Buchenwald

Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg (Etter Mountain) near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.

Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes, religious and political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Freemasons, Jehovah's Witnesses, criminals, homosexuals, and prisoners of war— worked primarily as forced labor in local armament factories. From 1945 to 1950, the camp was used by the Soviet occupation authorities as an internment camp, known as NKVD special camp number 2.

In the camp health staff, medical doctors and nurses, made experiments wtih the prisoners as studied obejcts. E. g. During year 1941 Aribert Heim (born 1914 declared dead 1992 by german court 2012) worked as camp doctor at Buchenwald KZ. He had before that been at Sachenhausen KZ and in october 1941 he began work at Mathausen KZ.Another e.g. is the brigadier general of the Luftwaffe Gerhard Rose (1896-declared dead 1992), who in Dachau and Buchenwald made series of deathly "experiments" about tyfus and malaria on the jewish prisoners. One of Rose's collegues was Waldemar Hoven (1903-1948), who had a lower rank but was a SS-doctor with the same interest of 'treating' the prisoners with fenol injections.

Among all the adult prisoners the nazis also kept lots of so called orphan boys, whos parents and sibblings had been killed in other KZ-camps. A documentary film is made about all these hundereds of children The Boys of Buchenwald.

Two of the adult prisoners, Fritz Löhner-Beda and Herman Leopoldi, composed a song to Buchenwald KZ at the end of 1938:

Das Buchenwaldlied ("The Buchenwald Song"):

O Buchenwald, ich kann dich nicht vergessen, weil du mein Schicksal bist. Wer dich verließ, der kann es erst ermessen, wie wundervoll die Freiheit ist! O Buchenwald, wir jammern nicht und klagen, und was auch unser Schicksal sei, wir wollen trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen, denn einmal kommt der Tag, dann sind wir frei!

O Buchenwald, I can’t forget about you, because you are my fate. Who leaves you, only he can appreciate how wonderful freedom is! O Buchenwald, we don’t cry and complain and whatever may be our destiny, even so we shall say "yes" to life for once the day shall come when we shall be free!

El Male Rachamim Holocaust Prayer - אל מלא רחמים, תפילת אזכרה לקרבנות השואה

References

The Holocaust - the Jewish Tragedy by Martin Gilbert [1]

Wikipedia

Levande historia information på svenska om Buchenwald KZ (information in swedish about Buchenwald KZ)