Transcript Experiences at Buchenwald

Experiences at
Buchenwald
Experiences at Buchenwald
Acknowledgements
This source collection
is made by Chris Rowe
with the support of
Buchenwald Memorial
and Mateo Martinez.
This collection is part
of the unit “Internment
without a trial:
Examples from the
Nazi and Soviet
regimes” that is
developed in the MultiFacetted Memory
project.
More information
www.euroclio.eu/multifacetted-memory
The ideological purpose of Buchenwald was to submerge the
individual in a group identity; not only to imprison and intimidate
inmates but to dehumanise them. But the experiences of people in
camps such as Buchenwald were complicated and varied. Different
people reacted differently to the circumstances they faced, What
seemed simple distinctions between perpetrators and victims were
not simple at all; nor was the apparently joyous experience of
liberation in 1945.
Experiences reflected the changing context of the camp at
Buchenwald. From 1937 to 1941, the Third Reich was at peace, or
was flushed with the ‘success’ of victories in a European war. From
the end of 1941 to 1945, the Reich experienced Total War, with
increasing economic hardships and intensified ideology that
culminated in the Holocaust. By May 1945, all organisation of the
camp system had collapsed , as was revealed by the appalling
conditions and mass deaths uncovered by the liberation.
Experiences changed again when the camp was re-opened as a
Soviet special camp.
Czech prisoners arriving at
Buchenwald, 1939
Czechs who have arrived from a transport
from Pilsen. (United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, Washington)
Viennese Jews arrive at Buchenwald
Viennese Jews who have been deported standing on the muster ground in civilian
clothing in October 1939 (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington)
New prisoners at registration
Registration of Jewish men on November 1938 (American Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee, New York)
Roll call, November 1938
Arrested Jews standing for roll call in blocks. One third of those imprisoned in
Buchenwald, were of Jewish origin. The mass arrests was a result of the nationwide
pogroms of the Night of the Broken Glass - attacks on Jewish businesses and people
throughout Germany on November 9-10, 1938. (United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, Washington)
Roma/Sinti prisoners (Autumn 1939 or Spring 1940)
Roma/Sinti from Burgenland, Austria are compelled to stand for roll call on the
occasion of a visit from a high/ranking SS officer. Buchenwald was initially established
as a detention centre for political prisoners, such as German communists or social
democrats. After July 1938, German and Austrian Roma/Sinti prisoners were
imprisoned in the camp, as well. (Photo: SS, 1939. United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, Washington)
Disabled prisoners, June 1938
Five disabled persons in inmate’s uniform. The triangular badges identify them as Jews.
The ‘law’ in the Third Reich looked down upon disabled people, labeling them ‘life
unworthy of life’ and highlighting them as a burden to society. In Nazi usage,
“euthanasia” referred to the systematic killing of the mentally and physically disabled.
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington)
Example of registration of prisoners
Special Index Card used for inmates of the Pogrom Camp 1938. In this case Hermann
Nathan was taken into custody according to "Jew Action” dated 10.11.38 on that same
day by the Kassel Authorities and was transferred to Buchenwald one day later. His
stay was short as he was released on December 7th 1938, he was married with two
children. His religion is given as "mos" meaning he is a son of Moses. (No known
copyright restrictions)
Disinfection of inmates of the Polish-Jewish Special Camp on the muster
ground, autumn of 1939.
Buchenwald Concentration Camp Records Office. (United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, Washington)
The dining hall in the SS casino at Buchenwald.
Postcard published by the Waffen SS (Sammlung Gedenkschtaette Buchenwald)
Commandant Koch with his son at Buchenwald Zoo, situated close to the
concentration camp. Oktober 1939
Public Domain
Italian guest at the Buchenwald Falkenhaus, greeted by among others the
Gauleiter of Thuringia, and the camp commandant, Karl Koch. 1940
Gedenkstätte Buchenwald
The first snow at Buchenwald, December 1940. Artwin Koch with his parents in
front of the camp commandant’s building.
From an album of photographs assembled by Karl and Ilse Koch fortheir son, Artwin.
Karl Koch had the album put together by prisoners in the camp’s book-binding
workshop. The album was used by the American prosecution team as evidence in the
Buchenwald Trial which took place in Dachau in 1947. The album is held today in the
National Archives in Washington. (Public Domain)
Werner Fricke with his wife and friends in 1941
SS-Hauptscharführer Werner Fricke, head of the Weimar Buchenwald Registrar’s Office
II from 1939 to 1945, with his wife and friends in front of their new house in the SS
colony II near Kleinobringen. (Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar)
The prisoners library
A number of pictures were made to the order of the Lagerkommandant and they
contain a comprehensive recording of the premises of the camp. The pictures were
made by prisoners from the photo department. (End of 1943) (Musée de la Résistance
et de la Déportation, Besançon)
Inmates at work at the Records Office; to the right the Jehovah’s Witness Karl
Siebeneichler in the end of 1943
The department’s most important task is to produce photos for the inmates’ personal
data card file. (Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation, Besançon)
Buchenwald: from left to right, the laundry building, the Goethe Oak and the
kitchen. June, 1944
Some inmates drew strength from the idea that Goethe once sat under this tree. From 1943 there
were some foreign prisoners working in the photography department. They had limited access to
a collection of cameras. In June 1944 Geoges Angéli secretly took eleven photos, mostly in the
Small Camp His motive was to provide testimony for what had happened in the camp. Angéli
considered it to be an act of resistance. He hid the photographs, so they survived the destruction
of the photography department in August 1944. The photos were displayed in small exhibitions
organised by the FNDIRP, of which Angéli is a member. The true meaning and origin of the photos
was not publicly known until the 1990s. (Sammlung Gedenkschtaette Buchenwald)
The dentists' treatment room for the
SS authorities in Buchenwald at the
end of 1943
(Musée de la Résistance et de la
Déportation, Besançon)
Execution of inmates, May 11th, 1942
Polish inmates before their public
execution in a forest near Poppenhausen,
Thuringia. The 19-year-old Polish slave
laborer Jan Sówka awaits execution by
hanging for the murder of a German
policeman. In April 1942, a Polish forced
laborer was beaten unconscious by a
German
policeman
named
Albin
Gottwald. Two Polish men took revenge
on Gottwald and stabbed him to death on
a forest path near Poppenhausen. One of
the two Poles, Jan Sówka was captured.
