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Buchenwald concentration camp

Buchenwald (German pronunciation: [ˈbuːxn̩valt]; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg [de] hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or suspected communists were among the first internees.

Buchenwald
Nazi concentration camp
Polish prisoners forced to undress after arriving in the camp, c. 1940
Below: Roll call at Buchenwald
LocationWeimar, Germany
Operated bySchutzstaffel
Commandant
Operational15 July 1937 – 11 April 1945
Number of inmates280,000
Killed56,545
Liberated by6th Armored Division, United States Army
Websitewww.buchenwald.de/en/69/

Prisoners came from all over Europe and the Soviet UnionJews, Poles and other Slavs, the mentally ill and physically disabled, political prisoners, Romani people, Freemasons, and prisoners of war. There were also ordinary criminals and sexual "deviants". 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 7,113 of whom died. Today the remains of Buchenwald serve as a memorial and permanent exhibition and museum.

Establishment Edit

 
Entrance gate of the Buchenwald concentration camp, inscribed Jedem das Seine ("To each his own")

The Schutzstaffel (SS) established Buchenwald concentration camp at the beginning of July 1937.[2] The camp was to be named Ettersberg [de], after the hill in Thuringia upon whose north slope the camp was established.[2][3] The proposed name was deemed inappropriate because it carried associations with several important figures in German culture, especially Enlightenment writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who had lived in Weimar. Instead the camp was to be named Buchenwald, in reference to the beech forest in the area. However, Holocaust researcher James E. Young [de] wrote that SS leaders chose the site of the camp precisely to erase the cultural legacy of the area. After the area of the camp was cleared of trees, only one large oak remained, supposedly one of Goethe's Oaks.[4][5]

 
Dutch Jews stand during a roll call after their prisoner transport from Buchenwald in May 1941 in camp 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 Edit

Organization Edit

Buchenwald's first commandant was SS-Obersturmbannführer Karl-Otto Koch, who ran the camp from 1 August 1937 to July 1941. His second wife, Ilse Koch, became notorious as Die Hexe von Buchenwald ("the witch of Buchenwald") for her cruelty and brutality. In February 1940 Koch had an indoor riding hall built by the prisoners who died by the dozen due to the harsh conditions of the construction site. The hall was built inside the camp, near the canteen, so that oftentimes Ilse Koch could be seen riding in the morning to the beat of the prisoner orchestra.[11] Koch himself was eventually imprisoned at Buchenwald by the Nazi authorities for incitement to murder. The charges were lodged by Prince Waldeck and Dr. Morgen, to which were later added charges of corruption, embezzlement, black market dealings, and exploitation of the camp workers for personal gain.[12] Other camp officials were charged, including Ilse Koch. The trial resulted in Karl Koch being sentenced to death for disgracing both himself and the SS; he was executed by firing squad on 5 April 1945, one week before American troops arrived. Ilse Koch was acquitted by the SS court and released. However, she was rearrested by American occupation authorities in June 1945, and chosen as one of 31 Buchenwald defendants to stand trial before a Military Commission Court at Dachau. The life sentence imposed by the Dachau court was reduced to four years upon review. Upon her release from U.S. custody in October 1949, she was arrested by West German authorities, tried at Augsburg, and again sentenced to life imprisonment; she committed suicide in Aichach (Bavaria) prison in September 1967.[13] The second commandant of the camp, between 1942 and 1945, was Hermann Pister (1942–1945). He was tried in 1947 (Dachau Trials) and sentenced to death, but on 28 September 1948 he died in Landsberg Prison of a heart attack before the sentence could be carried out.[14]

Female prisoners and overseers Edit

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 Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and Bergen Belsen. Only one barracks was set aside for them; this was overseen by the female block leader (Blockführerin) Franziska Hoengesberg, who came from Essen when it was evacuated. All the women prisoners were later shipped out to one of Buchenwald's many female satellite camps in Sömmerda, Buttelstedt, Mühlhausen, 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 Edit

