60'th anniversary of liberation of Buchenwald

[RACPISA]

WEIMAR, Germany (AP) -- Survivors of the Buchenwald concentration camp joined German leaders Sunday to mark its liberation by U.S. troops 60 years ago and to warn that the suffering of its hundreds of thousands of prisoners must never be forgotten.

About 240,000 prisoners passed through the camp just outside the city of Weimar between 1937 and 1945 -- Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, prominent political prisoners, Jehovah's witnesses and others. About 56,000 died, many worked to death by the Nazis.

About 1,000 people gathered in a cold drizzle as German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and camp survivors observed a minute of silence and placed flowers where prisoners were forced to assemble.

Earlier, Schroeder expressed shame in Germany's name and honored the victims in a ceremony at Weimar's National Theater, a symbol of the city's classical cultural heritage.

"They fell victim to hunger, sickness, the sadistic terror and systematic murder," Schroeder said in a speech. "I bow before you, the victims and their families."

Though Buchenwald was not expressly built for mass killing, as Auschwitz was, it was just as much part of the Nazis' effort to wipe out anyone deemed un-German. Starvation, disease, overwork and medical experiments claimed many lives.

Jerry Hontas said he arrived as a 21-year-old Army medic the day after U.S. troops reached Buchenwald.

"It was so incredible -- stacks of bodies, the smell, the total shock and confusion, people walking around by the thousands," he said. "We had no concept for this kind of insane cruelty."

By that time, Georg Sterner, a Hungarian Jew, had been at Buchenwald for 10 months. He recalled looking out from Barracks No. 37 when the first U.S. tank crashed through the barbed-wire perimeter fence on April 11, 1945.

"We always kept up hope," said the 77-year-old retired engineer from Budapest.

The official ceremony was part of a weekend of commemorations. It began with music by Ludwig van Beethoven, a representative of the cultured Germany of which Schroeder said the Nazis were "the absolute negation."

A women's choir sang a song written by two Austrian inmates at Buchenwald that became the secret camp anthem.

"Oh Buchenwald, I cannot forget you, because you are my destiny," they sang. "Only those who leave you can grasp how wonderful freedom is."

Former inmates recalled the stench of the crematoriums, the beatings and the forced labor. They worried that the world will find it harder to understand what happened under the Nazis once the survivors are gone.

"In a certain sense the cycle of active memory is closing, with the vow not only to cast our eyes back upon the past but also to look forward to the future," said Spanish writer and former culture minister Jorge Semprun, himself a former Buchenwald inmate.

With an eye on recent electoral successes by Germany's extreme-right fringe, Schroeder pledged that his country would remain vigilant against neo-Nazi stirrings.

Buchenwald inmates rose up against their Nazi captors as the 6th Armored Division of the U.S. 3rd Army approached the camp. When U.S. troops arrived, they found some 21,000 survivors.

The Americans then forced Weimar residents to look at what had been going on about five miles outside their town. Some women reportedly fainted when they saw the piles of corpses.

But Schroeder noted that Buchenwald's sinister history continued after the Nazi defeat in World War II, when the Soviets turned it into a Stalinist prisoner camp where thousands died.

These days, Weimar would rather be remembered as the place where Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Germany's most revered classical writer and playwright, had his home. Goethe, who died in Weimar in 1832, walked in the forests where the Buchenwald camp later was built.

"This Weimar stands for humanity, enlightenment, idealism," Schroeder said. "It is the geographical closeness of culture and barbarism that makes us so speechless."

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/04 ... index.html

[michael mills]

The Buchenwald commemoration ceremony was a farce, full of historical falsification.

It was not mentioned that the camp was internally controlled by the Communist prisoners who, with the tacit consent of the lazy German commanders, exercised a reign of terror over the non-Communist prisoners.

A large proportion of the deaths of inmates was the responsibility of the de-facto Communist prisoner administration, which in effect determined who would live and who would die. The Communists looked after each other, keeping the available food and the easiest jobs for themselves, and leaving the non-Communist prisoners to suffer and die.

And one can only laugh at the attempted juxtaposition of the music of Beethoven with the supposedly antithetical National Socialism. In fact, the National Socialist regime made extensive use of Beethoven's music in their ceremonies, seeing him as a prime example of the "superior" German culture that they claimed to represent themselves.