On 11 May 1942, nineteen prisoners from
Buchenwald concentration camp were
taken to the place in the woods where
Gottwald’s body had been found., to be
punished for the act committed
by Sówka and his accomplice. The
German soldiers built three gallows. The
execution of the nineteen Polish prisoners
began at 10:50 where the prisoners were
hanged one after another. Finally, Sówka
was hanged after being forced to witness
the deaths of the others. Hundreds of
Polish forced laborers were rounded up
and forced to watch the executions.
(United State Holocaust Memorial
Museum, Washington )
Forced labour
Inmates clearing rubble after air raid on the ground of the Gustloff Works. Photo made
after August 24, 1944
Inmates of Buchenwald marching back to the camp from the sub-camp at the
Gustloff-Works, 1944.
Buchenwald was primarily a forced labour camp. The prison population grew rapidly to
support wartime industries in nearby sub-camps (Sammlung Gedenkstätte
Buchenwald)
Personal card for a detainee
8 March 1944
Exclusion within exclusion: the Little Camp. June 1944
This quarantine zone was separated from the rest of the camp. The accommodation
consisted of windowless stable barracks and tents. (Sammlung Gedenkschtaette
Buchenwald)
At the end of the camp road there was a brothel in which women from Ravensbruck
Concentration Camp were forced to work as prostitutes from 1943 onward. Non-Jewish
inmates are permitted to purchase a visit to the brothel as a reward for good work.
(June 1944). (Sammlung Gedenkschtaette Buchenwald)
Medical experiments (June 1944)
Inmates in front of Block 46, where medical experiments were carried out on inmates 9
Sammlung Gedenkschtaette Buchenwald)
Death Marches (January 18 1945)
A drawing by Walter Spitzer, showing a death march from Auschwitz arriving at
Buchenwald Nearly 60,000 prisoners wee forced on death marches from the Auschwitz
camp system; more than 15,000 died during the marches.
Almost liberated, 2 April 1945
Near the end of the war, the Allied armies closed in on the Nazi concentration camps. The Soviets
approached from the east, and the British, French, and Americans from the west. The Germans
began frantically to move the prisoners to camps deeper inside Germany; the SS authorities did
not want prisoners to fall into enemy hands alive to tell their stories to the liberators. Prisoners
were forced to march long distances in bitter cold, with little or no food, water, or rest. Those who
could not keep up were shot. On April 2, shortly before the camp was liberated, the Nazis began a
mass evacuation of more than 30 000 prisoners from Buchenwald and its sub-camps. About 8,000
died during the march. Before the march began, the Nazis burnt down the barracks and the SS
shot dead between 60 and 70 prisoners who were too weak to start the march.
Children at Buchenwald (after 11 April 1945)
Children whose parents were killed in Buchenwald were taken care by the other
inmates of the camp.
Evidence of brutality
Many of the slave laborers had died from malnutrition when U.S. troops of the 80th
Div. entered the camp. 16 April 1945. When Buchenwald was liberated on April 11,
1945, the US soldiers uncovered shocking scenes and evidence of the camp’s brutality.
They found bodies of starved and exhausted victims as well as emaciated
survivors. (Public Domain)
Weimar citizens visiting the camp after liberation (16.04.1945)
Citizens of Weimar standing before a trailer filled with bodies in the inner yard of the
crematorium facility. These civilians were compelled to visit the site by the American
commander Lorenz Schmuhl, to witness evidence of the atrocities committed there.
(Schmuhl can be seen standing to the left of the trailer, wearing a steel helmet and
light-colored jacket).
1st of May1945
Labour Day Parade on the camp road (Sammlung Gedenkschtaette Buchenwald)
Nazi loot from Buchenwald victims.
These are a few of the thousands of wedding rings removed from their victims in order
to salvage the gold. 1st U.S. Army troops discovered these rings along with other
valuable article such as watches, precious stones, eyeglasses and gold teeth fillings, in a
cave adjoining the Buchenwald camp. 5 May 1945 (Public domain)
Prisoners welcome the liberators
American soldiers walk around Buchenwald. May 27th 1945. (National Archives,
Washington/public domain)
Four weeks after liberation (May
1945)
17-21 year old young people from
Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia.
Since their liberation they had the best
nutrition possible provided by the
Americans; but, even after four weeks,
the Hungarian boy sitting in the
middle was still so weak that he had to
be carried to his place to take this
picture. (Stadtarchiv Reutlingen,
Fotosammlung)
This collection is part of the unit
“Internment without a trial:
Examples from the Nazi and Soviet
regimes”
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