#Buchenwald

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Wedding rings that had been taken from Holocaust victims. This box was found during the liberation of Buchenwald.

Historical Snapshots

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Buchenwald concentration camp, April 1945 - by Margaret Bourke-White (1904 - 1971), American

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A German woman is overcome as she is forced to witness the crimes committed in her name and with her permission, Nammering, Germany. 17 May 1945

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Nineteen-year old Joseph Guttman, a Polish boy liberated by American forces from Buchenwald, bursts into tears on the chest of Master Sgt. William Best, on Pier 61, following his arrival on the SS Marine Marlin, December 24, 1948. Sgt. Best, of Brooklyn, said he had adopted Joseph under arrangements made through the American Military Government in Germany. Joseph's parents, two brothers and two sisters were all killed in the concentration camp. Sgt. Best commanded a tank detail to which young Guttman became attached as mascot after his liberation.

Photo: John Lindsay for the AP via WHNT

[coolcarsntrucksngunsnusa]

“All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes -all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the earth into a graveyard, into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the grave diggers.”

― Rod Serling

[rayeshistoryhouse]

^Memorial for the homosexual men who were imprisoned at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimar, Germany

rayeshistory.com

[unfug-bilder]

Zwei Drittel von (bisher) ~ 60 Drukos sind relativierend oder schlimmer. Meist schlimmer.

[faustianwit]

Buchenwald: Horror and Liberation

TW for talk about human atrocities, war crimes, torture. No images of victims included. Short, based on an article I'm writing with a very restricted word count

There is a  particularly notorious concentration camp named Buchenwald, though it could be extrapolated that few in the general public (especially American) are aware of the atrocities that transpired, and the story of liberation. Based in Weimar, a well populated city in central Germany, a city known for Goethe as well as the birthplace of the Weimar republic. Buchenwald was Surrounded by an electrified barbed wire fence, watchtowers and sentries armed with automatic machine guns. It contained a substantial number of prisoners, numbering 19,845 in November of 1938, starting with Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Sinti & Roma and German military deserters. Expanded to POWs from various nations, resistance fighters, prominent government officials from German occupied territories, as well as forced laborers from Poland.  Among the atrocities at the camp were medical experimentation, murder by injection, and physical torture. As mentioned, Nazi scientists conducted medical experiments on the population. Including subjecting prisoners to various different types of infectious diseases, for the purpose of conducting research on the efficiency of vaccines and treatments against these diseases.

Gay men were a substantial population in the camp, often reaching the harshest conditions. Leading Nazi research to experiment with finding a “cure” for homosexuality, through the implantation of sexual hormones. On the infectious disease side, Typhus was of particular research interest to Nazi scientists. Multiple factors may have contributed to a devastating Typhus outbreak in late 1938, purposeful infection by scientists, overcrowding and lack of water were most likely those factors. This outbreak dwindles the population down from the 19,845 number mentioned earlier to only 5,400 prisoners alive by the beginning of the war. On the physical torture side, there was “The Bunker”, a notorious punishment block, where those who violated the harsh regulations were sent, often never to return. By the time the Nazi death marches began towards the end of the war, as the allies were advancing, 47,000 prisoners were crammed into the main camp, most did not survive to see liberation day.

Finally, on April 11, 1945 the Third U.S Army advanced from the east. By 10:00 AM, all remaining SS officers were ordered to leave by Nazi officials, by noon, all commanding officers fled. At 2:30 PM, tanks of the Fourth Armored Division rolled through the SS. Annex.  By 4:00 PM, victims overpower the last remaining SS. Officers. By the time American liberators entered the camp, prisoners had already beaten many of the remaining SS. Officers to death. As American tanks were around ten miles out, scouts from the Fourth and Sixth Armored Division were the first to reach the camp proper. Accounts from American soldiers manning tanks on liberation day reported the overwhelming stench of death as far as those ten miles out, a stench so overpowering they covered their mouth with handkerchiefs.

On that day, 21,000 inmates were liberated, 900 of which were children and youth. The camp was controlled by its former prisoners for about three days, before control was passed to the U.S Army. Even with emergency medical care, many were too sick to save. Starved almost to death, only feeding the absolute bare minimum to sustain life, many of the camp's prisoners perished to what we now call “refeeding syndrome” as American medical staff scrambled desperately to feed them-accidently killing the survivors in the process

Survivors finally began leaving the camp in groups come August of 1945. The American Army would also withdrawal and hand over control to the Soviet Military Administration

The German populace from the surrounding area were forced to reckon with the atrocities at Buchenwald, and countless photos and videos were distributed to the world at large. Many American soldiers assert that the German populace simply ignored the happenings at Buchenwald, “how the people could even suggest that they didn’t know what was going on, the odor had to tell them something was going on. Why they didn’t ask…” recounts Nathan Schaeffer, a soldier present on liberation day.

