BUCHENWALD!

We left Weimar, the center of German culture and civilization, and drove through a beautiful forest to Buchenwald.  The roadside was covered with wild flowers.  Before the construction of Buchenwald, the mountain top forest had been a favorite location for the people of Weimar to relax and enjoy the beauties of nature.  Next to Buchenwald was a formal garden attached to an estate - Shoah in paradise.   When we arrived in Buchenwald, I first saw the SS barracks that had been built by the prisoners.  They are now a youth hostel – I found this both practical and a little macabre.  I went to the bookstore and found a section in English.  I spent a few minutes reading exerts from various books - it was engaging and disturbing at the same time.  I left the bookstore and walked back to camp.  I walked through the Iron Gate that reads “JEDEM DAS SEINE” – TO EACH HIS OWN.  The gate, the barbed wire fence, the 4 watchtowers and the crematorium are the only structures still standing within the camp.  I walked to the crematorium and went inside – I saw the autopsy table where the gold teeth were pulled from the mouths of the dead, the cremation urns and a large photo on the wall of naked bodies stacked up against a wall like wood for the winter.  I stood there and looked the photo and then looked out the door at the wall where the bodies had been stacked.  There is a darkness in humanity that all to often demands expression in the most horrific ways.  It feeds on death, destruction and degradation until nothing is left but the ashes of the dead.

The barracks of the prisoners are gone – razed or burned to the ground.  The foundation of each barrack is filled with black cinders.  It is a field of desolation surrounded by barbed wire.  As I wandered among the ruins, I saw a small spray of beautiful, delicate white flowers – life struggling to live among the memories of the dead.  I eventually found the Jewish section.  Next to foundation of one of the barracks were words of remembrance in English and Hebrew etched in the ground.  Someone had left a small Israeli flag draped over the foundation – rocks and candles held it down.  One corner was loose and folded over so I unfolded it and put a black cinder on it to hold it down.  I recited the Shema and Kaddish.  I then left – it was too much.  I read “Jedem Das Sein” again as I exited the gate. 

Buchenwald was not an “extermination” camp but was a “forced labor” camp and was a transition camp for the exterminations camps further east.  There were over a 250,000 prisoners at Buchenwald.  Over 50,000 died of starvation, disease, abuse, neglect and over work.   Many were brutally murdered by the guards.  The prisoners were Jews, Romani, Sinti, communists, political prisoners, the handicapped, criminals and homosexuals.  There were rabbis, priests and ministers. Of the 12,000,000 killed in the Holocaust, half were Jews.  The other half needs to be remembered too.  Lest we forget.