Buchenwald concentration camp
| Buchenwald | |
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Nazi concentration camp | |
 Polish prisoners forced to undress after arriving in the camp, c. 1940 Below: Roll call at Buchenwald 6th Armored Division, United States Army | |
| Notable inmates | Bruno Apitz, Phil Lamason, Elie Wiesel, Rudolf Brazda |
| Website | www |
Buchenwald (German pronunciation:
Prisoners came from all over
From August 1945 to March 1950, the camp was used by the
Establishment
The
The camp, designed to hold 8,000 prisoners, was intended to replace several smaller concentration camps nearby, including Bad Sulza, Sachsenburg, and Lichtenburg.[7] Compared to these camps, Buchenwald had a greater potential to profit the SS because the nearby clay deposits could be made into bricks by the forced labor of prisoners. The first prisoners arrived on 15 July 1937, and had to clear the area of trees and build the camp's structures.[2] By September, the population had risen to 2,400 following transfers from Bad Sulza, Sachsenburg, and Lichtenburg.[8]
On the camp's main gate, the motto Jedem das Seine (English: "To each his own"), was inscribed. The SS interpreted this to mean the "master race" had a right to humiliate and destroy others.[9] It was designed by Buchenwald prisoner and Bauhaus architect Franz Ehrlich, who used a Bauhaus typeface for it, even though Bauhaus was seen as degenerate art by the National Socialists and was prohibited. This defiance however went unnoticed by the SS.[10]
Command structure
Organization
Buchenwald's first commandant was SS-
Female prisoners and overseers
 | This section needs additional citations for verification. (March 2019) |
The number of women held in Buchenwald was somewhere between 500 and 1,000. The first female inmates were twenty political prisoners who were accompanied by a female SS guard (Aufseherin); these women were brought to Buchenwald from Ravensbrück in 1941 and forced into sexual slavery at the camp's brothel. The SS later fired the SS woman on duty in the brothel for corruption; her position was taken over by "brothel mothers" as ordered by SS chief Heinrich Himmler.
The majority of women prisoners, however, arrived in 1944 and 1945 from other camps, mainly
, to name a few. No female guards were permanently stationed at Buchenwald.Contrary to popular opinion, the notorious "Bitch of Buchenwald" Ilse Koch never served in any official capacity at the camp, nor ever acted as guard.[15] In total, however, more than 530 women served as guards in the vast Buchenwald system of subcamps and external commands across Germany. Only 22 women served/trained in Buchenwald, compared to over 15,500 men.[16][page needed]
Subcamps
About 136 subcamps and satellite commandos belonged to Buchenwald concentration camp.[17]
In 1942, the SS began to use its forced labor supply for armaments production. Because it was more economical to rent out prisoners to private firms, subcamps were set up near factories which had a demand for prisoner labor. Private firms paid the SS between 4 and 6 Reichsmarks per day per prisoner, resulting in an estimated 95,758,843 Reichsmarks in revenue for the SS between June 1943 and February 1945.[18] So the subcamps of Buchenwald were mainly used for armament production and other fabrications and are considered labour camps. Conditions were worse than at the main camp, with prisoners provided insufficient food and inadequate shelter.[19]
Allied POWs
Although it was highly unusual for German authorities to send
All these airmen were in aircraft that had crashed in
Victims
Causes of death
A primary cause of death was illness due to harsh camp conditions. Like all concentration camps, prisoners at Buchenwald were deliberately kept in a state of
Summary executions of Soviet POWs were also carried out at Buchenwald. At least 1,000 men were selected in 1941–42 by a task force of three Dresden Gestapo officers and sent to the camp for immediate liquidation by a gunshot to the back of the neck, the infamous Genickschuss.
