Day 77 - "The last public hanging at Buchenwald"

"This was also the last time the gallows would be brought out for a public hanging.  Public hangings were used as an example for us all; in case we should think of trying an escape.


We had to watch the hangings for a couple of hours while the music played and the fellow, a Russian or Polish, I think, were slowly hung up and left to die.  Everybody was compelled to look upon it during that time.


His executioner, an S.S., would give a speech about daring to escape and that was it!  I always thought that there were two that I saw but from where I stood I had a rather awkward view and what with moving about, the helpers and the posts, my view from the distance was somewhat impeded.


Winter went by with snow and freezing temperatures and I had the only woman's fur coat in the camp.  It kept me decently warm, it was a bit thin and worn out but kept the freezing wind out very well.  It also covered up my escape outfit.  My hair was nearly normal now, no brush cut to spoil the effect!


The winter was made harder by the long roll calls.  We had to be counted and recounted until late into the night - they always found mistakes to be dealt with unless the S.S. was a slow poke.  We all quickly came to the conclusion that the long roll calls were a direct result of sour grapes on their part because of all the set backs they now had to face.


All of their fronts were now crumbling - even the home front!  However, they probably felt the need to preserve their institutions as long as they could and we were the shield in front of them.  That was the intended finale; to use us as human shields, our sole hope was to get and receive help from our Allies.


Churchill had refused the arms drop we had asked for in return for the destruction of the secret arsenal.  We thought that this would have given us the chance of getting the equalizer for which we had hoped.  It was believed that   Churchill would not give us what we wanted because of potential reprisals against the other camps...


Wing Commander Yeo Thomas had his reservations too!  He had been saved by the Camp Resistance (very much like myself), for its uses.  That is how he escaped death at the hands of the Gestapo and Nazis, not otherwise as the film suggested from the death transport.....




To be continued ...

Day 76 - Peenemunde - foreshadowing Hitler's downfall!

I recently discovered that the number I have been quoting as my Dad's Buchenwald number is incorrect.  My brother and I were relying on our memories of the number branded on my Dad's arm - it seems that neither of us were correct!   The number on his arm was allocated at Auschwitz and also slightly different from the number I have been quoting!!!!!  At this point, I am leaving the blog with the incorrect number. Somehow!!!Day 51 is in the wrong spot in the blog - sorry about that!


"A combination of planned and unplanned actions now came into play which helped hasten the downfall of Hitler.  The information that had recently been passed on to us was essential intelligence in relation to the V2's and V3's as well as the military installations for jet planes down in the valley.  There were enough weapons to have a ball.  "Peenemunde" was a baby in comparison.  Nevertheless, it was only Peenemunde that was ever mentioned out of it all!!!


Like most other concentration camps, Buchenwald is only known for its atrocities - no recommendations for the actions and deeds mentioned in this narration, which I believe were of the greatest importance to the overall cause.


The question, of course, why destroy a fifty thousand pound epic when you could combine two epics without losing any credibility and at the same time please an intelligent audience with a masterpiece!


If you have to squash or destroy a good film after the war in the process of something that is very wrong or else given credit to other nations or nations of other peoples, besides your own, is that it!  A further course of events would explain what I have just written, my writing is just like Buchenwald which had a veil hanging over it!!!!


My further explorations now found me caught in the underground tunnels near the V2's and it was here that I now met with what appeared to be another member of the S.S. - this time I had a completely different experience from what I had encountered when I had been beaten for another infraction.  This man was completely different in character - the contrast was so great that I was left wondering whether he was one of us or just monitoring the place after the bombing.  


It seemed to me that he was trying to hide just as much as I was!!  Possibly he could have been disguised as an S.S. and not concerned about me or what I was doing down there at all!  He had the character of a gentleman, with class, and appeared to be genuinely concerned about my welfare.  He advised me that it would be better for me not to hide down there and left me unscathed - I never saw him again after that either!


S.O.S. were operating on the inside now, taken from emigrant settlers from the U.S.A., with German origins.  Anyway, no further communications with me were tried - the incident I had experienced in the underground tunnels appeared to be purely coincidental in nature! 


If the man in the tunnel had been an S.S. officer things were really on the turn.  However, their blend was such that they could hardly change based on their oaths and so called honors of the new knights class.  To me, he didn't seem to belong to the lower echelons or brutal bullies we knew but appeared to be an aristocratic in his bearing!!!


