From 1945 to 1950 the Soviet Occupation Force used the area of the second camp as an internment camp for NDSAP members along with people arrested arbitrarily. There were 28,000 internees of which some 7,000 died of neglect. The dead were buried in mass graves north of the camp near the railroad station.
On arrival at the Concentration Camp, one must follow a road called "The Road of Blood", past the old Russian Barracks and family quarters area where Soviet Troops had been quartered until the end of the cold war. Climbing the hill you will pass the Memorial Bell Tower on your left which contains the figured memorial to the victims of Buchenwald. After this a little further on, you arrive in the military installation where all the old military buildings still remain. To the right one can see the old railway station and to the left the clock tower entrance to blocks of Camp I which includes a typhus fever experiment center, a special camp for Soviet prisoners of war, SS barracks, a crematorium, disinfecting buildings, a war industry factory and other workshops. Camp II to the east was created for NDSAP prisoners in 1945 by the Soviet military. Camp III includes the war industry factories called "Gustoffwerke" a large industrial complex of about fifteen factories.
At the entrance to Camp I near the clock tower is the location of a metal commemorative plaques in the surface of the old assembly area. On the plaque is inscribed is the names of the various nationalities who were victims of the Buchenwald atrocities:
Albanians, Algerians, Andirons, Argentineans, Egyptians, Belgians, Bosnia's, British, Brazilians, Bulgarians, Chinese, Danish, Germans, Estonians. Finland's, French, Greeks, Indians, Indonesians, Iranians, Italians, Jews, Yugoslavians, Canadians, Croatians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Luxembourg's, Moroccans, Montenegrins, Netherlanders, Norwegians, Australians, Polish, Portuguese, Gypsies, Rumanians, Russians, Swedes, Swiss, Serbia, Slovakians, Slovenians, Czechs, Spanish, Turks, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Americans and stateless people.
As you enter the main gate at the clock tower in Buchenwald Concentration Camp, which leads to the prisoner block area you cannot help but notice the most fitting motto of the camp itself as it is spelled out in the wrought iron letters at the top of the entrance gate "Zür jeder seine" translated meaning "to each his own". Once inside the camp itself you are immediately confronted with a panoramic view of all the old barrack block foundations, where once stood rows upon rows of wooden barrack block buildings that have all been destroyed because of their contaminated condition. One remains as a reminder of their drab, primitive construction. To the right stands a three story masonry structure and to the far right of this is the crematorium.
Looking around you immediately sense that you are in the place in which you have the overwhelming feeling of the horror and oppression which still prevails. There is an aura hanging over this destroyed piece of landscape which makes the hairs rise at the nape of your neck. The feeling is mindful of a visit to the battlefields of Verdun in France. Standing there in the early of a November morning as the sun rays are fighting to shine through the shrouds of mist and fog that lingers among the stunted trees and vegetation of the deserted landscape. One can almost believe that one can see the images of the lost souls of those thousand and thousands of casualties who were never buried, were never identified and with only some of their bones collected and preserved in the Ossary Memorial.
In order to really understand the circumstances and the reality of any historical event one must stand in that location with the knowledge of what had occurred at that particular event. So it is at Buchenwald, as you stand there you grasp the significance of what occurred. There will always be this feeling of a lingering memory of the horror and suffering that took place there.
A memorial slab is placed in the Camp I area to commemorate the Allied service members which include 26 Canadians , 84 Americans, 48 British, 6 Australians, 2 New Zealanders, and 1 Jamaican who were murdered at Buchenwald during the Second World War. The following words have been inscribed in German, Russian and English:
In honour of the memory of the members of the British and Canadian Forces murdered in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. The lives of four British Patriots were saved by the solidarity of the prisoners of Block 17 who disguised and hid them.
As for the SS Guards at Buchenwald. Those that were tried and hanged are:
| Richard Koehler | Hubert Krautwurst | Hans Schmitt |
| Fredrich Wilhelm | Hans Merbach | Hans Eisele |
| Emil Pleissner | Herman Helbig | Herman Pristier |
| Max Schubert |
Those that were tried and released were:
| Peter Merker, released 1950 | Wolfgang Otto, released 1952 |
| Helmut Roscher, released 1950 | Albert Schwartz, released 1950 |
| Hans Wolf released 1950 | Josias Waldeck, released 1950 |
| August Bender, released 1950 | Arthur dietzsch, released 1950 |
Wolfgang Otto was retried in 1988 and is still in prison.
