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Buchenwald: Legend and Reality
by Mark Weber
Buchenwald is widely regarded as one of wartime Germany's most notorious
"death camps." In fact, though, this carefully cultivated image
bears little resemblance to reality. Today, more than forty years after
the end of We Second World War, the camp deserves another, more objective
look.
History and Function
The Buchenwald concentration camp was located on a wooded hill outside of
Weimar, in what is now East Germany. It was opened in July 1937. Until the
war years, almost all the inmates were either professional criminals or
political prisoners (most of them ardent Communists). Some 2,300 Buchenwald
inmates were pardoned in 1939 in honor of Hitler's 50th birthday.
At the outbreak of war in September 1939 the camp population was 5,300.
This grew slowly to 12,000 in early 1943, and then increased rapidly as
many foreign workers, especially Poles, Ukrainians and Russians, were brought
for employment in war production. (note l)
During the war years Buchenwald was expanded into a vast complex of more
than a hundred satellite factories, mines and workshops spread across a
large portion of Germany. The most important of these was probably the Dora
underground plant, which produced V-2 missiles. In October 1944 it became
the independent Nordhausen (Mittelbau) camp. (note 2)
Many thousands of Jews arrived at Buchenwald from Hungary and various eastern
camps in 1944 and 1945. Most had been evacuated by railroad from Auschwitz
and other camps threatened by the advancing Red Army. (note
3)
The number of inmates increased enormously during the final months of the
war: 34,000 in November 1943, 44,000 in April 1944, and 80,000 in August
1944. A monthly peak was reached at the end of February 1945, when 86,000
inmates were crammed into the severely overcrowded camp. Almost 30,000 inmates
were evacuated from Buchenwald during the week before the U.S. Army takeover
on 11 April 1945. Altogether a total of 239,000 persons were interned in
the camp between 1937 and April 1945. (note 4)
The Commandant and his wife
The first Commandant, Karl Koch, ran Buchenwald from 1937 until early 1942,
when he was transferred to Majdanek. He proved a notoriously brutal and
corrupt administrator who enriched himself with valuables stolen from numerous
inmates, whom he then had killed to cover up his thefts. The camp physician,
Dr. Waldemar Hoven, murdered many inmates in cooperation with Koch and the
Communist underground camp organization. Koch was eventually charged by
an SS court with murder and corruption, found guilty and executed. (note
5)
His wife, Ilse Koch, was involved in many of her husband's crimes, but the
fantastic charge that she had lamp shades and other items manufactured from
the skins of murdered inmates is not true. This allegation was made by the
United States prosecution team at the main Nuremberg tnal. (note
6)
General Lucius D. Clay, Commander in Chief of U.S. Forces in Europe and
Military Governor of the U.S. Occupation Zone of Germany, 1947-49, carefully
reviewed the Use Koch case in 1948 and found that, whatever her other misdeeds,
the lampshade charge was baseless. He commuted her sentence from life imprisonment
to four years and informed the Army Department in Washington "There
is no convincing evidence that she [Ilse Koch] selected inmates for extermination
in order to secure tatooed skins or that she possessed any articles made
of human skin." (note 7) During a 1976 interview Clay
recalled the case:
We tried Ilse Koch ... She was sentenced to life imprisonment,
and I commuted it to three [four] years. And our press really didn't like
that. She had been destroyed by the fact that an enterprising reporter who
first went into her house had given her the beautiful name, the "Bitch
of Buchenwald," and he had found some white lampshades in there which
he wrote up as being made out of human flesh
Well, it turned out actually that it was goat flesh But at the trial it
was still human flesh. It was almost impossible for her to have gotten a
fair trial.
... The Germans picked her up and gave her 12 years for her treatment of
her own people. But it wasn't really a war crime in the strict sense of
the word.
And those are the kinds of things that we had to deal with all the timer.
(note 8)
The Inmates: Life and Death
There is no question that many atrocities were committed against Buchenwald
inmates. However, at least a very large portion of them were committed,
not by the German SS guards, but by the underground Communist camp organization
that gained almost total internal control after 1943. This remarkable situation
was confirmed in a detailed U.S. Army intelligence document of 24 April
1945 entitled Buchenwald: A Prelirninary Report. (note 9)
This confidential analysis remained classified until 1972.
