Buchenwald

The Holocaust is the most horrifying crime against humanity of all time. Hitler, in an attempt to establish the pure Aryan race, decided that all mentally ill, gypsies, non-supporters of Nazism, and Jews were to be eliminated from the German population. He proceeded to reach his goal in a systematic scheme. One of his main methods of "doing away" with these "undesirables" was through the use of concentration camps. In January 1941, in a meeting with his top officials, the 'final solution' was decided (The Holocaust: Buchenwald). The Jewish population was to be eliminated. The people that were sent to concentration camps such as Buchenwald were treated horribly and it is unimaginable what they had to go through while they were there.
The first concentration camps were set up in 1933. In the early days of Hitler's regime, concentration camps were places that held people in protective custody. Victims for protective custody included those who were either physically or mentally ill, gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, Jews and anyone against the Nazi party (The Holocaust: Buchenwald). By the end of 1933 there were at least fifty concentration camps throughout occupied Europe. At first, the camps were controlled by the Gestapo but by 1934 the SS, Hitler's personal security force, were ordered, by Hitler, to control the camps (Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team). Camps were set up for several different purposes. Some were set up for forced labor, others for medical experiments and, later on, for death/extermination. Transition camps were set up as holding places for death camps.
Henrick Himmler, chief of the German police, the Gestapo, thought that the camps would provide an economic base for the soldiers (The Holocaust: Buchenwald). This unfortunately did not happen, the work force was poorly organized and working conditions were inhumane. Camps were set up along railroad lines, so that the prisoners would be conveniently close to their destination. As they were being transported, the soldiers kept telling the Jews to have hope (Herder Jr). When the camps were finally opened, most of the families who were shipped out together ended up being separated. Often, the transports mirrored what went on in the camps; cruelty by the officers, near starvation of those being transported, fetid and unsanitary conditions on the trains. On the trains, Jews were starved of food and water for days. Many people did not survive the ride to arrive at the camp. Jews were forced to obey the guards' orders from the moment they arrived at the camps. If they didn't, they would be beaten, put into solitary confinement or shot (Herder Jr). Prisoners usually had marks on their clothes or numbers on their arms to identify them (The Holocaust: Buchenwald).
The sanitary conditions of the camps were horrible. There was only one bathroom for four hundred people. They had to stand for hours in snow, rain, heat, or cold for roll call, which was twice a day (Gilbert). Within the first few days of being at the camps, thousands of people died of hunger, starvation and disease. Other people died from the cruel punishments of the guards; beatings and torture. Typhus, a disease caused by germs carried by flies, was the main disease that spread throughout the camps. Even when people were sick, they still continued working because they did not see that sickness meant death.
In 1937, 7,000 Jews were in camps (Chesnoff). By 1938, 10,000 more Jews were sent to camps. Jews were taken to camps if they expressed negative feelings about the government, if they married a non-Jew, if they were sick (mentally or physically), or if they had a police record (Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team). When someone escaped from the camp, all the prisoners in that group were shot. Nazis, who claimed that they did not necessarily hate Jews, but wanted to preserve the Aryan race, seemed to enjoy making the Jews suffer (Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team). They rationalized that slavery was better than killing their prisoners. Gold fillings, wedding bands, jewelry, shoes and clothing were taken from the prisoners when they first entered the camps and these items were then sold (Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team).
In July 1937, the Nazis began building Buchenwald (The Holocaust: Buchenwald). It officially opened on July 19, 1937. The first commander of Buchenwald was Karl Koch (The Holocaust: Buchenwald). He headed it until he was relocated in Majdanek. The first inmates there were professional criminals, after the criminals, political prisoners were sent there. These politicals were favored over the rest of the prisoners. On arrival, prisoners were asked their status, if they responded political; they were supplied with better boots and warmer clothes. These small items were essential for the prisoners' physical and mental shape. They also received the highest positions available for prisoners. The first whole Jewish transport was composed of politicals. They arrived in June 1938 because of an action against "asocial" Jews.
