Buchenwald concentration camp

Coordinates: 51°01′20″N 11°14′53″E / 51.02222°N 11.24806°E / 51.02222; 11.24806
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Buchenwald" redirects here. For other uses, see Buchenwald (disambiguation).

Buchenwald
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 inmatesBruno Apitz, Phil Lamason, Elie Wiesel, Rudolf Brazda, Ernst Thälmann
Websitewww.buchenwald.de/en/69/

Buchenwald (German pronunciation:

communists
were among the first internees.

Prisoners came from all over Europe and the Soviet Union, and included Jews, Poles, and other Slavs, the mentally ill, and physically disabled, political prisoners, Roma, Freemasons, and prisoners of war. There were also ordinary criminals and those perceived as sexual deviants by the Nazi regime. All prisoners worked primarily as forced labor in local armaments factories. The insufficient food and poor conditions, as well as deliberate executions, led to 56,545 deaths at Buchenwald of the 280,000 prisoners who passed through the camp and its 139 subcamps.[1]

The camp gained notoriety when it was liberated by the United States Army in April 1945; Allied commander Dwight D. Eisenhower visited one of its subcamps.

From August 1945 to March 1950, the camp was used by the

Soviet occupation authorities as an internment camp, NKVD special camp Nr. 2
, where 28,455 prisoners were held and 7,127 of whom died. Today the remains of Buchenwald serve as a memorial and permanent exhibition and museum.

Establishment

The inscription on the entrance gate to Buchenwald concentration camp, which reads: "Jedem das Seine" ("To each his own")

The

Goethe's Oaks.[4][5]

Mauthausen on 26 June 1941.[6]

The camp, designed to hold 8,000 prisoners, was intended to replace several smaller concentration camps nearby, including Bad Sulza [de], 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-

Dachau Trials) and sentenced to death, but on 28 September 1948 he died in Landsberg Prison of a heart attack.[14]

Female prisoners and overseers

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

Gotha, Gelsenkirchen, Essen, Lippstadt, Weimar, Magdeburg, and Penig
, 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

Main article: List of subcamps of Buchenwald

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

Main article: Allied airmen at Buchenwald concentration camp

Although it was highly unusual for German authorities to send

168 aviators for two months.[20] These men were from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica. They all arrived at Buchenwald on 20 August 1944.[21][22]

All these airmen were in aircraft that had crashed in

Terrorflieger ("terror aviators"). The aviators were initially held in Gestapo prisons and headquarters in France. In April or August 1944, they and other Gestapo prisoners were packed into covered goods wagons and sent to Buchenwald. The journey took five days, during which they received very little food or water.[23]

Victims

Causes of death

On 26 April 1942, twenty Polish prisoners were hanged in retaliation for the killing of a German overseer. Pictured awaiting execution.

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

Sonnenstein Killing Facility, where they were murdered with carbon monoxide
gas.

crucified upside-down. Sommer was especially infamous for hanging prisoners from trees by their wrists, which had been tied behind their backs (a torture technique known as strappado) in the "singing forest", so named because of the screams which emanated from this wooded area.[25][26]

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

incendiary bombs, involved inflicting "very severe" white phosphorus burns on inmates.[29] When challenged at trial over the nature of this testing, and particularly over the fact that the testing was designed in some cases to cause death and only to measure the time which elapsed until death was caused, one Nazi doctor's defence was that, although a doctor, he was a "legally appointed executioner".[30]

Number of deaths

Main article: Number of deaths in Buchenwald
Corpses found in the camp after liberation

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

Prisoner of KZ Buchenwald with member of SS personnel after entry of U.S. Army, 1945
U.S. Senator Alben W. Barkley (D-Kentucky) looks on after Buchenwald's liberation.
'Orphans of Buchenwald Ex-Prisoners Coming Home Air Views HQ and Camps (1945)' – film from US National Archives

