the head.
The most common act for allied airmen to be classified a terror flier was to be captured in civilian clothing and/or without their dog tags.
The German Foreign Office decided that these captured enemy airmen should not be given the legal status of prisoner of war (POWs) but should instead be treated as criminals and spies and were sent to Buchenwald.
However, on the night of 19 October, seven days before their scheduled execution, 156 of the 168 airmen, including Lamason, were transferred from Buchenwald to Stalag Luft III by the Luftwaffe.
Beck subsequently died, but the other ten airmen were transported to Stalag Luft III, in small groups, over a period of several weeks.
One reason for the lower death rate was the help these policemen received in the form of packets provided by the Danish Red Cross.