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 Edit

Although it was highly unusual for German authorities to send Western Allied POWs to concentration camps, Buchenwald held a group of 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 occupied France. Two explanations are given for them being sent to a concentration camp: first, that they had managed to make contact with the French Resistance, some were disguised as civilians, and they were carrying false papers when caught; they were therefore categorized by the Germans as spies, which meant their rights under the Geneva Convention were not respected. The second explanation is that they had been categorised as 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 (US: boxcars) and sent to Buchenwald. The journey took five days, during which they received very little food or water.[23]

Victims Edit

Causes of death Edit

 
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 starvation, many while performing grueling forced labor,[24] making consequent illnesses prevalent. Malnourished and suffering from disease, many were literally "worked to death" under the Vernichtung durch Arbeit policy (extermination through labor), as inmates only had the choice between slave labor or inevitable execution. Many inmates were killed by human experimentation or fell victim to arbitrary acts perpetrated by the SS guards. Other prisoners were simply murdered,[25] primarily by shooting and hanging. As part of Action 14f13, prisoners deemed too weak or sick to work were sent to Sonnenstein Killing Facility, where they were murdered with carbon monoxide gas.

Walter Gerhard Martin Sommer was an SS-Hauptscharführer who served as a guard at the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald. Known as the "Hangman of Buchenwald", he was considered a depraved sadist who reportedly ordered Otto Neururer and Mathias Spanlang, two Austrian priests, to be 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.[26][27]

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 vaccines against epidemic typhus in 1942 and 1943. In all 729 inmates were used as test subjects, of whom 154 died.[28] Other "experimentation" occurred at Buchenwald on a smaller scale. One such experiment aimed at determining the precise fatal dose of a poison of the alkaloid group; according to the testimony of one doctor, four Soviet POWs were administered the poison, and when it proved not to be fatal they were "strangled in the crematorium" and subsequently "dissected".[29] Among various other experiments was one which, in order to test the effectiveness of a balm for wounds from incendiary bombs, involved inflicting "very severe" white phosphorus burns on inmates.[30] 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".[31]

Number of deaths Edit

 
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.[32]

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.[33]

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[34]
  • Executions by shooting: 8,483
  • Executions by hanging (estimate): 1,100
  • Deaths during evacuation transports (estimate): 13,500[35]

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.[36]

Liberation Edit

 
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

On 4 April 1945 the U.S. 89th Infantry Division overran 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 forced to join the evacuation marches.[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 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 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 6th Armored Division, part of the U.S. Third Army, and under the command of 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 Edit

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 Edit

 
Ilse Koch testifies

Buchenwald trial Edit

Thirty SS perpetrators at Buchenwald were tried before a US military tribunal in 1947, including Higher SS and Police Leader 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 Edit

 
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 Edit

 
Slave laborers at Buchenwald after liberation in 1945

Survivors who have written about their camp experiences include Jorge Semprún, who in Quel beau dimanche! describes conversations involving Goethe and Léon Blum, and Ernst Wiechert, whose Der Totenwald was written in 1939 but not published until 1945, and which likewise involved Goethe. Scholars have investigated how camp inmates used art to help deal with their circumstances, and according to 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 Edit

Video of President Obama's visit

On 5 June 2009 U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Buchenwald after a tour of Dresden Castle and Church of Our Lady. During the visit they were accompanied by Elie Wiesel and Bertrand Herz, both survivors of the camp.[58] Volkhard Knigge [de], the director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation and honorary professor of University of Jena, guided the four guests through the remainder of the site of the camp.[59] During the visit Wiesel, who together with Herz were sent to the Little camp as 16-year-old boys, said, "if these trees could talk." His statement marked the irony about the beauty of the landscape and the horrors that took place within the camp.[59] President Obama mentioned during his visit that he had heard stories as a child from his great uncle, who was part of the 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 Edit

