Concentration camps arose during the first months of the Nazi’s seizure of power within Germany. The SS, headed by Heinrich Himmler, had two objectives—to train a new ruling class and to eliminate all opposition for the party. Concentration camps accomplished both objectives. Although Himmler did not invent the camps, his secret service organizer Reinhard Heydrich reorganized them along uniform lines. The main purpose of concentration camps was to eliminate every trace of actual or potential opposition to Nazi rule. Camps also became a training place for the SS to learn brutality, a place to collect and exploit SS labor slaves, and place for large-scale scientific experimentation. The SS and SA designed the camps to hold communists, socialists and labor leaders who represented a symbolic threat to the Reich. The political enemies, combined with the moral enemies—criminals, homosexuals, and handicapped—simply did not fit in with German ideology. But beyond the simple ideological and moral enemies, Jews were considered "the very embodiment of evil and hence the most dangerous enemies to the volkisch state." Guards were taught to dehumanize the prisoners to achieve racial purity. Through segregation, debasement, humiliation and extermination the SS evoked an effective form of terror upon those judged unfit to join German society.

Erected in the summer of 1937, Buchenwald was located five miles north of Weimar in a dense forest region of Germany. A Goethe Tree, celebrated in German poetry, marked the center of the camp. Originally erected for political prisoners, Buchenwald grew to include gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and Jews. By the time of its liberation the concentration camp was one of the largest on German soil, with about 130 satellite camps and extension units. Not to be confused with a death camp, Buchenwald served as a labor camp and a deportation site. The primary goal was to exploit those useful prisoners for the German State. However, when overcrowding developed in the 1940’s, mass murders did occur at the German concentration camp.

On July 19, 1937, 149 inmates from Sachsenburg concentration camp became the first inhabitants of Buchenwald. On the second day 70 criminals joined them. On July 27^th, political prisoners and seven Jehovah witnesses became prisoners. Three days later 600 additional prisoners from Lichtenburg concentration camp joined. By Aug 6^th, some three weeks later, about 1,400 prisoners resided within the new Buchenwald concentration camp—mainly without shelter. They suffered without clean water or sanitation. But conditions of the unfinished camp did not cause terror—the rituals enacted within the camp’s boundaries did.

The workday lasted about fourteen hours including Sunday. Depending on the work detail, hours started at six in the morning to nine at night. Lunch lasted an hour, but there was no time for prisoners’ personal needs since roll was called twice. The rations given dwelt in the realm of twenty-cents per inmate—equating to a small loaf of bread and some water. The amount of labor details signified the high pressure under which the inmates worked. There were two quarry details, two excavation details, five transport details, a logging detail, a lumberyard detail, a barrack construction detail, a road building detail, a drainage detail, a water works detail, a power line detail, a materials dump detail a skilled construction workers detail, and various other jobs. By 1938 inmates finally constructed the electronically charged wire fence to surround the hundred-acre camp.

Like most concentration camps, Buchenwald developed into highly structured and functional society. The SS guards and block officers ruled with almost unrivaled authority. The SS guards who brutally beat, maimed, or killed prisoners under the guise of sabotage or escape attempts earned furloughs, extra pay or rapid promotions. In the hierarchy of power within the prisoner’s ranks, the senior camp inmate acted as a go between for the prisoners and SS. Underneath the senior camp inmate were the senior block inmates who were responsible for food rations and maintaining order in each block. The kapos were the prisoners who directed the work details. All levels of authority were extraordinarily corrupt, cruel, and brutal. Regardless of the character of each position, force kept order. Therefore brutal force was used regularly. Each prisoner wore a color-coded badge upon his sleeve to designate the reason for his internment. This made it easier for the SS guards to keep order, separate the moral from political inmates, and identification. (See Appendix I) The "Greens" or criminals held power among inmates during the camp’s early months because of their previous knowledge of brutality. But this power quickly transferred to the communists who keep order more efficiently. This underground communist leadership would later impact Buchenwald’s liberation and commemoration. Although early Buchenwald worked like a well-oiled machine, things changed rapidly as the population grew beyond capacity.