In April 1945 an Alsos Mission team was searching for a German nuclear physicist near Weimar, eastern Germany. Taking a side road through woods to avoid German forces, they struck a ghastly smell from a clearing, and saw a barbed wire enclosure with a few pathetic figures and piles of corpses. Before continuing their mission they broke secrecy protocol to radio a request for the Army to send medical help. A group of survivors had just taken control of the camp from the few remaining Nazi guards. The four-man team was under linguist Hugh Montgomery and included Corporal Rick Carrier. Montgomery recalled the survivors made a final request: Please give the guards to us, and we’ll take care of them ..... And I’m sure they did. Montgomery later joined the CIA, and took part in Operation Gold in Berlin.[36]

On 4 April 1945 the

Ohrdruf
, a subcamp of Buchenwald.

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.[37] 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 8 April 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

U.S. Third Army
responded:

KZ Bu. Hold out. Rushing to your aid. Staff of Third Army.

Interior of the barracks, pictured after liberation by Jules Rouard [fr] on 16 April 1945

According to Teofil Witek, a fellow Polish prisoner who witnessed the transmissions, Damazyn fainted after receiving the message.[38]

3:15 p.m. was the time the camp was liberated, and is the permanent time of the clock at the entrance gate.

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.[39]

A detachment of troops of the U.S. 9th Armored Infantry Battalion, from the

Captain Frederic Keffer, arrived at Buchenwald on 11 April 1945 at 3:15 p.m. (now the permanent time of the clock at the entrance gate). The soldiers were given a hero's welcome, with the emaciated survivors finding the strength to toss some liberators into the air in celebration.[40]

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,[40] 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.[41]

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.[42] 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…'.[43]

Aftermath

Ilse Koch testifies

Buchenwald trial

Main article: Buchenwald trial

Thirty SS perpetrators at Buchenwald were tried before a US military tribunal in 1947, including

Josias Erbprinz zu Waldeck und Pyrmont, who oversaw the SS district that Buchenwald was located in, and many of the doctors responsible for Nazi human experimentation. Almost all of the defendants were convicted, and 22 were sentenced to death. However, only nine death sentences were carried out, and by the mid-1950s, all perpetrators had been freed except for Ilse Koch, who was tried by a West German court and given a life sentence. Additional perpetrators were tried before German courts during the 1960s.[44]

The site

Buchenwald memorial by Fritz Cremer

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.[45] 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.[46] 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.[47] 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.[48][49]

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.[50] 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.[51] 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.[52]

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

Mittelbau-Dora.[53]

Literature

Slave laborers at Buchenwald after liberation in 1945. Elie Wiesel is seen in the second row, seventh from left.

Survivors who have written about their camp experiences include

Theodor Ziolkowski writers often did so by turning to Goethe.[54] Artist Léon Delarbre sketched, besides other scenes of camp life, the Goethe Oak, under which he used to sit and write.[55] One of the few prisoners who escaped from the camp, the Belgian Edmond Vandievoet, recounted his experiences in a book whose English title is "I escaped from a Nazi Death Camp" [Editions Jourdan, 2015]. In his work Night, Elie Wiesel talks about his stay in Buchenwald, including his father's death.[56] Jacques Lusseyran, a leader in the underground resistance to the German occupation of France, was eventually sent to Buchenwald after being arrested, and described his time there in his autobiography.[57]

