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'''Buchenwald concentration camp''' was a [[Nazi concentration camp]] established on the Ettersberg (the Etter Mountain) located near [[Weimar]], [[Thuringia]], [[Germany]], in July [[1937]]. The prisoners were primarily used as [[Labor camp|slave labor]] in local armament factories.
'''Buchenwald concentration camp''' was a [[Nazi concentration camp]] established on the Ettersberg (the Etter Mountain) located near [[Weimar]], [[Thuringia]], [[Germany]], in July [[1937]]. The prisoners were primarily used as [[Labor camp|slave labor]] in local armament factories.
COLIN FUDA IS LIKE TO DIE FWAR.


Between [[1945]] and [[1950]] the camp was used by the [[Soviet]] occupational authorities.
Between [[1945]] and [[1950]] the camp was used by the [[Soviet]] occupational authorities.

Revision as of 14:53, 10 April 2007

Gate with the words Jedem das Seine ("To each his own")

Buchenwald concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg (the Etter Mountain) located near Weimar, Thuringia, Germany, in July 1937. The prisoners were primarily used as slave labor in local armament factories. COLIN FUDA IS LIKE TO DIE FWAR.

Between 1945 and 1950 the camp was used by the Soviet occupational authorities.

History

Slave laborers in Buchenwald; (Elie Wiesel is second row, seventh from left)
Bodies of the Buchenwald concentration camp prisoners, April 1945
File:Buchenwald-bei-Weimar-am-24-April-1945.gif
A member of the U.S. Congressional Nazi crimes committee visiting Buchenwald

The word "Buchenwald" (German for "beech forest") was chosen because the Nazi authorities were not willing to name it after the Ettersburg (the keep) or Ettersberg (the mountain) because of the close ties of the location to Goethe, who was being idealized as "the embodiment of the German Spirit" ("Verkörperung des Deutschen Geistes"). Similarly, the camp could not be named for another town nearby (Hottelstedt) because of administrative considerations (it would have resulted in a lower paygrade for the SS troops stationed at the camp).

Between July 1937 and April 1945, approximately 250,000 people were incarcerated in Buchenwald by the Nazi regime, including 168 American, Australian, British and Canadian POWs and a few Gay men. The number of deaths is estimated at 56,000.

Many inmates died during human experimentations, or fell victim to arbitrary acts perpetrated by the SS guards. At one point, the ashes of prisoners would be returned to families in a sheet metal box, but postage was due by the family. This was stopped as more and more prisoners died.

Although not technically an extermination camp, summary executions of Soviet prisoners of war took place at Buchenwald. At least 1,000 Soviet POWs were selected in 1941-1942 by a task force of three police officers of the Dresden Gestapo and sent to Buchenwald. Immediately after their arrival they were killed by a gunshot in the back of the head.

The camp was also the site of large-scale testing of vaccines for epidemic typhus in 1942 and 1943, all in all testing 729 inmates, around 280 of whom died. Because of their long association in cramped quarters in Block 46, the bacterium killed more and infection lasted longer than typhus in healthy adults.

The first commandant was Karl Otto Koch, who ran the camp from 1937 to 1941. His second wife, Ilse Koch, became notorious as Die Hexe von Buchenwald ("The Witch of Buchenwald"), for her cruelty and brutality. Koch had a zoo built by the prisoners in the camp for the amusement of his children.

Koch was imprisoned at Buchenwald by Nazi authorities for corruption, embezzlement, black market dealings and his exploitation of camp workers. He was tried and executed by the Nazi authorities at Buchenwald in April 1945, whilst Ilse was sentenced to 4 years after the war. Her sentence was reduced to two years and she was set free. Later, she was arrested again and was sentenced to life imprisonment by the post-war German authorities. She committed suicide in a Bavarian prison cell in September, 1967.

The camp was also the main imprisonment for a number of Norwegian university students from 1943 until the end of the war. The students, being Norwegian, got better treatment than most, but had to resist Nazi schooling for months. They became remembered for resisting forced labour in a minefield, as the Nazis wished to use them as cannon fodder. The incident connected to this was remembered as the Strike at Burkheim. The Norwegian students in Buchenwald lived in a warmer house of stones and had their own clothes. [1]

During an American bombing attack on 24 August 1944 that was directed at a nearby armament factory, several bombs, including incendiaries, also fell on the camp, resulting in heavy casualties amongst the inmates.