Finally, the involvement of the Jewish Establishment in the whole proceeding was a prime example of the falsification of history. Buchenwald was never a major location for the persecution of Jews, the prisoners being either German criminals or Communists of various nationalities (including many Spanish Communists, such as the Jorge Semprun mentioned). In fact, at one point all the Jewish inmates of Buchewald were sent off to Auschwitz, leaving Buchenwald an "Aryans-only" establishment.

It would have been more appropriate for Schroeder to have crawled abjectly on his belly before the surviving leaders of the SED than before the head honcho of German Jewry, and to have promised to combat anti-Communism rather than anti-Semitism. But presumably that would not have gone down well with the Neocons.

[David Thompson]

Michael -- Sources please.

[Dan]

http://p093.ezboard.com/frodohforumfrm1 ... =699.topic

[David Thompson]

Dan -- I've read that thread, but it discusses a 20-year old 1985 quote from Elie Wiesel which appeared in Time magazine. Michael is talking about the 2005 contemporary anniversary of the camp's liberation, of which he said:

The Buchenwald commemoration ceremony was a farce, full of historical falsification.

I'm looking for some sources for Michael Mills' contentions that:

It was not mentioned that the camp was internally controlled by the Communist prisoners who, with the tacit consent of the lazy German commanders, exercised a reign of terror over the non-Communist prisoners.

A large proportion of the deaths of inmates was the responsibility of the de-facto Communist prisoner administration, which in effect determined who would live and who would die. The Communists looked after each other, keeping the available food and the easiest jobs for themselves, and leaving the non-Communist prisoners to suffer and die.

And one can only laugh at the attempted juxtaposition of the music of Beethoven with the supposedly antithetical National Socialism. In fact, the National Socialist regime made extensive use of Beethoven's music in their ceremonies, seeing him as a prime example of the "superior" German culture that they claimed to represent themselves.

Wiesel's quote is not mentioned in the article, which says:

Though Buchenwald was not expressly built for mass killing, as Auschwitz was, it was just as much part of the Nazis' effort to wipe out anyone deemed un-German. Starvation, disease, overwork and medical experiments claimed many lives.

You may have posted the link to provide additional information to the readers, rather than as proof of Mr. Mills' contentions, in which case I thank you.

[Dan]

That is totally true, David, but I thought that it was interesting the two top scholars from opposite sides of the "debate" had a similar take on this subject in a general way, and I thought that readers of the forum would be interested in Roberto's views, which are pretty much the same as mine.

Thanks for your letting me link to another forum, which as you know I don't normally do, and in fact Roberto doesn't post there very much in any event, although I could wish he would post here or there more.

Best

[David Thompson]

Dan -- I thoroughly agree with you about Roberto, whom I've always liked and respected. I don't mind links to other forums either, as long as they assist the readers by giving them more factual information, as this one did.

[David Thompson]

On 15 April 1945, CBS radio correspondent Edward R. Murrow broadcast a report about KL Buchenwald, describing the liberation of the camp five days earlier. This text is taken from Dr. Louis L. Snyder's Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, Paragon House, New York: 1989, pp. 44-45:

44

I propose to tell you of Buchenwald. It's on a small hill, about four miles outside Weimar.

This was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany ... and it was built to last. As we approached it, we saw about a hundred men in civilian clothes, with rifles, advancing in open order across the fields.

There were a few shots. We stopped to inquire. We were told that some of the prisoners had a couple of S.S. men cornered in there. We drove on, reached the main gate. The prisoners crowded up behind the wire. We entered. And now let me tell this in the first person, for I was the least important person there, as you can hear. There surged around me an evil-smelling crowd; men and boys reached out to touch me. They were in rags and the remnants of uniforms. Death had already marked many of them, but they were smiling with their eyes. I looked out over that mass of men to the green fields beyond, where well-fed Germans were ploughing.

A German, Fritz Kirchenheimer, came up and said:

"May I show you around the camp? I've been here ten years." An Englishman stood to attention, saying: "May I introduce myself? Delighted to see you. And can you tell me when some of our blokes will be along?" I told him "soon," and asked to see one of the barracks. It happened to be occupied by Czechoslovakians. When I entered, men crowded around, tried to lift me to their shoulders. They were too weak. Many of them could not get out of bed. I was told that this building had once stabled eighty horses. There were twelve hundred men in it, five to a bunk. The stink was beyond all description. When I reached the center of the barracks, a man came up and said: "You remember me, I'm Peter Zenkl, one-time Mayor of Prague." I remembered him, but did not recognize him. He asked about Bend and Jan Masaryk.

