Read Online The Liberators: America's Witnesses to the Holocaust by Michael Hirsh - Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Hirsh
Tags: History, Psychology, 20th Century, Holocaust, Modern, Psychopathology, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
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they began hearing rumors again. The 6th Armored Division was ahead of them, and it had found something. But at that point there were just rumors.
What they’d found was Buchenwald, which had been taken over on April 10 by Communist-led inmates who had been arming themselves for the day the Allied armies would approach the camp. The underground movement had nearly a thousand armed men, who had taken over after the hard-core SS guards fled as the U.S. Army approached Weimar. The underground fought against a small number of young German soldiers, overpowering and imprisoning those they caught in a place called “the dungeon.” A couple of the young soldiers tried to impersonate inmates but were caught, and it’s claimed that they subsequently hanged themselves.
Buchenwald was built in 1937 in a wooded area about five miles northwest of Weimar, in east-central Germany. The early inmates were predominantly political prisoners; however, after Kristallnacht in 1938, almost 10,000 Jews were sent to the camp. As the years went on, the Nazi regime sent a variety of people there: hardened criminals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gypsies, military deserters, and so-called asocials. In its final years, Buchenwald also held POWs from various countries, former government officials of Nazi-occupied countries, resistance fighters, and slave laborers brought to Germany from captured lands.
By February 1945, the population of Buchenwald and its nearly one hundred subcamps reached 112,000, most of whom were being worked by various businesses owned and operated for profit by the SS. In addition, medical experimentation on inmates, similar to that conducted at other concentration camps, took place at the main camp. Prisoners deemed no longer fit to work were usually selected for transport to other camps, where they were systematically killed. Though there was no gas chamber at Buchenwald, there was a crematorium building that the Americans discovered not only disposed of prisoners who died in the camp but contained a macabre mechanism for the killing of undesirable inmates.
Early in 1945, as the Russian army moved through Poland, the Germans emptied the death camps at Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen, sending thousands of prisoners on forced marches to Buchenwald and leaving thousands more dead along the roadside. In the first week of April, with American forces closing in, the Germans attempted to send almost 30,000 Buchenwald prisoners on foot and by train to other camps.
On the morning of April 11, a fourteen-year-old Jewish boy, Menachem Lipshitz, from Częstochowa, Poland, the location of a famous Catholic shrine, climbed to the roof of the hospital building at Buchenwald. He was being hidden in the hospital by Poles who were imprisoned in the camp. Speaking from his home in Nashville, the man, now known as Menachem Limor, says rumors of liberation had been spreading through Buchenwald. When they saw that the Germans had abandoned their guard posts, they began to believe that the rumors might be true. “When we heard that the Americans were coming, we went on the roof of the hospital, and then I saw American tanks coming from both sides of the camp. A jeep with American soldiers came into the camp, and that’s the first time I saw an American soldier in my life. And that’s how we were liberated.”
A few days before the Americans arrived, Limor says, the Germans “took up a lot of the people for the march of the death.” The day before, he’d known something was afoot because he’d seen one of the Russians in the camp walking through the hospital carrying a rifle. “We were afraid that maybe the Germans will take everyone out from the camp, and in the hospital, there was a group that say, ‘We won’t go. We will run away.’ And they had even clothes, you know, not inmate clothes, the civilian clothes. And I was lucky to be with them, that they said they would take me with them if we have to go. So there was an underground, but I was a
What they’d found was Buchenwald, which had been taken over on April 10 by Communist-led inmates who had been arming themselves for the day the Allied armies would approach the camp. The underground movement had nearly a thousand armed men, who had taken over after the hard-core SS guards fled as the U.S. Army approached Weimar. The underground fought against a small number of young German soldiers, overpowering and imprisoning those they caught in a place called “the dungeon.” A couple of the young soldiers tried to impersonate inmates but were caught, and it’s claimed that they subsequently hanged themselves.
Buchenwald was built in 1937 in a wooded area about five miles northwest of Weimar, in east-central Germany. The early inmates were predominantly political prisoners; however, after Kristallnacht in 1938, almost 10,000 Jews were sent to the camp. As the years went on, the Nazi regime sent a variety of people there: hardened criminals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gypsies, military deserters, and so-called asocials. In its final years, Buchenwald also held POWs from various countries, former government officials of Nazi-occupied countries, resistance fighters, and slave laborers brought to Germany from captured lands.
By February 1945, the population of Buchenwald and its nearly one hundred subcamps reached 112,000, most of whom were being worked by various businesses owned and operated for profit by the SS. In addition, medical experimentation on inmates, similar to that conducted at other concentration camps, took place at the main camp. Prisoners deemed no longer fit to work were usually selected for transport to other camps, where they were systematically killed. Though there was no gas chamber at Buchenwald, there was a crematorium building that the Americans discovered not only disposed of prisoners who died in the camp but contained a macabre mechanism for the killing of undesirable inmates.
Early in 1945, as the Russian army moved through Poland, the Germans emptied the death camps at Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen, sending thousands of prisoners on forced marches to Buchenwald and leaving thousands more dead along the roadside. In the first week of April, with American forces closing in, the Germans attempted to send almost 30,000 Buchenwald prisoners on foot and by train to other camps.
On the morning of April 11, a fourteen-year-old Jewish boy, Menachem Lipshitz, from Częstochowa, Poland, the location of a famous Catholic shrine, climbed to the roof of the hospital building at Buchenwald. He was being hidden in the hospital by Poles who were imprisoned in the camp. Speaking from his home in Nashville, the man, now known as Menachem Limor, says rumors of liberation had been spreading through Buchenwald. When they saw that the Germans had abandoned their guard posts, they began to believe that the rumors might be true. “When we heard that the Americans were coming, we went on the roof of the hospital, and then I saw American tanks coming from both sides of the camp. A jeep with American soldiers came into the camp, and that’s the first time I saw an American soldier in my life. And that’s how we were liberated.”
A few days before the Americans arrived, Limor says, the Germans “took up a lot of the people for the march of the death.” The day before, he’d known something was afoot because he’d seen one of the Russians in the camp walking through the hospital carrying a rifle. “We were afraid that maybe the Germans will take everyone out from the camp, and in the hospital, there was a group that say, ‘We won’t go. We will run away.’ And they had even clothes, you know, not inmate clothes, the civilian clothes. And I was lucky to be with them, that they said they would take me with them if we have to go. So there was an underground, but I was a
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