Visit from President Obama and Chancellor Merkel

Video of President Obama's visit

On 5 June 2009

89th Infantry Division, the first Americans to reach the camp at Ohrdruf, one of Buchenwald's satellites.[58] Obama was the first sitting US President to visit the Buchenwald concentration camp.[49]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Buchenwald Concentration Camp, 1937–1945". Retrieved 15 April 2023.
  2. ^ a b c Zegenhagen 2009, p. 290.
  3. ^ Rapson 2015, p. 27.
  4. ^ Rapson 2015, pp. 25, 27.
  5. ^ Wachsmann 2015, pp. 177–178.
  6. ^ Stein 2007, p. 81–83.
  7. ^ "Establishment of the camp". Buchenwald Memorial.
  8. ^ Wachsmann 2015, p. 178.
  9. ^ Rapson 2015, p. 51.
  10. ^ "Buchenwald Memorial Foundation".
  11. ^ Wachsmann 2015, p. 198.
  12. ^ Hackett 1997, p. 341.
  13. ^ Hackett 1997, p. 43 n.19.
  14. ^ Hackett 1997, p. 59 n.29.
  15. ISBN 9780674249189
    .
  16. ^ Stein 2005, p. n/a.
  17. ^ Buggeln 2014, p. 9.
  18. ^ Zanden 2009, p. 297.
  19. ^ Zanden 2009, p. 298.
  20. ^ Veterans Affairs Canada, 2006: "Prisoners of War in the Second World War" Archived 25 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine Accessed 16 May 2007.
  21. ^ National Museum of the USAF: "Allied Victims of the Holocaust" Accessed 9 July 2017.
  22. ^ "Eyewitness accounts of Art Kinnis, president of KLB (Konzentrationslager Buchenwald), and 2nd Lt. Joseph Moser, one of the surviving pilots". www.buchenwaldflyboy.wordpress.com.
  23. ^ 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.
  24. ^ a b "Quarry". Buchenwald Memorial.
  25. ISBN 0-8166-1226-9
    .
  26. ^ Stein 2005, p. 302.
  27. ^ Spitz 2005, p. 199.
  28. ^ Spitz 2005, pp. 209–210.
  29. ^ Spitz 2005, pp. 213–214.
  30. ^ Spitz 2005, p. 209.
  31. ^ Bartel 1961, p. 64, lines 12–23.
  32. ^ Bartel 1961, p. 203, lines 18–38.
  33. ^ Includes male deaths in satellite camps.
  34. ^ 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.
  35. ^ Bartel 1960, p. 87, line 8.
  36. ISBN 978-0-06-244962-7
    .
  37. ^ Stein 2005, p. 227.
  38. ISBN 1-55778-363-2
    .
  39. ISBN 9781473870666
    . Retrieved 8 July 2020.
  40. ^ a b Wayne Drash (14 August 2008). "Buchenwald liberator, American hero [James Hoyt] dies at 83". CNN. Archived from the original on 29 January 2009.
  41. ^ "Edward R. Murrow Reports From Buchenwald". www.otr.com. Archived from the original on 24 January 2016. Retrieved 10 April 2014.
  42. ^ Mauriello 2017, pp. 32–34.
  43. ^ White's dispatch on Buchenwald 18 April 1945 reproduced in his book Conquerors' Road (Harper Collins, 1996) p. 189.
  44. ^ Zegenhagen 2009, pp. 293–294.
  45. ^ Marcuse 2010, p. 190.
  46. ^ Marcuse 2010, p. 200.
  47. ^ Overesch, Manfred (1995). Buchenwald und die DDR oder Die Suche nach Selbstlegitimation. Göttingen. pp. 325–326.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  48. ^ 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.
  49. ^ a b "Obama Visits Buchenwald Concentration Camp". CBS News. 5 June 2009.
  50. ISBN 978-3-631-63678-7
    .
  51. ^ Gesetzblatt der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik vom 4. September 1961, Teil II, Nr. 61.
  52. ISBN 978-3-631-63678-7
    .
  53. ^ "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.
  54. JSTOR 3195281
    .
  55. ISBN 978-0-85667-534-8
    .
  56. ^ Wiesel, Elie (2007). La Nuit (2nd ed.). Paris: Éditions de Minuit. pp. 194–200.
  57. ^ 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.
  58. ^
    National Archives
    .
  59. ^ 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

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.

51°01′20″N 11°14′53″E / 51.02222°N 11.24806°E / 51.02222; 11.24806

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