President Obama’s visit on Friday to Buchenwald in Germany is likely to stick with him for a very long time. It has with me, many years later.
I saw Buchenwald in 1992, on a trip through Europe that touched on much of the history of World War II. The former concentration camps sit high above Weimar. It was a cold, windy spring day when I was there; I could only imagine how brutal the conditions must have been in the winter.
The barracks are gone; having been burned down after the camp was liberated. But still in place are parts of the camp that leave no doubt about the inhumanity that took place there.
The crematorium is still standing, with its brick ovens where thousands of bodies were disposed of. In another building, there are small rooms that were used for human experimentation, complete with the “medical tools” the Nazi doctors used.
There was a German guide the day I was there. She spoke very little English. Actually, she didn’t have to. It was crystal clear what had gone on at Buchenwald. It was not at all hard to imagine that the death toll there was 56,000.
The preservation of places like Buchenwald allows that horrible history to never be denied—all the more important as the generation that fought in World War II reaches its twilight and fewer and fewer of the people who survived those camps, or liberated them, are alive to tell about them.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments regarding your visit to Buchenwald. I agree that the preservation of the concentration camps is of vital importance. It is important not only to remember the history of the holocaust, but also to connect all of us to our humanity by facing our inhumanity. Moreover, there is no question of the permanent emotional and intellectual impact by visiting such places. My wife and I visited Auschwitz and Birkenau, in Poland, around the same time as your visit to Buchenwald. The borders of Poland had just been opened to the West and it was immediately obvious how green the country was to handle tourism. It was difficult to find anyone who spoke English, much less any organized tour guides to view historic landmarks. We took a local bus to the town where Auschwitz was located. For reasons I still don’t understand the bus dropped us off about a mile from the concentration camp. With little money, sleep and food, we hiked to Aushcwitz. Auschwitz is preserved like a museum, whereas Birkenau is left as it was found, almost in ruin, when it was liberated by US and ally troops. What was so striking about Birkenau was the size and enormity of the camp. The barracks where prisoners of all ages were housed spread out over the vast landscape and appeared to stretch to the end of each horizon. I’ve seen many documentaries and films on the holocaust, but until one actually stands on the ground where millions of victims also stood, walked, worked, cried and died, the true horror is difficult to imagine. Over a million people were murdered at Auschwitz and Birkenau combined. As my wife and I left the camp, just outside the entrance of Auschwitz, there a lone black bird flying directly over our heads. The bird must have caught in a current for it did not move in any direction, but stayed in one place, hovering over us, floating in air. It was an erie sight as we stood there in silence. We were both convinced that the bird was trying to tell us something. For a moment, we believed that embodied in that bird were the souls of the millions of people that had passed through the hellish gates of that concentration camp asking us never to forget what happened there. And, we never will.