I asked how many men had died in that building during the last month. They called the doctor. We inspected his records. There were only names in the little black book . . . nothing more . nothing to show who had been where, what he had done or hoped. Behind the names of those who had died, there was a cross. I counted them. They totaled two hundred forty-two—two hundred forty-two out of twelve hundred, in one month.

As I walked down to the end of the barracks, there was applause from the men too weak to get out of bed. It sounded like the handclapping of babies. They were so weak. The Doctor's name was Paul Heller. He had been there since 'thirty-eight. As we walked out into the courtyard, a man fell dead. Two others, they must have been over sixty, were crawling towards the latrine. I saw it, but will not describe it. In another part of the camp they showed me the children, hundreds of them. Some were only six. One rolled up his sleeves, showed me his number. It was tattooed on his arm .. . B-6030, it was. The others showed me their numbers. They will carry them until they die. An elderly man standing beside me said: "The children ... enemies of the State!" I could see their ribs through their thin shirts. The old man said, "I am Professor Charles Richer, of the Sorbonne." The children clung to my arms and stared. We crossed to the courtyard. Men kept coming up to speak to me and to touch me .. . professors from Poland, doctors from Vienna, men from all Europe, men from the countries that made America.

We went to the hospital. It was full. The doctor told me that two hundred had died the day before. I asked the cause of death. He shrugged and said: "Tuberculosis, starvation, fatigue, and there are many who have no desire to live. It is very difficult." Dr. Heller pulled back the blanket from a man's feet to show me how swollen they were. The man was dead.

Most of the patients could not move.

As we left the hospital, I drew out a leather billfold, hoping that I had some money that would help those who lived to get home. Professor Richer from the Sorbonne said: "I should be careful of my wallet, if I were you. You know there are criminals in this camp too." A small man tottered up, saying: "May I feel the leather, please. You see, I used to make good things of leather in Vienna." Another man said: "My name is Walther Roede (?). For many years I lived in Joliet, came back to Germany for a visit and Hitler grabbed me."

I asked to see the kitchen. It was clean. The German in charge had been a Communist, had been at Buchenwald for nine years, had a picture of his daughter in Hamburg, hadn't seen her for almost twelve years . . . and if I got to Hamburg, would I look her up?

45

He showed me the daily ration: one piece of brown bread about as thick as your thumb, on top of it a piece of margarine as big as three sticks of chewing gum. That, and a little stew, was what they received every twenty-four hours.

He had a chart on the wall . . . very complicated it was. There were little red tabs scattered through it. He said that was to indicate each ten men who died. He had to account for the rations, and he added: "We're very efficient here."

We went again into the courtyard, and as we walked, we talked. The two doctors, the Frenchman and the Czech, agreed that about six thousand had died during March. Kirchenheimer, the German, added that back in the winter of 'thirty-nine, when the Poles began to arrive, without winter clothing, they died at the rate of approximately nine hundred a day. Five different men asserted that Buchenwald was the best concentration camp in Germany. They had had some experience in the others.

Dr. Heller, the Czech, asked if I would care to see the crematorium. He said it wouldn't be very interesting, because the Germans had run out of coke some days ago and had taken to dumping the bodies into a great hole nearby.

Professor Richer said perhaps I would care to see the small courtyard. I said yes. He turned and told the children to stay behind. As we walked across the square, I noticed that the Professor had a hole in his left shoe and a toe sticking out of the right one. He followed my eyes and said: "I regret that I am so little presentable, but what can one do?"

At that point, another Frenchman came to announce that three of his fellow-countrymen outside had killed three S.S. men and taken one prisoner.

We proceeded to the small courtyard. The wall was about eight feet high. It adjoined what had been a stable or garage. We entered. It was floored with concrete. There were two rows of bodies stacked up like cordwood. They were thin and very white. Some of the bodies were terribly bruised, though there seemed to be little flesh to bruise. Some had been shot through the head, but they bled but little. Only two were naked. I tried to count them as best I could, and arrived at the conclusion that all that was mortal of more than five hundred men and boys lay there in two neat piles. There was a German trailer, which must have contained another fifty, but it wasn't possible to count them. The clothing was piled in a heap against the wall. It appeared that most of the men and boys had died of starvation; they had not been executed.

But the manner of death seemed unimportant. Murder had been done at Buchenwald. God knows how many men and boys have died there during the last twelve years. Thursday, I was told that there were more than twenty thousand in the camp. There had been as many as sixty thousand. Where are they now?