By 1938, Buchenwald prepared to take German Jews and Austrian Jews as inmates. Historian Jack Fischel argues that Buchenwald was a camp intended to pressure Jews to leave Germany. Upon seeing the circumstances within the camp, those prisoners released would leave German territory and resettle their families in other places without contaminating the German society. The Rath Action, commonly called Krystallnact, added 10,000 German Jews to Buchenwald’s prison population. Overcrowding forced every 2,000 new inmates to live in barracks designed for 400. Of the Krystallnact Jews, sixty-eight went completely insane and were beaten to death. Sanitation was so awful that SS guards pushed people’s heads into overflowing toilet bowls until they drowned. Hundreds died within the few weeks they stayed at Buchenwald. But, Fischel’s theory holds some credence since most of these Krystallnact inmates were released.

The tone in German concentration camps changed with the arrival of the war. By August of 1939, Buchenwald contained over 5,000 inmates. After the outbreak of war, arrests brought thousands of political prisoners and influx of 2,500 Polish and Austrian Jews to the already overcrowded camp. A "little camp" made mostly of tents was built outside the main camp to accommodate the Jews, gypsies and eastern Europeans. A political prisoner, Gerhard Haring, described the overcrowded ‘little camp’:

In 1942 things changed drastically within Buchenwald as the Nazis implemented the "Final Solution". Jackson Spielvogel attributes the drastic step in racial purification to the war. "A war against the Soviet Union was a war against the Jews" since Soviet Bolshevism was associated with Jews. The disorder of war also gave the Nazis the opportunity to systematically annihilate the Jews by hiding the facts of genocide. In October of 1942, the Jewish inmates began to be transported out of Buchenwald into the death camps in the east. The prisoners were loaded onto trains and shipped to places like Auschwitz for extermination. Attributed to internal sabotage, gassings never took place at Buchenwald because the facilities were never fully erected. As mass deportations occurred fear engulfed the entire camp. Those suitable for work found themselves shipped to work details while those with poor health or socially unacceptable found themselves shipped to their deaths. 13,000 people had been transferred to these extermination camps by 1945.

Although the tides began to turn in favor of the allies during 1944, time ran out for many of Buchenwald’s prisoners. As the Nazis lost ground, Buchenwald faced immense population and internal pressures. Although the concentration camp was not designated as a death camp, mass killings occurred with greater frequency. The Buchenwald stables became a type of "murder plant" where 8,000 Soviet prisoners of war were killed. (See Appendix III) The crematorium also became a place for executions. Prisoners were hung on the wall by hooks and then slowly strangled to death. The smoke emitted from the burning gradually increased to more than twice a week by the end of the war. These atrocities culminated in the first days of April 1945.

As the Soviet Union approached the German fronts in 1945, the Nazis had to abandon the Polish extermination camps and destroy the evidence of their sadomasochism before the allies discovered the atrocities. Auschwitz was liquidated. Those prisoners not yet killed were marched to German concentration camps of Dachau, Mauthauseu, and Buchenwald. Thousand of prisoners arrived in Buchenwald increasing the camp’s population to over 50,000. It became obvious that the liberation of the Buchenwald was inevitable as the American/British/French armies began to discover other concentration camps. But the last few days of Buchenwald proved to be the most fateful.

The Commandant Hermann Pister received orders from Berlin to get rid of the prison population before the allies could discover the camp. But Pister hesitated. Historian Robert Abzug attributes this hesitation to Pister’s practicality. Pister knew that Americans were coming and he wanted to present himself well, so he slowed attempt to evacuate and kill the prisoners. Between April 3^rd and 10^th over 20,000 inmates were transported out of the camp to Dachau, Flossenburg, and Theresienstadt. Most died on the journey. Through the communist resistance groups within the prisoners’ ranks, many SS orders were outright defied or stalled. Chaos began to reign within the camp. Pister did not threaten the inmates with the usual force and by April 10^th he fled with most of the SS guard leaving only a skeleton crew to control the camp.

