Buchenwald then and Now

I have also read the reports and have heard the public discontent about it, but as a survivor of Buchenwald who has visited a number of times since the camp’s liberation, I must say that I don’t know about any prisoner barracks that remained intact after the war.

At the end of the war, the camp was destroyed to the ground, and all the barracks disappeared. What is possible is that the reports are about more distant camps that are affiliated with Buchenwald, but not Buchenwald itself, which indicates perhaps tendentious reporting.

In any case, even if the reports are true, the blocs where the Eritrean or Syrian migrants are being housed should not really interest anyone. After all, they are just being given a place to rest their heads and take cover from the elements. In my opinion, it’s hard to see this as a “desecration of the memory of the martyrs,” as some reports have said. It’s humanism that is appropriate in the face of the waves of migrants fleeing from war-torn areas after years of bloodshed and strife.

There are those who think that this is a cynical play on emotions by Germany. There is no better rectification of the historical wrongs than by displaying empathy toward these wretched migrants and housing them in these barracks. The problem is that it comes on the account of the memories of the murdered Jews.

It’s important to note that all the displays of empathy and all the assistance given to the refugees cannot atone in even the slightest way for just one drop of blood of a single Jewish child; how much more so can it not atone for the six million Jews who were brutally murdered by the German nation during the Holocaust. It is impossible to atone for that in any way. Anyone who thinks that a pillow and blanket for an Eritrean child is a replacement for the horrors of Buchenwald needs urgent psychiatric care.

The German nation must physically maintain three things that will forever testify to the abominations it committed. These three things still exist and I have seen them myself: the horrible crematoria where they burned the holy bodies, Hy”d; the torture rooms at the entrance to the camps, where our brethren were tortured with brutality that we cannot fathom; and the bronze sign at the gate of the camp with the evil and obtuse phrase: “Each man to his fate.”

This is a cruel, cynical phrase that basically says: you are entering here, but we don’t guarantee in which way you will emerge, if at all. It is a sign that evokes horror and is even worse than the sign above Auschwitz stating “Arbeit macht frei — Work makes (you) free,” which is nothing more than a deception. In Buchenwald, by contrast, with these three horrific German words the cursed Nazis conveyed the entire truth.

As long as these three things still exist, they eternalize in the clearest way what happened there on the blood-soaked ground of Buchenwald, and it makes no difference anymore what the barracks and huts are used for.

I don’t think there is anyone in the world who believes that a photo of Africans or Syrians sleeping on a bed in Buchenwald will erase or diminish in any way the notorious history of the camp. The horrors that this camp saw can never be erased.

In general, the objective of Buchenwald from its establishment was the torture and killing of Jews. Already in 1936, three years before the war broke out, when no one even fathomed the Holocaust or the Final Solution, Buchenwald was a place to where Jewish prisoners from Germany were sent. On Kristallnacht, which took place in November 1939, 30,000 Jews were incarcerated in Buchenwald and Dachau before the war even started. This camp was established to persecute Jews wherever they were, and it never had any other purpose aside from brutality and hatred of Jews.

It is impossible to blur these things with any type of humanitarian gesture. Buchenwald was the source of brutality and evil during the Holocaust, and it will remain that way, to Germany’s abomination, forever.

From a Torah perspective, as Jews we know “When your enemy falls do not rejoice,” even if they are refugees from an enemy country like Syria. After all, these are civilians fleeing the regime of Assad and the war that is consuming the region. The same is true of the Africans. We have no accounts to settle with any of them. They are refugees, and include small children and women. Will we not allow them a roof over their heads?

This article appeared in print in the September 24th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.