As I left that camp, a Frenchman who used to work for Havas in Paris came up to me and said: "You will write something about this perhaps." And he added: "To write about this, you must have been here at least two years, and after that . . . you don't want to write any more."

I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I 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 that was pleasing to the eye, and the Germans were well-fed and well-dressed; American trucks were rolling towards the rear filled with prisoners. Soon they would be eating American rations, as much for a meal as the men at Buchenwald received in four days.

If I have offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I'm not in the least sorry. I was there on Thursday . . . and many men and many tongues blessed the name of Roosevelt. For long years, his name had meant the full measure of their hope. These men who had kept close company with death for many years did not know that Mr. Roosevelt would, within hours, join their comrades who had laid their lives on the scales of freedom.

Back in forty-one, Mr. Churchill said to me, with tears in his eyes: "One day the world and history will recognize and acknowledge what it owes to your President." I saw and heard the first installment of that at Buchenwald on Thursday.

It came from men all over Europe.

Their faces, with more flesh on them, might have been found anywhere at home. To them the name Roosevelt was a symbol, a code-word for a lot of guys named Joe, who were somewhere out in the blue with the armor, heading east. At Buchenwald they spoke of the President just before he died. If there be a better epitaph, history does not record it.

Readers interested in first-hand accounds from inmates of their experiences at KL Buchenwald are invited to take a look at these threads:

KL Buchenwald & Dora: Dr. Alfred Balachowsky's testimony
viewtopic.php?t=63092
KL Buchenwald: Testimony of Dr. Victor Dupont
viewtopic.php?t=63083

Dr. Eugen Kogon's book The Theory and Practice of Hell, and the US Army document The Buchenwald Report are also very helpful.

[michael mills]

My source for the nature of the recent Buchenwald celebration is the Deutsche Welle television channel, which broadcast the ceremony.

I can attest that there was no mention in the ceremony of the fact that the camp was run internally by a group of Communist prisoners, with the acquiescence of the German camp command.

I can attest that the ceremony gave the strong impression that Buchenwald played a major role in the persecution of the Jews, and that Jews rather than Communists were the major victim group.

I can attest that at the ceremony, the German Jewish Establishment had the role of representing the victims of the camp, and it was the body to which apology was made.

My point is that if the German Government felt it necessary to prostrate itself before a body representing the prisoners held in Buchenwald, then the most appropriate body would have been the Communist Party.

Instead, obeisance was paid to the Jewish Establishment as representative of the victims of the camp, which is a falsification of history so far as Buchenwald in particular is concerned.

[michael mills]

If I have offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I'm not in the least sorry. I was there on Thursday . . . and many men and many tongues blessed the name of Roosevelt. For long years, his name had meant the full measure of their hope. These men who had kept close company with death for many years did not know that Mr. Roosevelt would, within hours, join their comrades who had laid their lives on the scales of freedom.

.........................................................

Their faces, with more flesh on them, might have been found anywhere at home. To them the name Roosevelt was a symbol, a code-word for a lot of guys named Joe, who were somewhere out in the blue with the armor, heading east. At Buchenwald they spoke of the President just before he died. If there be a better epitaph, history does not record it.

I think Ed Murrow was deceiving himself at this point.

The Communist prisoners, who were the dominant group in Buchenwald, certainly looked to Stalin as their saviour. Roosevelt was a second-ranker from their point of view.

Colour film footage taken shortly after the capture of Buchenwald shows liberated prisoners marching in formation under red banners, carrying a portrait of Stalin. It is clear where their political allegiance lay.

[David Thompson]

If a poster raises a question about the events, other posters may answer the question with evidence. If a poster stops asking questions and begins to express a point of view, he then becomes an advocate for that viewpoint. When a person becomes an advocate, he has the burden of providing evidence for his point of view. If he has no evidence, or doesn't provide it when asked, it is reasonable for the reader to conclude that his opinion or viewpoint is uninformed and may fairly be discounted or rejected.

viewtopic.php?t=53962

[michael mills]

From the testimony of Dr Balachowsky:

In comparison with Buchenwald, we found a considerable change at Dora, as the general management of the Dora Camp was entrusted to a special category of prisoners who were criminals.

The above makes my point exactly.

At Dora, the management of the camp was in the hands of criminal prisoners, those who wore the green badge.