In the camp events were rapidly changing now.  Criminals were completely eradicated from our ranks and the "politicals" were taking over to be Capos."




To be continued ...

Day 51 - A camp within a camp and timelessness!

See Day 1 (Blog 1) for introduction!


"There was still no drinking water so most of us drank of the dirty pools on the earthern floor with dire results to follow.  I abstained and found myself a place against the back of another fellow and alternatively against a wooden panel.  People started dropping downwards again and making room in this way.

I put one sole under my buttocks, the other under my feet.  In this way, I took some naps in the long and eventful night that followed.  First, I was rudely awakened by a couple of shots, some of our fellows got shot for daring to go outside for starters! That was out of bounds.

Later in the night, we heard muffled voices and shovelling and we couldn't make out why,  we weren't allowed to see anything, you see - we were always left completely in the dark.

The morning of another day arrived and we were allowed to go out into the early morning dew to the pit, managing for what we had to do!  The two shot bodies of our comrades were placed next to the pit to be hauled away.

When the food came around, which judging by the sunlight, was about nine, which I am afraid I cannot prove either, not having an instrument amongst us to give us a measure of time, I say all this as a matter of fact.  Sometimes, a machine made by man and programmed to his conceptions is more believed than man himself.

This again, seems to me, to be especially the case today.  I have noticed that many of the disbelievers of what happened in the camps have a special attraction to machines programmed to man's conceptions.  It is something they can see and therefore they justify their arguments through technology which I have observed with utter amazement but not disbelief like them! 

A knowledge of time was forgotten, somehow, by us, the soldiers had watches but it was safer to keeps ones distance from them.

After the bodies had been removed and the soldiers had left - don't forget we were a camp within a camp, we noticed and found ourselves inbetween barbed wire on the inside of an electrical fence.

The food was atrocious but we ate it eagerly, just a bowl with a glue-like, jelly-like substance holding the cabbage and some seeds together - I think it was some rye.  No utensils of course, a little bread was provided and we managed to pick the food up with the bread and slurped down the rest like animals do.

That was the idea, we were reduced or rather brought down to that
level ........ "

There is enough material in my Dad's memoirs for me to continue this blog for many more months!  I will also include official camp papers and other material that my Dad kept  from the war in the next few months!

Day 75 - D.O.R.A. "Deutshe Oberlander Rochetten Aktiengesel-shate!

One day a French pilot and other prisoners that I had known from a previous transport arrived at the camp.  Most of them died from tuberculosis shortly afterwards but from this group we learned all about D.O.R.A or The German Oberlander Rockets Company.  It was, of course, a long distance ballistic missile, enormous in size, that could maybe reach as far as London or New York - wherever its final destination was it could cause a lot of destruction and had to be stopped.

This was our pigeon and was our highest priority.  All our efforts and secrets would be in service to the destruction of this project.  The French pilot told us how they had to work day and night in the most appalling conditions to fulfill this program.  They had to participate in making tunnels in a very primitive way, the machinery was completely inadequate for the tasks they had to perform.  He said they worked almost non-stop inside a long ridge, dying and dropping down like flies.  They worked above and below ground walking miles to do the burrowing like the moles from their camp!

A lot of experts were brought in once the silo was up and the gigantic rocket started to take shape like a big monster; can you imagine an atomic bomb in this nose cone or even enough explosives to enable the missile to reach as far as New York!  What destruction that contraption could have caused.


Maybe, they couldn't exactly hit Times Square but they could hit New York from anywhere - at this point they had the capacity but not time which was running out very quickly.


The boycott and the messenger would have to go out very fast for this project so that the Allies could annihilate it with V2'S.


To be continued ...

Day 74 - Ranken-Revier ( First Aid Barracks) and V2's!

It came to pass that the hiding place for everything was under the chair, desk and floor of the S.S. doctor, a Bavarian in the "Ranken-Revier", the small row of first aid barracks stretched alongside near the fence on the left side on entering the camp.


The doctor had been playing a double role all along; from sending us on death transports to participating in single and multiple murders.  He was as culpable as any other S.S. and at the same time tried to save his own skin.  He had been taken into complete confidence by the camp elders, the all German seniors.  I don't know exactly when but I do know it was before my entry into Buchenwald.


The radio must have been there all along too and I can honestly say that most of us didn't know about it.  We couldn't even look the fellow straight in the eyes - it was best we didn't know him at all and vice versa but it is certain that quite a few prisoners were saved from the worst transports by his intervention.