In a short preface, Army intelligence chief Alfred Toombs called this secret
report "one of the most significant accounts yet written on an aspect
of life in Nazi Germany" because it "tells how the [Buchenwald]
prisoners themselves organized a deadly terror within the Nazi terror."
The general accuracy of the report had been independently confirmed, Toombs
added.
As large numbers of foreigners began arriving at the camp during the war
years, the confidential report noted, the understaffed SS found it necessary
to turn over an ever larger share of camp administration to the inmates
themselves. In practice this meant that by 1943 the well-organized and
disciplined Communist inmate organization had taken virtually total control
of the camp's internal operation. As the report explained:
The trusties had wide powers over their fellow inmates. At first
they were drawn almost exclusively from the German criminals. This period
lasted until 1942. But gradually the Communists began to gain control of
this organization. They were the oldest residents, with records of 10-12
years in the concentration camps ... They clung together with remarkable
tenacity, whereas the criminal elements were simply out for their own individual
welfare and had little group cohesiveness. The Communists maintained excellent
discipline and received a certain amount of direction from outside the camp.
They had brains and technical qualifications for running the various industries
established at the camp.
Their advances were not made without resistance from the criminals, but
gradually the criminals were eliminated from power, partly by intimidation,
partly with the aid of the SS. Numbers of the criminals were Icilled by
beatings, hangings or injections of phenol into the heart or of air or milk
into the veins. The injections were a specialty of the camp doctor [Hoven],
who became a partisan of the Communist faction.
Besides the top positions in the trusty organization, there were a number
of key Communist strongholds in the administration of the camp. One was
the food supply organization, through which favored groups received reasonable
rations while others were brought to the starvation level. A second was
the hospital, staffed almost exclusively by Communists. Its facilities were
largely devoted to caring for members of their party ... Another Communist
stronghold was the Property Room ... Each German trusty obtained good clothing
and numerous other valuables. The Communists of Buchenwald, after ten or
twelve years in concentration carnps, are dressed like prosperous business
men. Some affect leather jackets and little round caps of the German navy,
apparently the uniform of revolution.
As a result of all this:
... lnstead of a heap of corpses or a disorderly mob of starving,
leaderless men, the Americans [who captured the camp] found a disciplined
and efficient organization in Buchenwald. Credit is undoubtedly due to the
self-appointed Camp Committee, an almost purely Communist group under the
domination of the German political leaders.
... The trusties, who in time became almost exclusively Communist Ger nans,
had the power of life and death over all other inmates. They could sentence
a man or a group to almost certain death ... The Communist trusties were
directly responsible for a large part of the brutalities committed at Buchenwald.
Communist block chiefs, the report stated, would personally beat their charges
and "sometimes forced whole blocks to stand barefoot in the snow for
hours, apparently on their own initiative." The Communists killed "large
numbers" of Polish inmates who refused to submit to their rule. They
forced French inmates to give up thousands of Red Cross parcels. The report
mentioned several particularly brutal Communist camp leaders by name.
It confirmed that the camp physician, Dr. Hoven, had been an important Communist
ally who killed numerous criminal and anti-Communist political prisoners
with lethal injections. An SS investigation team uncovered his activities
during the war and sentenced him to death for murder. However, because of
the critical wartime shortage of doctors, he was reprieved after 18 months
in jail. After the war the Communists tried to protect their ally, but Hoven
was sentenced to death for a second time by a U.S. military tribunal and
executed in 1948.
Camp Communists maintained close relations with the well- organized underground
Communist party on the outside. "From Buchenwald an inmate went out
regularly to establish contact with a Communist courier bringing news and
instructions. Bound by his loyalty to the Party, the contact man never made
use of his opportunity to escape personally." The Communist camp military
organization had three machine guns, fifty rifles and a number of hand grenades.
The German Communists lived better than any other group. "Even now,"
the report noted, "they may be distinguished from the rest of the inmates
by their rosy cheeks and robust health, though they have been in concentration
camps for much longer than the others."