Buchenwald, located in Poland, was built on the site of Mt. Ettersberg, five miles northwest of the Weimar Republic (The Holocaust: Buchenwald). The camp, surrounded by walls and barbed wire, was encircled with guard towers at spaced intervals. Buchenwald was actually a series of internal sub camps with wooden and stone barracks, old horse stables, and tent cities. The "little camp", built beyond the roll call area, acquired the worst reputation. Buchenwald was an all men camp until around 1944 when they started to bring women to the camp (The Holocaust: Buchenwald).
The vast majority of the thousands of prisoners died at Buchenwald each year died, soon after their arrival. Buchenwald held 238,980 prisoners and of those that were there, 56,545 were murdered or died in that camp (Chesnoff). They usually died of exhaustion, physical and psychological or due to their loss of desire to live (Chesnoff). Their lives before the camp didn't prepare them for this type of exhaustion and daily harsh physical work. A survivor of Buchenwald said, "It took a long time for a mind, torn from the anchorages of the outside world and thrust into life-and-death turmoil, to find a new inward center of gravity. (Herder Jr)"
The German soldiers were always especially cruel, mentally and physically, to the Jewish prisoners (Gilbert). At that time, the Germans considered Jewish human life not equal the worth of an animal. Mentally, they would try to depress the morale of the prisoners; preventing the development of self-worthlessness among the victims and making them feel as if they shouldn’t even be alive (Gilbert). If a person tried to steal another man's bread, he wasn't reported to the SS, the room attendants took care of him, and if he didn't die from beating, they injured him so brutally that he was only fit for the crematorium. This was done to maintain morale and mutual trust. Some men used the typhus wards, which the SS would not go near, to hide men whose names had come up on the death lists.
The SS officers at the camp physically abused the prisoners in many ways. Next to the shooting chambers, where hundreds died daily, there was a crematorium (Gilbert). Aside from the huge ovens, there were 48 hooks for hanging pairs of prisoners at a time (Gilbert). If they were not dead in the set five minutes, they would be clubbed to dead and then thrown into the incinerator. The bathrooms prisoners used were 20 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 12 feet deep open pits with railings along the side to squat (Gilbert). The soldiers would throw people in the hole while they were doing their business. In December 1942, the camp received German criminals who had been handed over to the SS by the prison authorities. Most of them became the victims of pseudo-medical experiments performed in the camp hospital (The Holocaust: Buchenwald). In Buchenwald, the winter Appels, or roll calls can be considered a form of extermination. Some dropped dead, during roll call, from the freezing cold while others caught pneumonia and then died (The Holocaust: Buchenwald).
A survivor said that the men in Buchenwald "gradually realized that obedience meant death. The only hope of survival lay in resistance (Herder Jr).“ In Buchenwald, there was a firmly established underground where, by the end of the war, the political prisoners ran internal camp affairs completely (The Holocaust: Buchenwald). The underground made contact with the Allies, resulting in a bombing raid which severely damaged SS sectors of the camp. It was on this raid on August 24, 1944 that the underground began to arm itself. This was the foundation of the take-over of Buchenwald. The mass evacuation planned for April 5, 1945 was foiled (Herder Jr). The armed underground movement strengthened themselves and when the American troops arrived on April 11, 1945, the underground was in control and handed the camp over to the Americans (Herder Jr). When the Americans got to the camp they were completely horrified by what they saw, they couldn’t believe that stuff that had been going on at this camp.
People throughout history have been murdered; but never as many people as during the Holocaust, in such a short period of time and under such well-organized circumstances. One third of all the Jews in the world were eliminated. The estimated total is somewhere around six million. "We Must Never Forget" are words which each Jew must remember. The things the Jews and many other “outsiders in society” had to experience during the holocaust are horrific and will never be forgotten by the world.