The camp was also a site of large-scale trials for
Number of deaths
The SS left behind accounts of the number of prisoners and people coming to and leaving the camp, categorizing those leaving them by release, transfer, or death. These accounts are one of the sources of estimates for the number of deaths in Buchenwald. According to SS documents, 33,462 died. These documents were not, however, necessarily accurate: Among those executed before 1944, many were listed as "transferred to the Gestapo". Furthermore, from 1941, Soviet POWs were executed in mass killings. Arriving prisoners selected for execution were not entered into the camp register and therefore were not among the 33,462 dead listed.[31]
One former Buchenwald prisoner, Armin Walter, calculated the number of executions by the number of shootings in the spine at the base of the head. His job at Buchenwald was to set up and care for a radio installation at the facility where people were executed; he counted the numbers, which arrived by telex, and hid the information. He says that 8,483 Soviet prisoners of war were shot in this manner.[32]
According to the same source, the total number of deaths at Buchenwald is estimated at 56,545. This number is the sum of:
- Deaths according to material left behind by the SS: 33,462[33]
- Executions by shooting: 8,483
- Executions by hanging (estimate): 1,100
- Deaths during evacuation transports (estimate): 13,500[34]
This total (56,545) corresponds to a death rate of 24 percent, assuming that the number of persons passing through the camp according to documents left by the SS, 240,000 prisoners, is accurate.[35]
Liberation
On 4 April 1945 the
Buchenwald was partially evacuated by the Germans from 6 to 11 April 1945. In the days before the arrival of the American army, thousands of the prisoners were forcibly evacuated on foot.[36] Thanks in large part to the efforts of Polish engineer (and short-wave radio-amateur, his pre-war callsign was SP2BD) Gwidon Damazyn, an inmate since March 1941, a secret short-wave transmitter and small generator were built and hidden in the prisoners' movie room. On April 8 at noon, Damazyn and Russian prisoner Konstantin Ivanovich Leonov sent the Morse code message prepared by leaders of the prisoners' underground resistance (supposedly Walter Bartel and Harry Kuhn):
To the Allies. To the army of General Patton. This is the Buchenwald concentration camp. SOS. We request help. They want to evacuate us. The SS wants to destroy us.
The text was repeated several times in English, German, and Russian. Damazyn sent the English and German transmissions, while Leonov sent the Russian version. Three minutes after the last transmission sent by Damazyn, the headquarters of the
KZ Bu. Hold out. Rushing to your aid. Staff of Third Army.
According to Teofil Witek, a fellow Polish prisoner who witnessed the transmissions, Damazyn fainted after receiving the message.[37]
As American forces closed in, Gestapo headquarters at Weimar telephoned the camp administration to announce that it was sending explosives to blow up any evidence of the camp, including its inmates. The Gestapo did not know that the administrators had already fled. A prisoner answered the phone and informed headquarters that explosives would not be needed, as the camp had already been blown up, which was not true.[38]
A detachment of troops of the U.S. 9th Armored Infantry Battalion, from the
Later in the day, elements of the U.S. 83rd Infantry Division overran Langenstein, one of a number of smaller camps comprising the Buchenwald complex. There, the division liberated over 21,000 prisoners,[39] ordered the mayor of Langenstein to send food and water to the camp, and hurried medical supplies forward from the 20th Field Hospital.
Third Army Headquarters sent elements of the 80th Infantry Division to take control of the camp on the morning of Thursday 12 April 1945. Several journalists arrived on the same day, perhaps with the 80th, including Edward R. Murrow, whose radio report of his arrival and reception was broadcast on CBS and became one of his most famous:
I asked to see one of the barracks. It happened to be occupied by Czechoslovaks. When I entered, men crowded around, tried to lift me to their shoulders. They were too weak. Many of them could not get out of bed. I was told that this building had once stabled 80 horses. There were 1,200 men in it, five to a bunk. The stink was beyond all description.
They called the doctor. We inspected his records. There were only names in the little black book, nothing more. Nothing about who these men were, what they had done, or hoped. Behind the names of those who had died, there was a cross. I counted them. They totaled 242. 242 out of 1,200, in one month.
As we walked out into the courtyard, a man fell dead. Two others, they must have been over 60, were crawling toward the latrine. I saw it, but will not describe it.
— Extract from Edward R. Murrow's Buchenwald Report – 15 April 1945.[40]
Civilian tour
After Patton toured the camp, he ordered the mayor of Weimar to bring 1,000 citizens to Buchenwald; these were to be predominantly men of military age from the middle and upper classes. The Germans had to walk 25 kilometres (16 mi) roundtrip under armed American guard and were shown the crematorium and other evidence of Nazi atrocities. The Americans wanted to ensure that the German people would take responsibility for Nazi crimes, instead of dismissing them as atrocity propaganda.[41] Gen. Dwight Eisenhower also invited two groups of Americans to tour the camp in mid-April 1945; journalists and editors from some of the principal U.S. publications, and then a dozen members of the Congress from both the House and the Senate, led by Senate Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley.