Fmally, the report's authors warned against the simplistic and naive notion
that former inmates should be trusted and helped just because they had been
interned in German camps. "Some are in fact 'bandits,' criminals from
all Europe or foreign workers in Germany who were caught stealing ... They
are brutalized, unpleasant to look on. It is easy to adopt the Nazi theory
that they are subhuman."
A book published in 1961 by the Communist-run "Intemational Buchenwald
Committee" of East Berlin proudly describes the wartime activities
of the camp's Communist underground. It ran an underground camp newspaper,
an illegal radio transmitter, an inmate orchestra (which played Communist
songs), a large library and even a military organization. It held Communist
ceremonies and political meetings, and carried out extensive sabotage of
German war production. (note 10)
Former Buchenwald inmate Emst Fedem, a Jew, explained after the war how
the Communist camp organization cooperated with the SS to increase its own
power and eliminate opponents and undesirables. He recalled that the leader
of the Jewish section of the Communist camp organization, Emil Carlebach,
declared quite frankly that for him only his [Communist] friends counted,
that everybody else might as well perish." Fedem reported that he personally
witnessed two acts of brutality by Carlebach, who was a Block Senior from
1942 until 1945. In one case he ordered the death of a fellow Jewish inmate
for allegedly mistreating inmates at another camp. On another occasion Carlebach
personally beat an elderly Jewish inmate from Tulkey to death because he
had unavoidably relieved himself in the barracks. (note 11)
Similarly, an Englishman who spent 15 months in Buchenwald reported after
the war that the Communist camp organization did not consider the Jewish
inmates particularly worth trying tokeep alive. (note l2)
In recent years some homosexual organizations have claimed that thousands
of homosexuals were "systematically exterminated" in the German
concentration camps. While it is true that many were interned as criminals,
no homosexual was ever killed by the Germans for that reason alone. It is
also worth recalling that during the 1930s and 1940s, homosexual behavior
was considered an odious crime in most of the world, including the United
States.
A former Buchenwald inmate recalled in 1981: "... Homosexuals were
oppressed by the Nazis because of their social mores ... In Buchenwald,
a great number of them were not killed by the Nazis, but by political prisoners
[Communistsl, because of the homosexuals' aggressive and offensive behavior."
(note l3)
Day-to-day conditions were much better than most portrayals would suggest.
Inmates could both receive and send two letters or postcards monthly. They
could receive money from the outside. Inmates were also paid for their labor
with special camp currency which they could use to purchase a wide variety
of items in the camp canteen. They played soccer, handball and volleyball
in their spare time. Soccer matches were held on Saturdays and Sundays on
the camp playing field. A large camp library offered a wide range of books.
A motion picture theater was very popular. There were also variety shows,
and musical groups put on regular concerts in the central square. A camp
brothel, which employed 15 prostitutes when the Americans arnved, was available
to many inmates. (note l4)
Extermination factory?
The Americans who arrived at Buchenwald in April 1945 found hundreds of
sick inmates and many unburied corpses in the camp. Horrific photos of these
gruesome scenes were immediately circulated throughout the world and have
been widely reproduced ever since, giving the impression that Buchenwald
was a diabolical mass killing center.
The American government encouraged this impression. A U.S. Army report about
Buchenwald prepared for the Supreme Allied Headquarters in Europe and made
public at the end of April 1945 declared that the "mission of the camp"
was "an extennination factory." (note 15) And
two weeks later a U.S. Congressional report on German camps, later used
as a Nuremberg trial document, was issued which likewise described Buchenwald
as an "extermination factory." (note l6)
This superficially plausible description is, however, completely wrong.
The great majority of those who died at Buchenwald perished during the chaotic
final months of the war. They succumbed to disease, often aggravated by
malnutrition, in spite of woefully inadequate efforts to keep them alive.
They were victims, not of an "extermination" program, but rather
of the terrible overcrowding and severe lack of food and medical supplies
due to a general collapse of order in Germany during the tumultuous final
phase of the war.