References Edit

  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. ^ Jardim, Tomaz (2023). Ilse Koch on Trial: Making the 'Bitch of Buchenwald'. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 1. 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" 25 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine Accessed 16 May 2007.
  21. ^ 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" 25 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine Accessed 16 May 2007.
  24. ^ "Quarry". Buchenwald Memorial.
  25. ^ "Quarry". Buchenwald Memorial.
  26. ^ Luža, Radomír (1984). The resistance in Austria, 1938–1945. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-1226-9.
  27. ^ Stein 2005, p. 302.
  28. ^ Spitz 2005, p. 199.
  29. ^ Spitz 2005, pp. 209–210.
  30. ^ Spitz 2005, pp. 213–214.
  31. ^ Spitz 2005, p. 209.
  32. ^ Bartel 1961, p. 64, lines 12–23.
  33. ^ Bartel 1961, p. 203, lines 18–38.
  34. ^ Includes male deaths in satellite camps.
  35. ^ 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.
  36. ^ Bartel 1960, p. 87, line 8.
  37. ^ Stein 2005, p. 227.
  38. ^ Langbein, Hermann (1994). Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps, 1938–1945. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Paragon House. p. 502. ISBN 1-55778-363-2.
  39. ^ Best, Brian (2015). Reporting the Second World War. Casemate Publishers. p. 234. ISBN 9781473870666. Retrieved 8 July 2020.
  40. ^ a b Wayne Drash (14 August 2008). "Buchenwald liberator, American hero dies at 83". CNN.
  41. ^ "Edward R. Murrow Reports From Buchenwald". www.otr.com.
  42. ^ Mauriello 2017, pp. 32–34.
  43. ^ White's dispatch on Buchenwald 18 April 1945 reproduced in his book Conquerors' Road (Harper Collins, 1996) p189.
  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. ^ 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. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. p. 94. ISBN 978-3-631-63678-7.
  51. ^ Gesetzblatt der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik vom 4. September 1961, Teil II, Nr. 61.
  52. ^ 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. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. pp. 2–3, 88–91. ISBN 978-3-631-63678-7.
  53. ^ "Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation – Purpose of the Foundation". Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation. Retrieved 18 August 2012.
  54. ^ Ziolkowski, Theodore (2001). "Das Treffen in Buchenwald oder Der vergegenwärtigte Goethe". Modern Language Studies. 31 (1): 131–50. doi:10.2307/3195281. JSTOR 3195281.
  55. ^ Jenkins, David Fraser (2000). John Piper: The Forties. New Age International. p. 84. 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. ^ a b "Buchenwald – The WhiteHouseBlog". whitehouse.gov. 5 June 2009. Retrieved 18 August 2012 – via 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. from the original on 29 January 2017. Retrieved 1 May 2016.

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  • 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.
  • Wachsmann, Nikolaus (2015). KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4299-4372-7.
  • Zanden, Christine Schmidt van der (2009). "Buchenwald Subcamp System". In Megargee, Geoffrey P. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945. Vol. 1. Bloomington: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. pp. 567–569. 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: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. pp. 567–569. ISBN 978-0-253-35328-3.