The liberation of Buchenwald on April 11, 1945 sparked a heated debate for scholars and historians concerning resistance in concentration camps. The two accounts that exist reflect the way in which Buchenwald was commemorated. One theory holds that communists saved the camp’s inhabitants. The communist factions controlled the underground leadership of the camp. Calling themselves the International Committee, these prisoners were lead by the communist Hans Eiden. Throughout 1943 guns had been stolen from the armament and hidden. By noon, when distant gunfire echoed in the trees, the resistance overpowered the remaining SS guards and liberated the camp from inside. With power now in the hands of the prisoners they patiently waited for the Allies to bring supplies. The second theory holds that upon hearing the approaching gunfire in the afternoon, the SS guards fled into the forest. The prisoners then showed their guns without any enemy left to fight.

The American Combat Team 9 of the 9^th Armored Infantry Battalion, Sixth Armored Division reached the nearby town of Hottelstedt at noon. SS guards were found in the town and a small contingent of American soldiers was sent to investigate the location of a possible concentration camp. They stumbled upon Buchenwald and liberated 21,000 prisoners. The crematorium contained hundreds of half burned bodies since the coal had run out. Reflecting on the liberation, prisoner Eugen Kogon said,

Upon liberation, the Allies saw a macabre working society. The International Committee had complete control over the inhabitants of the main camp and they took over aid and relief efforts as well as dealing justice to the SS. Eighty guards were killed. Newspaper journalist Percy Knauth, who entered the camp shortly after the liberation saw a sign left over from the Nazis. "It was a big, white-painted proclamation, half-effaced now by wind and weather, but I could still read: ‘Honesty, Diligence, Pride, Ability—theses are the milestone of your way through here.’" But after viewing the inhabitants of the camp, it became evident that the irony and sarcasm of the German work ethic simply did not apply to the prisoners. The "little camp" inmates were held in such contempt that their gate remained locked days after liberation. Twenty or more prisoners continued to perish each day from malnutrition or disease. After revealing the reality of Buchenwald, questions arose--How had the world allowed such a thing to happen?

Of the estimated 250,000 people who entered Buchenwald, over 50,000 perished between 1937 and 1945. Edward R. Murrow, a renowned American broadcast journalist, reported the reality of the camp on CBS radio.

The misery in Buchenwald did not end with the liberation. Memorializing Buchenwald immediately became an issue once the survivors were cared for. The journalist Knauth wrote in 1946,

After 1951 most of the camp was demolished as the East German Democratic Republic (GDR) set up a memorial to anti-fascism. The Communist dominated government of post-war Germany influenced Buchenwald’s commemoration. They extolled the merits of those resistance fighters who liberated the camp, making the "terrain of mass murder into a celebration of antifascism." Heavily influenced by the GDR government, the memory of the East Germans centered around political victims. The huge monuments that eclipse Buchenwald are a testament to communist doctrine implying that, "Capitalists and their Fascist henchmen waged a war of aggression against workers everywhere. In the museum texts, all victims, regardless of national origin, religion, or reason for deportation, became "anti-Fascist fighters." East German memories and memorials only reflected the GDR.

Since the reunification of Germany, memory and memorial in Buchenwald has been hotly debated. Both Jewish victims and gypsies desire some sort of memorial. But a more disturbing request for commemoration comes from the Germans themselves. Although no evidence exists that the Germans interned at Buchenwald after 1945 were tortured, many deaths resulted. Although not victims of Nazism, these deaths are also tied to Buchenwald. Those opponents of the memorial claim that by commemorating these fascist Germans, one could be memorializing Nazism. The debate rages.

Buchenwald represented unspeakable terror for thousands of prisoners. Perhaps the Christian Century magazine said it best in 1945,

• The song was sung by the Jewish prisoners at the end of roll call in Buchenwald to degrade and demoralize themselves. Often sung to salute a visiting dignitary and congratulate the success of the Nazi concentration camps.

SOURCE: David A. Hackett, The Buchenwald Report (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 169.

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Knauth, Percy, Germany in Defeat. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1946.

Kogon, Eugene, The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German Concentration Camps and the System Behind Them. New York: Octagon Books, 1973.

Koontz, Claudia, Germany’s Buchenwald: Whose Shrine? Whose Memory?, pp. 111- 119.

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