Along with these indirect victims of the war were many healthy inmates.
B.M. McKelway inspected Buchenwald shortly after the U.S. takeover as one
of a group of American newspaper editors and publishers. He reported that
"many of the hundreds of inmates we saw appeared to be healthy while
others suffering from dysentery, typhus, tuberculosis and other diseases
were living skeletons." (note 17)
One striking indication that Buchenwald was not an "extermination"
camp is the fact that some of the internees were children too young to work.
An estimated one thousand boys, aged two to 16, were housed in two special
children's barracks. Train transports of Jewish children arrived from 1942
to 1945. Some arrived from Auschwitz in 1943. Other Jewish children came
from Hungary and Poland. (note 18) The confidential U.S.
Army report of April 24, 1945, noted the "most remarkable sight of
the children" who "rush about, shrieking and playing." (note
l9)
Thirty years after the war, even famed "Nazi hunter" Simon Wiesenthal
conceded that "there were no extermination camps on German soil."
(note 20)
The gas chamber lie
Perhaps the most vicious lie circulated after the war about Buchenwald is
the charge that the Germans exterminated inmates there in gas chambers.
An official French government report submitted to the Nuremberg tribunal
as a prosecution exhibit imaginatively stated: "Everything had been
provided for down to the smallest detail. In 1944, at Buchenwald, they had
even lengthened a railway line so that the deportees might be led directly
to the gas chamber. Certain [of the gas chambers] had a floor that tipped
and immediately directed the bodies into the room with the crematory oven."
(note 21) The chief British prosecutor at the main Nuremberg
trial, Sir Hartley Shawcross, declared in his closing address that"murder
[was] conducted like some mass production industry in the gas chambers and
the ovens" of Buchenwald and other camps. (note 22)
In a book published in 1947, French priest Georges Henocque, former chaplain
of the Saint-Cyr Military Academy, claimed to have visited the inside of
a Buchenwald gas chamber, which he described in detaiL This particular story
has been cited as a good example of the kind of Holocaust lies which even
prominent personalities are capable of inventing. (note 23)
Another French priest and former inmate, Jean-Paul Renard, made a similar
claim about the camp in his own book published shortly after the war: "I
saw thousands and thousands of persons going into the showers. Instead of
liquid, asphyxiating gases poured out over them." When fellow Frenchman
and former Buchenwald inmate Paul Rassinier pointed out to the priest that
there was no gas chamber in the camp, Renard replied: "Right, but that's
only a figure of speech ... and since those things existed somewhere, it's
not imporant." (note 24)
In a book published in 1948, Hungarian Jewish writer Eugene Levai charged
that the Germans killed tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews at Buchenwald
in gas chambers. (note 25)
A widely distributed booklet issued by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League
of B'nai B'rith also spread the tale that people were gassed at Buchenwald.
(note 26)
In 1960 the Buchenwald gassing story was officially declared a fable. In
that year, Martin Broszat of the anti-Hitler Institute for Contemporary
History in Munich specifically stated that no one was ever gassed at Buchenwald.
(note 27) Professor A.S. Balachowsky, a member of the
Institut de France, likewise declared in November 1971: "I would like
to confirm to you that no gas chamber as such existed at Buchenwald ..."
(note 28) Holocaust writer Konnilyn Feig conceded in her
book, Hitler's Death Camps, that Buchenwald did not have a gas chamber.
(note 29) Today no serious historian still claims gassings
there.
How many perished?
The numbers of persons estimated to have perished at Buchenwald while it
was under German control vary tremendously. According to former inmate Elie
Wiesel, the prolific Jewish writer and 1986 Nobel Peace Prize recipient,
"In Buchenwald they sent 10,000 to their deaths every day." (note
30) This wildly irresponsible statement is, unfortunately, all too typical
of the the rhetoric of the man who was also chosen to head the U.S. govemment's
official Holocaust Memorial Council.