Further reading Edit

  • 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 Edit

  •   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

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

buchenwald, concentration, camp, buchenwald, redirects, here, other, uses, buchenwald, disambiguation, buchenwald, german, pronunciation, ˈbuːxn, valt, literally, beech, forest, nazi, concentration, camp, established, ettersberg, hill, near, weimar, germany, j. Buchenwald redirects here For other uses see Buchenwald disambiguation Buchenwald German pronunciation ˈbuːxn valt literally beech forest was a Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg de hill near Weimar Germany in July 1937 It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany s 1937 borders Many actual or suspected communists were among the first internees BuchenwaldNazi concentration campPolish prisoners forced to undress after arriving in the camp c 1940 Below Roll call at BuchenwaldLocationWeimar GermanyOperated bySchutzstaffelCommandantKarl Otto Koch 1 August 1937 July 1941 Hermann Pister 1942 1945 Operational15 July 1937 11 April 1945Number of inmates280 000Killed56 545Liberated by6th Armored Division United States ArmyWebsitewww wbr buchenwald wbr de wbr en wbr 69 wbr Prisoners came from all over Europe and the Soviet Union Jews Poles and other Slavs the mentally ill and physically disabled political prisoners Romani people Freemasons and prisoners of war There were also ordinary criminals and sexual deviants 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 7 113 of whom died Today the remains of Buchenwald serve as a memorial and permanent exhibition and museum Contents 1 Establishment 2 Command structure 2 1 Organization 2 2 Female prisoners and overseers 2 3 Subcamps 3 Allied POWs 4 Victims 4 1 Causes of death 4 2 Number of deaths 5 Liberation 5 1 Civilian tour 6 Aftermath 6 1 Buchenwald trial 6 2 The site 6 3 Literature 6 4 Visit from President Obama and Chancellor Merkel 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External linksEstablishment Edit nbsp Entrance gate of the Buchenwald concentration camp inscribed Jedem das Seine To each his own The Schutzstaffel SS established Buchenwald concentration camp at the beginning of July 1937 2 The camp was to be named Ettersberg de after the hill in Thuringia upon whose north slope the camp was established 2 3 The proposed name was deemed inappropriate because it carried associations with several important figures in German culture especially Enlightenment writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who had lived in Weimar Instead the camp was to be named Buchenwald in reference to the beech forest in the area However Holocaust researcher James E Young de wrote that SS leaders chose the site of the camp precisely to erase the cultural legacy of the area After the area of the camp was cleared of trees only one large oak remained supposedly one of Goethe s Oaks 4 5 nbsp Dutch Jews stand during a roll call after their prisoner transport from Buchenwald in May 1941 in camp 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 EditOrganization Edit Buchenwald s first commandant was SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Karl Otto Koch who ran the camp from 1 August 1937 to July 1941 His second wife Ilse Koch became notorious as Die Hexe von Buchenwald the witch of Buchenwald for her cruelty and brutality In February 1940 Koch had an indoor riding hall built by the prisoners who died by the dozen due to the harsh conditions of the construction site The hall was built inside the camp near the canteen so that oftentimes Ilse Koch could be seen riding in the morning to the beat of the prisoner orchestra 11 Koch himself was eventually imprisoned at Buchenwald by the Nazi authorities for incitement to murder The charges were lodged by Prince Waldeck and Dr Morgen to which were later added charges of corruption embezzlement black market dealings and exploitation of the camp workers for personal gain 12 Other camp officials were charged including Ilse Koch The trial resulted in Karl Koch being sentenced to death for disgracing both himself and the SS he was executed by firing squad on 5 April 1945 one week before American troops arrived Ilse Koch was acquitted by the SS court and released However she was rearrested by American occupation authorities in June 1945 and chosen as one of 31 Buchenwald defendants to stand trial before a Military Commission Court at Dachau The life sentence imposed by the Dachau court was reduced to four years upon review Upon her release from U S custody in October 1949 she was arrested by West German authorities tried at Augsburg and again sentenced to life imprisonment she committed suicide in Aichach Bavaria prison in September 1967 13 The second commandant of the camp between 1942 and 1945 was Hermann Pister 1942 1945 He was tried in 1947 Dachau Trials and sentenced to death but on 28 September 1948 he died in Landsberg Prison of a heart attack before the sentence could be carried out 14 Female prisoners and overseers Edit This section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Buchenwald concentration camp news newspapers books scholar JSTOR March 2019 Learn how and when to remove this template message 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 Ravensbruck 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 Auschwitz Ravensbruck and Bergen Belsen Only