As Balachowsky says, that was a change from Buchenwald, where the management of the camp was in the hands of the political prisoners, who were mainly Communists of various nationalities, including German.

[David Thompson]

Michael -- Your claim was:

It was not mentioned that the camp was internally controlled by the Communist prisoners who, with the tacit consent of the lazy German commanders, exercised a reign of terror over the non-Communist prisoners.

A large proportion of the deaths of inmates was the responsibility of the de-facto Communist prisoner administration, which in effect determined who would live and who would die. The Communists looked after each other, keeping the available food and the easiest jobs for themselves, and leaving the non-Communist prisoners to suffer and die.

I asked for your sources, and you didn't offer any. When I pointed that out, you refered to the testimony of Dr. Balachowsky to be found on the thread "KL Buchenwald & Dora: Dr. Alfred Balachowsky's testimony" at:
viewtopic.php?t=63092

If we look at the thread, however, this is all Dr. Balachowsky has to say about communists at KL Buchenwald:

HERR BABEL: Yes, I have one question. [Turning to the witness] You testified that weapons, 50 guns, if I understood

319

29 Jan. 46

correctly, were brought into either Block 46 or 50. Who brought these weapons in?

BALACHOWSKY: We, the prisoners, brought them in and hid them.

HERR BABEL: For what purpose?

BALACHOWSKY: To save our skins.

HERR BABEL: I did not understand you.

BALACHOWSKY: I said that we hid these guns because we meant to sell our lives dearly at the last moment -- that is, to defend ourselves to the death rather than be exterminated, as were most of our comrades in the camps, with flame-throwers and machine guns. In that case we would have defended ourselves with the guns we had hidden.

HERR BABEL: You said "we prisoners"; who were these prisoners?

BALACHOWSKY: The internees inside the camp.

HERR BABEL: What internees?

BALACHOWSKY: We, the political prisoners.

HERR BABEL: They were supposed to have been mostly German concentration camp prisoners?

BALACHOWSKY: They were of all nationalities. Unknown to the SS, there was an international secret defense organization with shock battalions within the camp.

HERR BABEL: There were German concentration camp prisoners who wanted to help you?

BALACHOWSKY: German prisoners also belonged to these shock battalions-German political prisoners, and in particular former German Communists who had been imprisoned for 10 years and who were of great help towards the end.

Dr. Balachowsky's testimony has nothing to support the salient points of your claim.

[michael mills]

Here is a link to Chancellor Schroeder's speech at the Buchenwald ceremony.

http://www.thueringen.de/de/index.asp?o ... rhard_schröder

As will be seen, there is no mention of the fact that the main group of prisoners consisted of Communists of various nationalities.

There is only an oblique reference to a "Stalinist" history of the camp, which seemingly includes both its post-war use as a prison by the rulers of the Soviet Zone until 1950 and the establishment there by the DDR Government of a memorial in 1958.

Although Schroeder does not explicitly say so, the DDR memorial was specifically targeted toward the Communist former prisoners. After the unification of Germany, the DDR-era memorial was removed, and replaced by a new one which downplayed the fact that Buchenwald was primarily a camp to hold Communists and Communist sympathisers.

By including the DDR-era memorial under the "Stalinist" history of Buchenwald, Schroeder is tacitly dismissing the historically correct image of the Buchenwald as an anti-Communist establishment.

Schroeder also refers to "anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia". But Buchenwald was not primarily a manifestation of those phenomena, since the prisoners held there were for the most part either common criminals or political prisoners; neither group of prisoners was targeted as a result of racism, but because of actual crimes committed or because of political beliefs and/or actions.

[michael mills]

Here is a link to the speech by the former Spanish Republican prisoner Jorge Semprun:

http://www.thueringen.de/de/index.asp?o ... ge_semprun

Note that Semprun states that in 10 years' time, only the Jewish version of the memory of the National Socialist past will remain, replacing the memory of the various other opponents of National Socialism who were prisoners in concentration camps.

Although Semprun saysthat that is a good thing, one detects an undertone of warning in his statement, an implied regret that the Jewish version of history will overshadow that of other groups, such as the Spanish Republicans.

One may guess that he did not want to make that point more explicit for fear of offending the Jewish Establishment.

Semprun also hopes that in 10 years' time the memory of the Soviet concentration camps will be as important as that of the German camps is now. In that respect, Semprun's speech was the most balanced of all, despite its ritualistic wallowing to the Jewish Establishment.[/quote]