The 1980 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia claimed that "more
than 100,000" died in the camp. (note 31) The Encyclopaedia
Judaica put the number at 56,549. (note 32) Raul Hilberg,
writing in the 1982 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana, stated that "more
than 50,000 died in the Buchenwald complex." (note 33)
The U.S. Army intelligence report of April 24, 1945 (cited above) noted
that the total number of certified deaths was 32,705. (note
34) A detailed June 1945 U.S. government report about Buchenwald put
the total at 33,462, of whom more than 20,000 died in the chaotic final
months of the war. (note 35)
The authoritative Intemational Tracing Service of Arolsen, an affiliate
of the Intemational Red Cross, stated in 1984 that the number of documented
deaths (of both Jews and non-Jews) at Buchenwald was 20,671, with another
7,463 for Dora (Mittelbau). (note 36)
While even these lower figures are regrettably high, it is important to
realize that the great majority of those who died at Buchenwald were unfortunate
victims of a catastrophic war, not Germany policy. Most of the rest were
murdered by order of the Communist underground camp organization. Several
hundred were also killed in Allied bombing attacks.
In one air raid against a large munitions factory near the main camp, British
bombers killed 750 persons, including 400 inmates. (note 37)
American and Soviet atrocities
Following the American takeover of Buchenwald in April 1945, about 80 remaining
German guards and camp functionaries were summarily murdered. Inmates brutally
beat the Germans to death, sometimes with the aid and encouragement of American
soldiers. (note 38) Between 20 and 30 GIs took turns gleefully
beating six young Germans to death. (note 39) Inmates
also commandeered American jeeps and drove to nearby Weimar, where they
looted and randomly killed German civilians. (note 40)
After the war the Soviet secret police operated Buchenwald as a concentration
camp for "potential class enemies" and other "possibly dangerous"
German civilians. In September 1949, more than four years after the end
of the war, there were still 14,300 inmates in the "special camp."
(While Buchenwald was under German control, the number of inmates did not
reach 14,000 until May 1943.) Conditions were horrible. Even the Soviet
official in charge of the concentration camps in Germany, General Merkulov,
acknowledged the severe lack of order and cleanliness, particularly at Buchenwald.
At least 13,000 and as many as 21,000 persons died in Soviet-run Buchenwald,
but no one has ever been punished for the deaths and mistreatment in this
notorious postwar camp. (note 4l) One former inmate described
his "five years of horrible seclusion, humiliations, interrogations
and annihilation" in the Soviet-run camp in these words:
People were mere numbers. Their dignity was consciously trampled
upon. They were starved without mercy and consumed by tuberculosis until
they were skeletons. The annihilation process which had been well tested
over decades was systematic. The cries and groans of those in pain still
echo in my ears whenever the past comes back to me in sleepless nights.
We had to watch helplessly as people perished according to plan -- like
creatures sacrificed to annihilation.
Many nameless people were caught up in the annihilation machinery of the
NKVD [Soviet secret police] after the collapse of 1945. They were herded
together like cattle after the so-called liberation and vegetated in the
many concentration carnps. Many were systematically tortured to death. A
memorial was built for the dead of the Buchenwald concentration camp. A
figure of death victims was chosen based on fantasy. Intentionally, only
the dead of the 1937-1945 period were honored. Why is there no memorial
honoring the dead of 1945 to 1950? Countless mass graves were dug around
the camp in the postwar penod. (note 42)
In an act of stunning hypocrisy, the Communist rulers of the postwar "Gemlan
Democratic Republic" have turned the Buchenwald camp area into a kind
of secular shrine. Every year, hundreds of thousands visit the sites, complete
with museums, bell tower, monumental sculpture and memorials dedicated,
ironically enough, to the "victims of fascism." (note
43) There is nothing to remind visitors of the thousands of forgotten
Germans who perished miserably during the years after the war when the camp
was run by the Soviets.
The story of Buchenwald, like the story of virtually every German wartime
concentration camp, is a microcosm of the entire Holocaust tale. The widely-accepted
portrayal of Buchenwald, like those of the other German camps, contrasts
sharply with the little- known reality.
Notes
1. The information in this section is from two sources:
"Buchenwald," Encyclopaeda Judaica (New York and Jersualem: 1971),
Vol. 4, pp. 1442, 1445; and U.S. government report B-2833 of 18 June 1945.