Schaeffer’s story as well as the account of Dr. Leon Bass will be covered in subsequent posts. I’m planning on making a small series on the stories of liberation of Buchenwald.

Sources (Cited in Chicago style, using Zoltero)

“Buchenwald.” Accessed October 20, 2024. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/buchenwald.

“Buchenwald - Photographs.” Accessed October 24, 2024. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/gallery/buchenwald-photographs.

“Oral History Interview with Nathan Schaeffer.” Accessed October 20, 2024. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn505539.

Hemstreet, Deborah E.-S., and George M. Weisz. “One Page in the History of Starvation and Refeeding.” Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal 15, no. 2 (April 28, 2024): e0010. https://doi.org/10.5041/RMMJ.10524.

Mittelbau-Dora, Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und. “Historical Overview: Concentration Camp.” Buchenwald Memorial. Accessed October 20, 2024. https://www.buchenwald.de/en/geschichte/chronologie/konzentrationslager.

Röll, W. “Homosexual Inmates in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.” Journal of Homosexuality 31, no. 4 (1996): 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1300/J082v31n04_01.

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Die Buchenwälder der Monti Picentini.

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Ansichtskarte

Nationale Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Buchenwald

Reichenbach (Vogtl): VEB BILD UND HEIMAT Reichenbach i.V. (A 1/B 832/68 IV-14-45 9/4104)

Foto: [Heribert] Darr, Reichenbach (Vogtl.)

1968

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Ilse Koch, "the witch of buchenwald"

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The photograph below of the 1945 Shavuot prayer service in the liberated Buchenwald camp hangs in Yad Vashem’s Holocaust History Museum. Leading the service is Rabbi Herschel Schacter, a Jewish chaplain who was among the American liberators of Buchenwald.

Upon arriving at Buchenwald, the young Rabbi realized these prisoners were frightened of his uniform, which for them had been a symbol of oppression, he shouted out to them in Yiddish: “Yidden, ihr zeit frei–Jews, you are free!”

Outside the barracks, Rabbi Schacter was appalled by the horrific sights he encountered. His shock and dismay grew as he discovered piles of corpses awaiting cremation, and the deplorable state of physical and mental health among the surviving prisoners.

It was there that he encountered an 8-year-old survivor, ‘Lulek’ Lau, who warily watched the Rabbi from behind the tangled bodies of the dead. Rabbi Schacter picked up the little boy in his arms, and asked him how old he was.

“I’m certainly older than you” the young boy replied.

“Older than me?” asked Rabbi Schacter, startled… “What makes you think so?”

“Because you cry and laugh as a child, while I have forgotten how to laugh, and I can’t even cry... So tell me, which of us is older?” ‘Lulek’ responded.

Rabbi Schacter stayed in the liberated camp to aid in the physical and mental recovery of the living prisoners and to renew Jewish life and traditions, including celebrating the impending Jewish holiday of Shavuot. Seated in the front row of the Shavuot prayers was 8-year-old ‘Lulek’ Lau (pictured below).

One month later ‘Lulek’ immigrated to the land of Israel. He would grow up to become the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, and a leading voice for Holocaust remembrance and education worldwide: Rabbi Israel Meir Lau.

Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors

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[captain-price-unofficially]

Wedding rings found by U.S. Army soldiers near the Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany, May 1945.

[nicklloydnow]

“I feel something like a powerful oppression, like an immense fatigue after marching and marching across fever-laden jungles, or by the shores of deadly lakes—and I am flooded by discouragement, so that it seems I shall never be able to escape from myself again. At the same time, my brain is heavy and troubles me. It feels as though an iron band were clasping my temples, tight enough to burst my skull.

Then, little by little, my thoughts abandon the garden, the torture-arenas, the agony beneath the bell, the trees haunted by pain, the bloody and devouring flowers. They are trying to burst through the setting of this charnel-house, penetrate to pure light, knock once more upon the gates of life. Alas, the gates of life never swing open except upon death, never open except upon the palaces and gardens of death.

And the universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden. Blood everywhere and, where there is most life, horrible tormentors who dig your flesh, saw your bones, and retract your skin with sinister, joyful faces.

Ah, yes! the Torture Garden! Passions, appetites, greed, hatred, and lies; law, social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering. What I saw today, and what I heard, exists and cries and howls beyond this garden, which is no more than a symbol to me of the entire earth. I have vainly sought a respite in quietude and repose in death, and I can find them nowhere.” - Octave Mirbeau, ‘The Torture Garden’ (1899)