one barracks was set aside for them this was overseen by the female block leader Blockfuhrerin Franziska Hoengesberg who came from Essen when it was evacuated All the women prisoners were later shipped out to one of Buchenwald s many female satellite camps in Sommerda Buttelstedt Muhlhausen 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 Edit 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 EditMain article Allied airmen at Buchenwald concentration camp Although it was highly unusual for German authorities to send Western Allied POWs to concentration camps Buchenwald held a group of 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 occupied France Two explanations are given for them being sent to a concentration camp first that they had managed to make contact with the French Resistance some were disguised as civilians and they were carrying false papers when caught they were therefore categorized by the Germans as spies which meant their rights under the Geneva Convention were not respected The second explanation is that they had been categorised as 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 US boxcars and sent to Buchenwald The journey took five days during which they received very little food or water 23 Victims EditCauses of death Edit nbsp 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 starvation many while performing grueling forced labor 24 making consequent illnesses prevalent Malnourished and suffering from disease many were literally worked to death under the Vernichtung durch Arbeit policy extermination through labor as inmates only had the choice between slave labor or inevitable execution Many inmates were killed by human experimentation or fell victim to arbitrary acts perpetrated by the SS guards Other prisoners were simply murdered 25 primarily by shooting and hanging As part of Action 14f13 prisoners deemed too weak or sick to work were sent to Sonnenstein Killing Facility where they were murdered with carbon monoxide gas Walter Gerhard Martin Sommer was an SS Hauptscharfuhrer who served as a guard at the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald Known as the Hangman of Buchenwald he was considered a depraved sadist who reportedly ordered Otto Neururer and Mathias Spanlang two Austrian priests to be 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 26 27 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 vaccines against epidemic typhus in 1942 and 1943 In all 729 inmates were used as test subjects of whom 154 died 28 Other experimentation occurred at Buchenwald on a smaller scale One such experiment aimed at determining the precise fatal dose of a poison of the alkaloid group according to the testimony of one doctor four Soviet POWs were administered the poison and when it proved not to be fatal they were strangled in the crematorium and subsequently dissected 29 Among various other experiments was one which in order to test the effectiveness of a balm for wounds from incendiary bombs involved inflicting very severe white phosphorus burns on inmates 30 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 31 Number of deaths Edit Main article Number of deaths in Buchenwald nbsp Corpses found in the camp after liberationThe 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 32 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 33 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 34 Executions by shooting 8 483 Executions by hanging estimate 1 100 Deaths during evacuation transports estimate 13 500 35 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 36 Liberation Edit nbsp Prisoner of KZ Buchenwald with member of SS personnel after entry of U S Army 1945 nbsp U S Senator Alben W Barkley D Kentucky looks on after Buchenwald s liberation source source source source source source source source source source source source source source Orphans of Buchenwald Ex Prisoners Coming Home Air Views HQ and Camps 1945 film from US National ArchivesOn 4 April 1945 the U S 89th Infantry Division overran 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 forced to join the evacuation marches 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 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 U S Third Army responded KZ Bu Hold out Rushing to your aid Staff of Third Army nbsp Interior of the barracks pictured after liberation by Jules Rouard fr on 16 April 1945According to Teofil Witek a fellow Polish prisoner who witnessed the transmissions Damazyn fainted after receiving the message 38 nbsp 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 6th Armored Division part of the U S Third Army and under the command of 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 Edit 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 Edit nbsp Ilse Koch testifiesBuchenwald trial Edit Main article Buchenwald trial Thirty SS perpetrators at Buchenwald were tried before a US military tribunal in 1947 including Higher SS and Police Leader 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 Edit nbsp Buchenwald memorial by Fritz CremerBetween 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 Ravensbruck 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 Edit nbsp Slave laborers at Buchenwald after liberation in 1945Survivors who have written about their camp experiences include Jorge Semprun who in Quel beau dimanche describes conversations involving Goethe and Leon Blum and Ernst Wiechert