Document 217I-PS, published in the "red senes," Nazi Conspiracy
and Aggression (NC&A) (Washington, DC: 1946-48), Vol. 4, pp. 800-833.
2. U.S. Army report of 25 May 1945. Document 2222-PS. Published
in NC&A, Vol. 4, pp. 86p864; "German-Bom NASA Expert ...,"
New York Times, 18 October 1984, pp. Al, A12: "Ex-Nazi Denies Role
...," New York Times, 21 October 1984, p. 8.
3. Document 2171-PS. NC&A, Vol. 4, pp. 800-833.
4. 2171-PS. NC&A, Vol. 4, pp. 832-833.
5. Nuremberg testimony of Günther Reinecke, 7 August
1946. Published in the IMT "blue series," Trial of the Major War
Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) (Nuremberg: 1947
49), VoL 20, pp. 438, 441 142; SS indictment brief against Karl Koch, 11
April 1944. Document NO-2360.
6. IMT, Vol. 3, pp. 514-515; Vol. 5, pp. 220-201; Vol. 32,
pp. 267- 269.
7. "Clay Explains Cut in Ilse Koch Term," New
York Times, 24 Sept. 1948,p.3.
8. Interview with Lucius D. Clay. Official Proceedings of
the George C. Marshall Research Foundation. Transcript of a videotape interview
shown at the conference "U.S. Occupation in Europe After World War
II," 23- 24 April 1976 at Lexington, Van, sponsored by the George C.
Marshall Research Foundation, pp. 37-38. (I am grateful to Robert Wolfe
of the National Archives for bringing this interview to my attention.)
9. Egon W. Fleck and Edwartd At Tenenbaum, Buchenwald: A
Preliminary Report, U.S. Army, 12th Army Group, 24 April 1945. National
Archives, Record Group 331, SHAEF, G-5, 17.11, Jacket 10, Box 151 (8929tl63-8929/180).
I am grateful to Mr. Timothy Mulligan of the Military Branch of the National
Archives for bringing this report to my attention. See also: Donald B. Robinson,
"Communist Atrocities at Buchenwald," American Mercury, October
1946, pp. 397-404; and Christopher Burney, The Dungeon Democracy (New York
1946), pp. 21, 22-23, 28-29, 32, 33, 34, 44, 46, 49.
10. Internationales Buchenwald-Komitee, Buchenwald (East
Berlin: Kongress, 1961).
11. Ernst Federn, 'That German ..." Harper's, August
1948, pp. 106-107.
12. Christopher Burney, The Dungeon Democracy (New York
1946), pp. l09, 124, 128-130.
13. The Jewish Times (Baltimore). Quoted in "On the
Holocaust," The Gay Paper (Baltimore), December 1981, p. 2.
14. John Mendelsoln; "Sources," Prologue (Washington,
DC: National Archives), Fall 1983, p. 180; Konnilyn G. Feig, Hitler's Death
Camps (New York 1981), p. 96; K. Morgen testimony, 7 August 1946, IMT, Vol.
20, p. 490; testimony by former Buchenwald innate Arnost Tauber at Nuremberg
"I.G. Farben" trial, 12 Nov. 1947. Printed in: Udo Walendy (ed.),
Auschwitz im IG-Farben Prozess (1981), p. 119; Roger Manvell and H. Fraenkel.
The Incomparable Crime (New Yorlc 1967), p. 155; Buchenwald Camp: The Report
of a Parliamentary Delegation (IAXK1OrL HMSO, 1945), pp. 4,5.
15. "Official Army Report Lists Buchenwald as Extermination
Factory, The Washington Star, 29 April 1945, p. A7.
16. U.S. Congressional Report on Camps, Doc. 159-L., IMT,
Vol. 37, pp. 605-626; and Congressional Record (Senate), 15 May 1945, pp.
457S 4582.
17. B. M. McKelway, "Buchenwald ...," The Washington
Star, 29 April 1945, pp. Al, A7.
18. B. M. McKelway, "Buchenwald ...," Washington
Star, 29 April 1945, p. A7; affidavit of H. Wilhelm Hammann of 6 March 1947.