Ilse Koch was tried in 1948 and was given four years and then retried and given a life sentence. She committed suicide in prison in 1967.
As can be seen most of the SS guards were tried in 1948 having been in prison up to their trial, two years were added and they were released. In most cases there were no real witnesses to the crimes they had committed.
As for most of the Camp Commanders between 1937 and 1945 they had been Commanders of other camps in Germany, France, Austria and Poland. Their individual trials did not necessarily concern atrocities in Buchenwald alone.
The old three story building at Buchenwald which originally was used to store prisoners personal effects on their arrival at the camp such as thousands of pairs of glasses, thousand of shoes, false teeth, children's dolls, clothing, luggage etc. etc. has been preserved as a museum and holds all the information concerning Buchenwald. All the old records, camp correspondence, films, photographs, documentation of the camp staff and stories of some of the more famous prisoners. At the entrance to this museum on a couple of pillars has been preserved some of the comments made by visitors to the present day camp. Comments such as "Had an interesting visit to Buchenwald … Thank you Adolf". Or the most dubious of all, "We did not really know about all of this !".
Just imagine, when a prisoner was no longer able to work, they were carted over to the crematorium and thrown down the stairs into the cellar. If they were not quite dead yet, there were hooks on the ceiling, by placing a sling around the victims neck and hanging them up, after a short pull on the ankles they were soon ready for the ride up on the elevator to the incinerators.
In 1998 and 1999 the issue of repaying the victims of the holocaust used as slave labour in the German war industry was reconsidered. Originally for example, a firm called E.G. Farber had a chemical factory operating during the war in the area of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp where those that had been executed were rendered down as chemicals for use in the war industry. After the war the E.G. Farber company was sold and the funds paid out to those victims who survived this part of the halocast.
Another of these firms guilty of using slave labourers for their war industry was Daimler Benz, who had among other factories, an aircraft engine works plant called Fabrik Ganzholden near Ludwigsfelden north east of Berlin in the province of Brandenburg. This large factory called the Deutsche Haus operated from 1939 to 1945 using slave labour. Aircraft engines were assembled using 1,100 young Polish women whose quarters were located in the cellars of the factory. They had been selected from the concentration camps of Ravensburg and Sachsenhausen. Also in the main factory works, Russian prisoners were also used. The main task of the Russian prisoners was to slave in the stone quarries where granite paving stones were produced for street repairs. God only knows how many of these people died from hunger, diseases, execution or overwork. In this very same area French, Belgium and Dutch military prisoners were also used in the war industry works.
Strangely at the same time most of the technical positions in the war industries were held by normal German people of the local area, yet the present population of this country has always maintained that they knew nothing of this concentration camp system. Who in hell is kidding who? Imagine these technical people were employed in factories along side these poor wretched inmates and did not know where they came from? Just imagine the number of those starved and overworked victims who must have dropped dead on the job.
In the factory near Ludwigsfelden the Russians gathered up all the old factory equipment and vehicles, put them all together in a compound with a fence around it. They abandoned the area as it stands today as a reminder of the place which included a vast burial area where the Russian military dead were buried in unmarked graves. Such places as this has long been eradicated in what was the former West Germany.
Now Mercedes Benz is building a new factory near there at Ahrensdorf on the other side of the autobahn from Ludwigsfelden. In comparison to what occurred during the era which the DDR existed, the Russians and the SED Governments made sure that all of the old installations from the Nazi days were kept as a reminder. Over the years from 1933 to 1945 a history was built by the Nazis that that the people of former West Germany have tried to eliminate by shutting it out of their lives as having never occurred. This part of their history was left out of their school books and everything that reminds one of this time has been removed. As is the case of the camps at Belsen and Dachau.
It is almost the beginning of a new century and the problem of repayment of those who had suffered so terribly and survived all of those years has still not been resolved. For the survivors of those 1,100 women who worked at the aircraft engine factory at Fabrik Ganzholden, probably now about 55 women in their seventies who have attempted many times to gain some remuneration have received nothing to date. Is there any chance they will be recognized? How can one remunerate one in such an instance?
On 14 and 15 August 1999, four members of the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 001 in Söllingen Germany visited the Buchenwald Concentration Camp Complex to lay a wreath and pay their respects. The Branch piper played the Lament at the memorial stone near Barrack Block 17 in the camp complex.
"Lest we forget"
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