War correspondent Osmar White reported that above the crematorium door was a verse beginning 'Worms shall not devour me, but flames consume this body. I always loved the heat and light…'.[42]
Aftermath
Buchenwald trial
Thirty SS perpetrators at Buchenwald were tried before a US military tribunal in 1947, including
The site
Between August 1945 and 1 March 1950, Buchenwald was the site of NKVD special camp Nr. 2, where the Soviet secret police imprisoned former Nazis and anti-communist dissidents.[44] According to Soviet records, 28,455 people were detained, 7,113 of whom died. After the NKVD camp closed, much of the camp was razed, while signs were erected to provide a Soviet interpretation of the camp's legacy.[45] The first monument to victims was erected by Buchenwald inmates days after the initial liberation. It was made of wood and only intended to be temporary. A second monument to commemorate the dead was erected in 1958 by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) government near the mass graves. It was inaugurated on 14 September 1958 by GDR Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl.[46] Inside the camp, there is a stainless steel monument on the spot where the first, temporary monument stood. Its surface is maintained at 37 °C (99 °F), the temperature of human skin, all year round.[47][48]
The three National Memorials of the GDR, built next to or on the sites of the former concentration camps Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück, played a central role in the GDR's remembrance policy under Erich Honecker.[49] They were controlled by the Ministry of Culture and thus by the government. According to their statute, these memorials served as places of identification and legitimisation of the GDR.[50] The political instrumentalisation of these memorials, especially for the current needs of the GDR, became particularly clear during the major celebrations of the liberation of the concentration camps, as historian Anne-Kathleen Tillack-Graf analysis in her thesis about the official party newspaper Neues Deutschland.[51]
Today the Buchenwald camp site serves as a Holocaust memorial. It has a museum with permanent exhibitions about the history of the camp. It is managed by Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, which also looks after the camp memorial at
Literature
Survivors who have written about their camp experiences include
Visit from President Obama and Chancellor Merkel
On 5 June 2009
See also
References
- ^ "Buchenwald Concentration Camp, 1937–1945". Retrieved 15 April 2023.
- ^ a b c Zegenhagen 2009, p. 290.
- ^ Rapson 2015, p. 27.
- ^ Rapson 2015, pp. 25, 27.
- ^ Wachsmann 2015, pp. 177–178.
- ^ Stein 2007, p. 81–83.
- ^ "Establishment of the camp". Buchenwald Memorial.
- ^ Wachsmann 2015, p. 178.
- ^ Rapson 2015, p. 51.
- ^ "Buchenwald Memorial Foundation".
- ^ Wachsmann 2015, p. 198.
- ^ Hackett 1997, p. 341.
- ^ Hackett 1997, p. 43 n.19.
- ^ Hackett 1997, p. 59 n.29.
- ISBN 9780674249189.
- ^ Stein 2005, p. n/a.
- ^ Buggeln 2014, p. 9.
- ^ Zanden 2009, p. 297.
- ^ Zanden 2009, p. 298.
- ^ Veterans Affairs Canada, 2006: "Prisoners of War in the Second World War" Archived 25 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine Accessed 16 May 2007.
- ^ National Museum of the USAF: "Allied Victims of the Holocaust" Accessed 9 July 2017.
- ^ "Eyewitness accounts of Art Kinnis, president of KLB (Konzentrationslager Buchenwald), and 2nd Lt. Joseph Moser, one of the surviving pilots". www.buchenwaldflyboy.wordpress.com.
- ^ From The Lucky Ones: Allied Airmen and Buchenwald (1994 film, directed by Michael Allder), cited by Veterans Affairs Canada, 2006: "Prisoners of War in the Second World War" Archived 25 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine Accessed 16 May 2007.
- ^ a b "Quarry". Buchenwald Memorial.
- ISBN 0-8166-1226-9.
- ^ Stein 2005, p. 302.
- ^ Spitz 2005, p. 199.
- ^ Spitz 2005, pp. 209–210.
- ^ Spitz 2005, pp. 213–214.
- ^ Spitz 2005, p. 209.
- ^ Bartel 1961, p. 64, lines 12–23.
- ^ Bartel 1961, p. 203, lines 18–38.
- ^ Includes male deaths in satellite camps.
- ^ Bartel (1961, p. 87, line 17–18) reports that somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 prisoners died on evacuation transports in March and April 1945.
- ^ Bartel 1960, p. 87, line 8.
- ^ Stein 2005, p. 227.
- ISBN 1-55778-363-2.
- ISBN 9781473870666. Retrieved 8 July 2020.
- ^ a b Wayne Drash (14 August 2008). "Buchenwald liberator, American hero dies at 83". CNN.
- ^ "Edward R. Murrow Reports From Buchenwald". www.otr.com.
- ^ Mauriello 2017, pp. 32–34.
- ^ White's dispatch on Buchenwald 18 April 1945 reproduced in his book Conquerors' Road (Harper Collins, 1996) p189.
- ^ Zegenhagen 2009, pp. 293–294.
- ^ Marcuse 2010, p. 190.
- ^ Marcuse 2010, p. 200.
- ^ Overesch, Manfred (1995). Buchenwald und die DDR oder Die Suche nach Selbstlegitimation. Göttingen. pp. 325–326.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Young, James E. (2000). At Memory's Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 105.
