Day 141 - Remembering Buchenwald 2012 and always!

This blog from Day 1 onward is my Dad's memoir about his experiences during World War II, both as a civilian and a Belgian political prisoner in several prisons in France as well as in Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. 

I am Louis' daughter Paula and have blogged his memoir in the last year - he passed away 23 years ago.  Naturally, I always have mixed feelings on Remembrance Day.  On one hand, I feel incredibly lucky that my Dad survived the concentration camp experience at both Buchenwald and Auschwitz.

On the other hand, I also feel very sad for all those people who have suffered because of war.  My Dad saw many people die in horrible ways and so I like to especially remember those who didn't make it as well as their families!

Remembering Buchenwald.....
THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS ARE FROM:
Working to Death
The Buchenwald Concentration Camp 
Kristina Mitim
Professor Lockhart and Professor Gramer
Independent Study 199 - April 9, 2000

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.  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,

"But while the men who had bee liberated made the air ring with their rejoicing, a remnant of the 26,000 men who had been shipped out of Buchenwald during the final weeks were starving and suffocating in fifty railroad cars on the outskirts of the Dachau Camp—nameless, immortal victims."With the discovery of Buchenwald, the western world faced the reality of German atrocities.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.

"…I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it I have no words. Dead men are plentiful in war, but the living dead, more than twenty thousand of them in one camp. And the country round about was pleasing to the eye, and the Germans were well fed and well dressed."With unflinching clarity, photographs of the victims reached American newsstands in Life Magazine. Nazi concentration camps shocked the world with their brutality. As victim’s images entered public consciousness Buchenwald became a symbol of unbelievable horror.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,

"Living there as no animal would live, they earned the respect of all mankind forever.That, I think, is the final moral of a place like Buchenwald. You can do what you will to man, but you cannot eradicate the power of his spirit. You can torture him; he will come back to face you again. You can make him live in filth and feed him excrement; he can still be greater than you are. You can kill him, burn him, scatter his ashes on a garbage dump; his ideals will kill you in the end. You cannot debase man, for in so doing you must lower yourself beneath him, and—no matter what you do—he always will be higher and stronger than you are. That is why no concentration camp in history has ever been successful in doing what it seeks to do, and why no concentration camp ever will be. Buchenwald carried the seeds of its own downfall in itself when its first strand of barbed wire was strung a decade ago, and every Buchenwald ever built always will.
But we forget so easily. Perhaps, to remember better, we should commemorate Buchenwald as we commemorate other things of which we are prouder."But Buchenwald was not commemorated immediately after its liberation. In fact the German concentration camp became a Russian interment camp. Between 1945 to 1950, the Soviet forces used the area to hold members of the Fascist party. Of the 28,000 internees, 7,000 died because of neglect and undernourishment.
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,

"Buchenwald and the other memorials of Nazi infamy reveal the depths to which humanity can sink, and has sunk, in these frightful years. They reveal the awful fate which may engulf all civilizations unless these devils of our pride and of our ruthlessness and of the cult of force are exorcised."Remembering the past through memorials like Buchenwald may enable society to face the reality of man’s brutal nature and strive harder to control the destructive tendencies toward each other.

I especially like to keep the memory of my Dad and his fellow prisoners at Buchenwald alive in my mind, both those who made it and those who didn't.................