After all the events that had just occurred, as before, we kept to our Commando's again. For a time, we held our respective old positions and collected screws and bolts to pile in heaps, moved bricks and planks back and forward and sometimes went to sit, for a while, on unexploded bombs to be left alone or have a tranquil rest.


Tom Mix continued to play homage to his nickname while doing his rounds with his whiplash.   One day, we noticed, a proud S.S., now walking past the smoldering covers of the Jewish shoes stacked up on the road.  At this moment, everything around us was just getting revived by a breeze which was just reaching an incendiary stick still hidden in the damp earth.  The incendiary stick suddenly went off!


The proud S.S. guard walking in front of us went flat in the mud right in front of us and his pride went flat too.  As he was aware of our presence we went deeper into the bomb pits - all he could do was try to gather himself together.


Suddenly, we heard the gradual noise of shouting and the hollow sound of prisoners hammering on anything they could see to warn us of danger.


It was Tom Mix in all his glory, he had unexpectedly disappeared in front of us and fallen crosswise, now stuck firmly and wedged in an open crevasse not too far from our position.  Nobody dared to go anywhere near him!  He had managed to get his luger loose and screamed the more for it, announcing, "Vervloechte Franszosen, all French for us too.  The row of bullets were for them and the last one was for himself - if it came to it!


He kept us at bay as he was drunk and likely afraid as he was in a very  awkward position.   He eventually got out without help!  In the evening, after his laughable debacle, he was again, wielding his whip before the signal came for stopping and entering the camp.  After a while, we got used to his capers although he was still very dangerous and to be taken very seriously, better safe than sorry!


As winter approached we managed to gather enough planks from the debris to make fires -  nobody stopped us anymore.  One day, I had the opportunity to have a good warm up and explore into the ruins and places never seen before - so secret were they!  I now came to a big heap, emitting a lot of simmering heat and so had a good warm up, turning my body on all sides to get the best of the warmth. 


While I was doing this my eyes noticed giant cylinders laying flat on the ground and I started to count them.  As I was counting some inmates from this department told me that there were eight obsolete and useless rockets without parts to complete their assembly.  Also, that the transportation had been completely disrupted.


When repairs had been completed these rockets would be gradually removed  but they were definitely out of the war at this moment.  These were the latest secret weapons, namely the V2's, in all their past glory - now just scrap.




To be continued ...

Day 73 - The Hiding of Arms at Buchenwald!!

The tree of Goethe was blown over in the blast and was laying on its side.  Prisoners were now cutting pieces of wood from the tree to make souvenirs.
Another prophecy and revelation had come to pass which was that when the foliage starts to die that the thousand year Reich would be close to its downfall.  This had come to pass and was happening now.


God only helps those who help themselves. This saying and others were coming into action and fulfillment at this moment!


The S.S. left us pretty much alone for three days.  We burned our dead and they tried to give their few, important, fallen figureheads a silent luguber ceremonial re-burial, a demonic Te Deum.  Substandard and with weird, funeral music that we could now hear over the distant vibrations of the purified air.  It seemed quasi mystical, more like black magic rites and very unpleasant to the ears.  From their preoccupation with the occult they were burying their insanity, void of light, understanding and pity.


We took advantage of these days of rest to augment our supply of arms.  The arms came in with the provision carts on the goods run from Weimer, which passed by the ruins.  This process was helped along by the total destruction and temporary set back to the S.S.' iron oaths and crumbling discipline - having received a lot of hard punches right on and in full face.


In Weimar, we heard that the people had heard the noise from the bombardment better than us - this gave them a prelude to what was in store for them.  After the third day, the S.S. monster came back into its own but something was lost forever.  They pulled themselves together but they never had the same stature and bearing as before the bombing.


Regarding the hiding of arms, hardly anybody knew, not even myself.  That was the sole responsibility of the elders of the camp as was the radio.  Eight prisoners had given their life for the radio, they were taken at random after the raid, taken to Weimer for interrogation, torture and then vanished from the scene - without talking.


We still had our secret to be used, as a last resort, at the appropriate time. Nobody was able to interfere with that, for himself or his buddies, this rule was for the benefit of the whole camp and a divine rule.




To be continued ...

Day 72 - My Dad's Prisoner Card

Elizabeth Kobler Ros from Arizona wrote this piece before she passed away! For me it is an excellent tribute in memory of my Dad and Dave Noble who passed away last year of cancer.


 "The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These people have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness and a deep loving concern..."