- ^ a b "Obama Visits Buchenwald Concentration Camp". CBS News. 5 June 2009.
- ISBN 978-3-631-63678-7.
- ^ Gesetzblatt der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik vom 4. September 1961, Teil II, Nr. 61.
- ISBN 978-3-631-63678-7.
- ^ "Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation – Purpose of the Foundation". Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation. Archived from the original on 4 March 2012. Retrieved 18 August 2012.
- JSTOR 3195281.
- ISBN 978-0-85667-534-8.
- ^ Wiesel, Elie (2007). La Nuit (2nd ed.). Paris: Éditions de Minuit. pp. 194–200.
- ^ Lusseyran, Jacques (1998). And There Was Light: Autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, Blind Hero of the French Resistance. Translated by Elizabeth R.Cameron (2nd ed.). New York: Parabola Books. pp. 272–309.
- ^ National Archives.
- ^ a b Remarks By President Obama, German Chancellor Merkel, And Elie Wiesel at Buchenwald Concentration Camp (Speech). Buchenwald memorial event. Weimar, Germany: The White House – Office of the Press Secretary. 5 June 2009. Archived from the original on 29 January 2017. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
Sources
- Bartel, Walter, ed. (1961). Buchenwald-Mahnung und Verpflichtung: Dokumente und Berichte [Buchenwald-Warnings and obligation: Documents and reports] (in German). Kongress-Verlag. .
- Buggeln, Marc (2014). Slave Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19870-797-4.
- Hackett, David A. (1997). The Buchenwald Reports. Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-3363-2. Retrieved 1 June 2016.
- Marcuse, Harold (2010). "The Afterlife of the Camps". In Wachsmann, Nikolaus; Caplan, Jane (eds.). Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories. Routledge. pp. 186–211. ISBN 978-1-13526-321-8.
- Mauriello, Christopher E. (2017). Forced Confrontation: The Politics of Dead Bodies in Germany at the End of World War II. Lanham: Lexington Books. ISBN 9781498548069.
- Rapson, Jessica (2015). Topographies of Suffering: Buchenwald, Babi Yar, Lidice. New York: Berghahn Books. ISBN 9781782387107.
- Spitz, Vivien (2005). Doctors from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans. Sentient Publications. p. 199. ISBN 978-1-59181-032-2.
- Stein, Harry (2005). Gedenkstatte Buchenwald (ed.). Buchenwald concentration camp 1937–1945 (A Guide to the Permanent Historical Exhibition). Wallstein. ISBN 978-3-89244-695-8.
- Stein, Harry (2007). Buchenwald Memorial (ed.). Konzentrationslager Buchenwald 1937–1945. Begleitband zur ständigen historischen Ausstellung (in German) (5th ed.). Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag. pp. 81–83. ISBN 978-3-89244-222-6.
- Stone, Dan (2015). The Liberation of the Camps: The End of the Holocaust and Its Aftermath. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300216035.
- Tillack-Graf, Anne-Kathleen (2012). Erinnerungspolitik der DDR. Dargestellt an der Berichterstattung der Tageszeitung "Neues Deutschland" über die Nationalen Mahn- und Gedenkstätten Buchenwald, Ravensbrück und Sachsenhausen. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main. ISBN 978-3-631-63678-7.
- ISBN 978-1-4299-4372-7.
- Zanden, Christine Schmidt van der (2009). "Buchenwald Subcamp System". In ISBN 978-0-253-35328-3.
- Zegenhagen, Evelyn (2009). "Buchenwald Main Camp". In Megargee, Geoffrey P. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945. Vol. 1. Translated by Pallavicini, Stephen. Bloomington: ISBN 978-0-253-35328-3.
Further reading
- Knigge, Volkhard und Ritscher, Bodo: Totenbuch. Speziallager Buchenwald 1945–1950, Weimar: Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau Dora, 2003.
- Tillack-Graf, Anne-Kathleen: Erinnerungspolitik der DDR. Dargestellt an der Berichterstattung der Tageszeitung "Neues Deutschland" über die Nationalen Mahn- und Gedenkstätten Buchenwald, Ravensbrück und Sachsenhausen. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-631-63678-7.
External links
Media related to Buchenwald concentration camp at Wikimedia Commons- Hardy Graupner: Survivors, academics recall dark episode in Germany's postwar history, Deutsche Welle, 16 February 2010.
- Guide to the Concentration Camps Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York City 2013. Includes extensive reports on Buchenwald collected by the Allied forces shortly after liberating the camp in April 1945.
- Holocaust Buchenwald Concentration Camp Uncovered (1945) | British Pathé on YouTube
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