whose Der Totenwald was written in 1939 but not published until 1945 and which likewise involved Goethe Scholars have investigated how camp inmates used art to help deal with their circumstances and according to Theodor Ziolkowski writers often did so by turning to Goethe 54 Artist Leon 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 Edit source source source source source source source source source source source source Video of President Obama s visitOn 5 June 2009 U S President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Buchenwald after a tour of Dresden Castle and Church of Our Lady During the visit they were accompanied by Elie Wiesel and Bertrand Herz both survivors of the camp 58 Volkhard Knigge de the director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau Dora Memorials Foundation and honorary professor of University of Jena guided the four guests through the remainder of the site of the camp 59 During the visit Wiesel who together with Herz were sent to the Little camp as 16 year old boys said if these trees could talk His statement marked the irony about the beauty of the landscape and the horrors that took place within the camp 59 President Obama mentioned during his visit that he had heard stories as a child from his great uncle who was part of the 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 EditBuchenwald Resistance List of subcamps of Buchenwald Number of deaths in Buchenwald Ohrdruf forced labor camp Persecution of Jehovah s Witnesses in Nazi Germany The Boys of Buchenwald List of prisoners of BuchenwaldReferences Edit 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 Jardim Tomaz 2023 Ilse Koch on Trial Making the Bitch of Buchenwald Cambridge MA Harvard University Press p 1 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 Quarry Buchenwald Memorial Quarry Buchenwald Memorial Luza Radomir 1984 The resistance in Austria 1938 1945 University of Minnesota Press 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 Langbein Hermann 1994 Against All Hope Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps 1938 1945 Translated by Harry Zohn New York Paragon House p 502 ISBN 1 55778 363 2 Best Brian 2015 Reporting the Second World War Casemate Publishers p 234 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 Gottingen pp 325 326 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a 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 Tillack Graf Anne Kathleen 2012 Erinnerungspolitik der DDR Dargestellt an der Berichterstattung der Tageszeitung Neues Deutschland uber die Nationalen Mahn und Gedenkstatten Buchenwald Ravensbruck und Sachsenhausen Frankfurt am Main Peter Lang p 94 ISBN 978 3 631 63678 7 Gesetzblatt der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik vom 4 September 1961 Teil II Nr 61 Tillack Graf Anne Kathleen 2012 Erinnerungspolitik der DDR Dargestellt an der Berichterstattung der Tageszeitung Neues Deutschland uber die Nationalen Mahn und Gedenkstatten Buchenwald Ravensbruck und Sachsenhausen Frankfurt am Main Peter Lang pp 2 3 88 91 ISBN 978 3 631 63678 7 Buchenwald and Mittelbau Dora Memorials Foundation Purpose of the Foundation Buchenwald and Mittelbau Dora Memorials Foundation Retrieved 18 August 2012 Ziolkowski Theodore 2001 Das Treffen in Buchenwald oder Der vergegenwartigte Goethe Modern Language Studies 31 1 131 50 doi 10 2307 3195281 JSTOR 3195281 Jenkins David Fraser 2000 John Piper The Forties New Age International p 84 ISBN 978 0 85667 534 8 Wiesel Elie 2007 La Nuit 2nd ed Paris Editions 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 a b Buchenwald The WhiteHouseBlog whitehouse gov 5 June 2009 Retrieved 18 August 2012 via 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 ASIN B0000BGX5M Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften 1983 edition 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 standigen historischen Ausstellung in German 5th ed Gottingen 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 uber die Nationalen Mahn und Gedenkstatten Buchenwald Ravensbruck und Sachsenhausen Peter Lang Frankfurt am Main ISBN 978 3 631 63678 7 Wachsmann Nikolaus 2015 KL A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps New York Macmillan ISBN 978 1 4299 4372 7 Zanden Christine Schmidt van der 2009 Buchenwald Subcamp System In Megargee Geoffrey P ed Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933 1945 Vol 1 Bloomington United States Holocaust Memorial Museum pp 567 569 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 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum pp 567 569 ISBN 978 0 253 35328 3 Further reading EditKnigge Volkhard und Ritscher Bodo Totenbuch Speziallager Buchenwald 1945 1950 Weimar Stiftung Gedenkstatten Buchenwald und Mittelbau Dora 2003 Tillack Graf Anne Kathleen Erinnerungspolitik der DDR Dargestellt an der Berichterstattung der Tageszeitung Neues Deutschland uber die Nationalen Mahn und Gedenkstatten Buchenwald Ravensbruck und Sachsenhausen Peter Lang Frankfurt am Main 2012 ISBN 978 3 631 63678 7 External links Edit nbsp 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 Pathe on YouTube Portals nbsp Germany nbsp World War II 51 01 20 N 11 14 53 E 51 02222 N 11 24806 E 51 02222 11 24806 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Buchenwald concentration camp amp oldid 1175856898, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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