In autumn 1944 the 1,960 Danish policemen, who were arrested and deported to Germany on 19 September 1944, came to Buchenwald.[2] Due to the negotiations between the Danish civil service and the German occupation forces, the Danish policemen received packs from the Danish Red Cross. The deported Danish policemen sometimes used the Red Cross packs to "organize" things. I.e. when other prisoners had pinched things from the kitchen, which was used to prepare things for the SS guards, the Danish police could swap these things.[3]. Because of the negotiations between the Danish Civil Service and the German occupation forces the deported Danish policemen got status as prisoners of war. On 16 December 1944 1,604 of the Danish policemen left Buchenwald to go to Mühlberg, a camp for prisoners of war. During the stay in Buchenwald 62 of the Danish policemen died.

The camp was partly evacuated by the Nazis on 8 April, 1945, as the US Fourth Army 22nd Infantry Regiment and 12th Infantry Regiment approached. Communist inmates stormed after that the watchtowers, killed the remaining guards and took over control. The communists used arms they had collected since 1942 (they had one machine gun and 91 rifles). The US Third Army assumed control of the camp two day later on 11 April 1945.

After the departure of Allied troops, the Soviet occupation forces used the infrastructure of the camp from 1945 to 1950, re-naming it "Special Camp 2".

Soviet Special Camp

Picture taken in winter of area where prisoner huts once were

After the liberation, between 1945 and February 10 1950 the camp was administered by the Soviet Union and served as a Special Camp No. 2 of the NKVD. Initially used for housing German war criminals, with time it was converted into a standard detention site for political prisoners and opposition to Soviet rule.

Between 1945 and 1950, 28,455 prisoners, including 1,000 women, were held by the Soviet Union at Buchenwald. Prisoners consisted of political prisoners, Nazi perpetrators, Hitler Youth members, as well as a large number people imprisoned due to identity confusion and arbitrary arrests. For example, John H. Noble from the American-German family who owned the Praktica Camera company was held there until 1950, before transfer to the camps in the Soviet Union, simply because the Soviets wanted the family's factories. The Soviets would not allow mail or visitation to prisoners and did not attempt to determine the guilt of any individual prisoner.

Many thousands of prisoners (estimates range from 12,000 to over 22,000) would die at the camp while in the Soviet Union's control. The dead were buried in mass graves by the rail yard and no notification was sent to family members upon death.

On January 16 1950 the camp was passed to the civilian authorities of the GDR and included 2,415 prisoners. In October 1950, it was decreed that the camp would be torn down. The main gate, crematorium, the Hospital Block and two guard towers escaped demolition. All prisoner barracks and other buildings were demolished. Foundations of some of the buildings still exist and many others have been rebuilt. According to the Buchenwald Memorial web site, "the combination of obliteration and preservation was dictated by a specific concept for interpreting the history of Buchenwald Concentration Camp."

The first monument was erected days after the initial liberation. Intended as completely temporary, it was built by the prisoners and was made of wood. The second monument to commemorate the dead was erected there in 1958 by the GDR near the mass graves. Inside the camp, there is a living monument in the place of the first monument and is kept at skin temperature year round.

People

Female prisoners and overseers

The number of women prisoners held in Buchenwald was about 200 to 1,000. The first female inmates were twenty political prisoners and one female SS guard (Aufseherin) who arrived in Buchenwald from Ravensbrück to serve in the camp's brothel in 1941. Later the SS fired the SS woman on duty in the brothel because she was accused of corruption, and her position was replaced by "brothel mothers" as ordered by SS Chief Himmler.

The majority of women prisoners, however, arrived in 1944 and 1945 from other camps, i.e. Auschwitz, Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen. Most of these women were Jewish. Only one barrack was set aside for the female prisoners, and this was overseen by the female Blockführerin, Franziska Hoengesberg, who came from Essen when it was evacuated. All of the women prisoners were later shipped out to one of Buchenwald's many female subcamps in Sömmerda, Buttelstedt, Mühlhausen, Gotha, Gelsenkirchen, Essen, Lippstadt, Weimar, Magdeburg and Penig, to name a few. No female guards were permanently stationed at Buchenwald.

When the Buchenwald camp was evacuated, the SS sent the male prisoners to other camps, and the 500 remaining women (including one of the secret annex members who lived with Anne Frank, "Mrs. van Daan" -- her real name was Auguste van Pels) were taken by train and foot to the Theresienstadt camp and ghetto in Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Many, including van Pels, died sometime between April 1945 and May 1945. Because the female prisoner population at Buchenwald was comparatively small, the SS only trained female overseers at the camp and "assigned" them to one of the female subcamps. 22 known female guards have personnel files at the camp, but it is unlikely that they permanently stayed at Buchenwald for longer than a few days.

