This Day in History - The Liberation of Buchenwald
Buchenwald main gate, inscription ‘Jedem Das Seine’ means ‘To each his own’ (Britannica)
Back in 2015, I started a history series titled ‘This Week in History’, which was fun to put together although I kept getting distracted as I came across things I hadn’t been aware of before.
Despite best intentions, I didn’t get to the end of the year, and called it a day in May as I found it too time-consuming and, as I’ve said before, I detest putting out sub-standard posts.
Anyway, I thought I would revive it… kind of.
Instead of writing about events that happened in one whole week, I’ll choose one incident that occurred on the day I post, starting with…
On the 11th of April 1945, the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald was liberated by the Sixth Armoured Division of the US Third Army.
In 1937, the Schutzstaffel, or SS as they were commonly referred to, established one of the first and largest camps in Germany, and named it Buchenwald, which means ‘beech forest’, referencing the nearby beech forest.
Prisoners destined for the camp came from all over Europe and the Soviet Union, and included Jews, Poles, Slavs, political prisoners, ordinary criminals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Romani people, gay men, and the mentally and physically disabled.
Buchenwald prisoners’ roll call (Wikimedia Commons)
Between its establishment in 1937 and the liberation of the prisoners in 1945, over 250,000 people were imprisoned in Buchenwald, working mainly as forced labour in local armaments factories.
Even though Buchenwald wasn’t an extermination camp, over 56,000 people died there due to the appalling conditions and exhausting labour, which coupled with constantly being kept in a state of starvation, made the prisoners prone to various illnesses.
If they weren’t literally worked to death, they were deliberately executed for no reason, or subjected to medical experimentation, which few survived.
German authorities rarely, if ever, sent Allied prisoners of war to concentration camps.
But, in 1944, a group of 168 aviators whose aircraft had crashed in occupied France were taken to Buchenwald and held there for 2 months.
The men, from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Jamaica, had first managed to make contact with the French Resistance before they were caught and held by the Gestapo, who eventually transferred them to Buchenwald.
The POWs were treated the same as the other prisoners, suffered the same abuse.
In October 1944, thanks to a change in policy, the aviators were transferred to Stalag Luft III, a POW camp, but Buchenwald had already claimed the lives of 2 of their comrades.
On the 4th of April 1945, the US 89th Infantry Division overran Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald.
Between the 6th and 11th of April, as US forces moved closer to the camp, thousands of prisoners were forced on marches out of Buchenwald, with many dying along the way.
But an underground resistance group managed to hamper the efforts of the Germans.
A Polish engineer and short-wave radio amateur, Gwidon Damazyn, who’d been a prisoner at Buchenwald since 1941, had helped build a short-wave transmitter and small generator in secret, which was kept hidden in the prisoners’ movie room.
On the 8th of April at noon, Damazyn and fellow prisoner, Konstantin Ivanovich Leonov, sent a Morse code message that had been prepared by the leaders of their underground resistance:
‘To the Allies. To the army of General Patton. This is the Buchenwald concentration camp. SOS. We request help. They want to evacuate us. The SS wants to destroy us.’
The message was repeated several times with Damazyn sending it in English and German, and Leonov sending the Russian version.
3 minutes after Damazyn’s final transmission, the pair received a response from the headquarters of the US Third Army:
‘KZ Bu. Hold out. Rushing to your aid. Staff of Third Army.’
On the 11th of April 1945 at 15:15, troops from the US 6th Armoured Division, part of the US Third Army, and under the command of Captain Frederic Keffer, arrived at Buchenwald, and liberated over 20,000 prisoners.
The time of their arrival, 15:15, is now the permanent time on the clock at the entrance gate of the camp.
Gatehouse of Buchenwald with the clock showing the time 15:15 (Chiode - Wikimedia Commons)
The soldiers were greeted with as much jubilation as the emaciated survivors could muster.
The next day, the 12th of April, elements of the 80th Infantry Division were sent to take control of the camp.
That same day, several journalists arrived, including Edward R. Murrow, whose radio report of his arrival at the camp was broadcast on CBS.
Edward R. Murrow in London circa 1940 (CBS photo archive)
This is an excerpt from his Buchenwald Report of the 15th of April 1945:
‘I asked to see one of the barracks. It happened to be occupied by Czechoslovaks. 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 80 horses. There were 1,200 men in it, five to a bunk. The stink was beyond all description…’
It’s great all those prisoners were liberated although liberation didn’t prevent deaths with so many still suffering malnutrition and disease, and there were those so malnourished their bodies were unable to cope with the food they were given.
But it’s beyond awful that they were there in the first place, at Buchenwald and all the other camps.
Having seen the photographs of the prisoners at Buchenwald, there are no words to describe the disgust one feels on discovering the horrors so-called humans can so callously inflict on other humans.
This article, ‘The Buchenwald Concentration Camp: Patton’s Bastardly Discovery’, is the most detailed account I came across while researching this post.
It gives an overview of the Third Army’s progress through Germany until they reach Ohrdruf then Buchenwald, after which we’re given an almost step-by-step report.
Many people around the world, including Americans and Britons, remained sceptical over reports, from as early as 1933, of the persecution of the Jews in Germany; many believed it was nothing more than an attempt to fuel anti-German sentiment.
Even after the Soviet army discovered Auschwitz in January 1945, many couldn’t believe it for it seemed too terrible to be true.
But for the American soldiers who saw the horrors of, first, Ohrdruf, then Buchenwald, there could be no denying it.
Entering Ohrdruf together with their entourage were General Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Omar Bradley, and General George S. Patton who said, ‘“We… visited the first horror camp any of us had ever seen.”’
Patton, known as ‘Old Blood and Guts’, found the scenes at Ohrdruf so stomach-churning, ‘“he went off to a corner thoroughly sick,” wrote Robert D. Murphy’, one of Eisenhower’s political advisers who was also present.
When they’d finished their nightmare tour of Ohrdruf, Eisenhower said, ‘“I want every American unit not actually in the front lines to see this place. We are told that the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, he will know what he is fighting against.”’