NO-2328. (Hamman was an inmate from 1938 until April 1945.)
19. E.W. Fleck and EA. Tenenbaurn, Buchenwald: A Prelinunary
Report, 24 April 1945 (Cited above), p. 14; see also the photo of Jewish
children inmates at Buchenwald in: Robert Abzug, Inside the Vicious Heart
(New York: Oxford, 1985), pp. 148-149.
20. S. Wiesenthal (letter), Book & Bookmen (London), April
1975, p. 5.
21. Nuremberg document 274-F (RF-301). If, Vol. 37, p.
148.
22. IMT, Vol. 19, p. 434; NC&A, Suppl. Vol. A, p. 61.
23. Georges Henocque, LesAutres de la Bàte (Paris:
G. Duraissie, 1947), p. 115. Facsimile reprint and commentary in Robert
Faurisson, Memoire en Defense (Paris: 1980), pp. 185-191.
24. Paul Rassinier, Debunking the Genocide Myth (Torrance,
CA.: The Noontide Press, 1978), pp. 129-130.
25. Eugene Levai, Black Book on the Martyrdom of Hungarian
Jewry (Zurich: 1948), p. 439.
26. Earl Raab, The Anatomy of Nazism (New York ADL, 1979),
photo caption opposite page 21. The Buchenwald gassing myth was also propagated
in: Francis Tomczuk, "Days of Remembrance," American Legion Magazine,
April 1985, p. 23.
27. Die Zeit, 19 August 1960, p. 16 (Up. editiorr 26 August
1960).
28. Germaine Tillion, Ravensbrueck (Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday,
1975), p. 231.
29. K Feig, Hitier's Death Camps, p. 100.
30. Stefan Kanfer, "Author, Teacher, Witness,"
Time magazme, 18 March 1985, p. 79.
31. "Buchenwald," Worid Book Encyclopedia, (1980
edition), Vol. 2, p. 550.
32. "Buchenwald," Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol.
4, p. 1445.
33. R Hilberg, "Buchenwald," Encyclopedia Americana
(1982 edition), Vol. 4, p. 677.
34. E. Fleck and E. Tenenbawn, Buchenwald: A Preliminary
Report (cited above), p. 18.
35. 2171-PS. NCLA, Vol. 4, p. 801.
36. Statement by Arolsen registry official Butterweck,
16 Jan. 1984. Facsimile in: Deutsche National-Zeitung (Munich), Nr. 18,
27 April 1984, p. 10.
37. Buchenwald Camp: Thc Report of a Parliamentary Delegation
(London: HMSO, 1945), p. 5; 2171-PS. NC1EA, VoL 4, p. 821.
38. Robert Abzug, Inside the Vicious Heart, pp. 49, 52.
39. Marguerite Higgins, News Is a Singular Thing (Doubleday,
1955), p. 78-79.
40. Elie WieseL Legends of Our Sune (New York Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1968), p. 140; Raul Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews
(New York Holmes & Meier, 1985), p. 987.
41. "Bis 1950: Buchenwald und Sachsenhausen,"
Amerika Woche (Chicago), 11 May 1985, p. 3; "Im Todeslager der Sowjets."
D. National-Zeitung (Munich), Nr. 47, 15 Nov. 1985, p. 4; "Soviet Camps
Busy, Berlin Paper Says," Ncw York Times, 10 Sept. 1949, p. 6.
42. Letter by E. Krombholz of Aschaffenburg, "Erlebnisbericht
aus einem Sowjet-KZ," D. National-Zeitung (Munich), Nr. 11, 9 Mash
1984, p. 10; see also sketches of conditions in Soviet-run Buchenwald by
former imnate Dr. Heinz Moller in: D. National-Zeitung (Munich), Nr. 6,
3 Feb. 1984, p. 5.
43. "Nazi Death Camp ..." (AP) Gazette-Telegraph
(Colorado Springs, Co.), 1 July 1984, p. H12; "At Buchenwald ...,"
New York Times, 14 April 1985, pp. 1, 29.
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