Ilse Koch served as "head supervisor" (Oberaufseherin) of 22 other female guards and hundreds of women prisoners in the main camp. Eventually, more than 530 women served as guards in the vast Buchenwald system of subcamps and external commands across Germany. Only twenty-two women served/trained in Buchenwald, compared to over 15,000 men.

Western Allied airmen

Buchenwald is also notorious as having held a group of 168 Western Allied aviators.[4] These prisoners of war (POWs) were from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They all arrived at Buchenwald on April 20, 1944.[5]

All of these airmen were in planes which 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, were disguised as civilians and were carrying false papers, when caught and were therefore categorised 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 ("terrorist aviators"). The aviators were initially held at Gestapo prisons and headquarters in France. In April 1944, they and other Gestapo prisoners were packed into boxcars and sent to Buchenwald. The journey took five days, during which they received very little food or water. One aviator held in Buchenwald recalled their arrival at the camp:

As we got close to the camp and saw what was inside...a terrible, terrible fear and horror entered our hearts. We thought, what is this? Where are we going? Why are we here? And as you got closer to the camp and started to enter the camp and saw these human skeletons walking around—old men, young men, boys, just skin and bone, we thought, what are we getting into?[6]

They were subjected to the same treatment and abuse as other Buchenwald prisoners, until October 1944, when a change in policy saw the aviators despatched to Stalag Luft III a normal POW camp. Two of the airmen died at Buchenwald.[7]

Well-known Nazi personnel

Well-known inmates

File:Buchenwald-J-Rouard-12.jpg
Buchenwald inmates
Buchenwald memorial


See also

  • Bodo Ritscher: Das sowjetische Speziallager Nr. 2 1945-1950. Katalog zur ständigen historischen Ausstellung; Göttingen: Wallstein, 1999
  • Volkhard Knigge und Bodo Ritscher: Totenbuch. Speziallager Buchenwald 1945-1950; Weimar: Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau Dora, 2003
  • Jan von Flocken/Michael Klonovsky: Stalins Lager in Deutschland 1945-1950. Dokumentation,Zeugenberichte; Berlin: Ullstein, 1991; ISBN 3-550-07488-3
  • Bruno Apitz: Nackt unter Wölfen (Naked among Wolves). Fictional account of the last days of Buchenwald before the US-American liberation based upon a true story. Available as a book in German or as a movie in German with English subtitles. Book: Aufbau Taschenbuchverlag, 1998; ISBN 3-7466-1420-1 Translations into English and other languages exist, but are out of print.
  • Eugen Kogon: The Theory and Practice of Hell: the German Concentration Camps and teh System Behind Them; New York; Farrar Strauss; 1950 republished 2006
  • Brian James: in You Magazine (Mail on Sunday/Daily Mail) August 1992, "The Dream that Wouldn't die". An account of John Noble's experiences in Buchenwald under Soviet Rule and the Soviet camp system in the 1950s. The article includes a reference to 3000 Westerners as Soviet prisoners in 1954.
  • John H. Noble: "I was a Slave in Russia: An American Tells his Story".

Notes

  1. ^ "19. september" by Carl Aage Redlich, published 1945, page 55.
  2. ^ The Danish police had been functioning from the beginning of the German occupation April 1940, They continued to do so also after the resignation of the Danish government August 1943. After the Danish government's resignation, the Danish Civil Service still cooperated with the German occupation forces to some extent. The German occupation forces though had lost confidence in the Danish police because of the growing sabotage from the resistance movement.
  3. ^ Podcast with one of 2,000 Danish policemen in Buchenwald. Episode 5 is about what the Red Cross packs implied.
  4. ^ Veterans Affairs Canada, 2006, "Prisoners of War in the Second World War"
  5. ^ [http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=1575 National Museum of the USAF, "Allied Victims of the Holocaust"
  6. ^ From The Lucky Ones: Allied Airmen and Buchenwald (1994 film, directed by Michael Allder) cited by Veterans Affairs Canada, Ibid
  7. ^ National Museum of the USAF, Ibid.
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51°01′20″N 11°14′53″E / 51.02222°N 11.24806°E / 51.02222; 11.24806

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