Buchenwald

I felt as though my visit to Buchenwald deserved it's own separate, more reflective post regarding my experience there. So here that is. There are no pictures in this post. I did not bring my camera to Buchenwald. Honestly, I feel that taking pictures at a concentration camp is incredibly disrespectful. I was raised with the notion that taking pictures anywhere holy (inside of a synagogue, in a cemetery) was just not done. I felt the same way about a concentration camp. I was a little bit insulted and hurt when I saw others taking pictures there, although I do understand that everyone does things differently. In my opinion though, Buchenwald is something that you should remember for the rest of your life without the need to take photographs.

As we arrived, I really wasn't sure what to expect. Buchenwald was a forced labor camp, where mostly foreigners and foreign POWs were kept. As overcrowding occurred near the end of the war, more and more people were outright murdered just to make room for others. There was a large Sinti and Roma Gypsy population here as well. There was also a special block for children and young people. Buchenwald was also a camp where a lot of medical experimentation went on, and there were memorials for that as well. After Buchenwald was liberated, the Soviets turned it into a camp for Nazi prisoners.

As we entered the actual camp itself, I felt an overwhelming sense of vastness. All of the barracks are gone, replaced with long rectangles filled with stones. Every so often there was a small plaque in German, Russian, English, and French explaining what the barracks that formerly stood there housed. Throughout the empty space, there were memorials for Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, POWs, Children, and victims of medical experimentation, among others. We walked throughout the open space for a while. All I could possibly think of were the people who walked there before I did, and what conditions they were under.

I also thought a lot about what these people could have become. Was someone who was murdered here going to go on and find a cure for cancer? Would they make a film that changed the industry? Would they be one of the next world leaders? This is a thought that is constantly on my mind whenever I think about the Holocaust. Eleven MILLION people were killed. How many of these people, had they not been victim to Nazi atrocities, would go on to change the world? I think this, above all, is the thing that affects me the most about the Holocaust. What could have been.

After walking around the former camp for about an hour and a half, we headed to the museum for the Second Buchenwald. As I said before, after Buchenwald was liberated the Soviets turned it into a sort of prison for Nazi-related peoples. I really can't say how I felt about this museum. I recognize that people there were killed, and some unjustly, but my deeper person can only think of one thing: they were Nazis. The illogical part of me says that all of them deserved to be there and everyone who died deserved it. I know this is a somewhat antiquated way of thinking, but I really can't help it. It's a lot to do with the way I was educated and raised, and even more to do with the fact that I am Jewish.

Following that museum we went into the museum on Buchenwald. A lot of it was in German, so I took in what I could. I was a little bit overwhelmed with information at this point, and hungry. We went to head out of the camp. On our way out, we crossed paths with a small building. This is where I basically broke down and needed to leave.

We entered the first small building. Inside there was a plaque explaining that it was in this house that the Nazis murdered about 1,000 young Soviet soldiers by shooting them point blank. I couldn't stay in the small building for too long, I was very overwhelmed with this information and with being in an enclosed and small space where so much murder took place. I went and stood outside. Attached to this small building was a larger building, the crematorium.

I am absolutely revolted by the fact that the crematorium is open. I think it is an atrocity. I can't even fathom why people would want to go into a building like that. People were BURNED in there. Thousands of people, discarded like trash. Why would you even want to set foot in there? There are ways to remember people. There are ways to remember the horror that occurred during the second world war. This is not one of them. I think this building should be shuttered forever, and that nobody should ever, ever go in it again. I realize that my opinion is my opinion, and that people will disagree with it, but this is how I feel. I really needed a space where I could say something like this, and inside the camp was not that space. I said it to my mother, and I feel a lot better saying it here as well.

Needless to say, I didn't go inside of the crematorium. I stood outside, crying and saying Kaddish (the Jewish prayer for mourning). It was one of the hardest things I've done, standing outside that terrible place and saying this prayer. After I finished saying Kaddish I went and placed some stones on a few of the memorials. In Judaism it is customary to place stones on graves instead of flowers. Stones don't die.

After we left the camp, I didn't feel like I could really discuss it with any of my peers. It was a deeply personal experience, and the only person I wanted to talk to was my Mom. Nobody else in this group is Jewish. This is difficult, and I'm glad my Mom could talk to me afterwards. But in the discussions between my peers that followed, I discovered that I really couldn't comfortably take part in them. I don't want to be on a high horse about it, but nobody in our group knows or understands what I went through at Buchenwald. Writing about it helps immensely. I'm also in contact with people in the Jewish community in Berlin, working on my thesis and discussing what happened to me at Buchenwald.