LIBERATION OF BUCHENWALD

Chapter 12

is a good time to switch off the radio, for I propose to tell you of Buchenwald.” You can Google Murrow’s radio broadcast and read his full transcript in detail, word for word of what he witnessed at Buchenwald.

By the end of the war, Buchenwald was the largest concentration camp in the German Reich. Approximately 56,000 men, women, and children were murdered or died from maltreatment, exposure, starvation, illness, or heinous medical experiments while in the Buchenwald camp system, the majority of them after

1942. Before the Nazis surrender on May 8, 1945, about 11,000,000 people died in the 520 concentration camps with the largest group of camp victims being Jews. Today, the Gate building of Buchenwald is one of the only buildings that remain standing. The clock on the building tower is stuck at 3:15 p.m. and has never been changed. It signifies the time Buchenwald was finally liberated by the Americans from the German SS on April 12, 1945. Three weeks later after the liberation of Buchenwald, the concentration camp of Dachau was liberated. One day after Dachau’s liberation, Hitler committed suicide. On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered and World War II came to an end.

In reviewing this history of Buchenwald, I had a theory about why my grandfather wanted to visit Dachau when he took my grandmother to Europe instead of the site of the actual camp he liberated. Here is the key information leading up to my theory. While at Buchenwald, the German SS knew that the Allied Forces were closing in. Just like the research shows, they tried to get rid of as many of the prisoners as possible and started to send them on “death marches” to mass graves or started shipping them out of the area, but nobody knows exactly where. The ones that were shipped out of Buchenwald on railroad cars were never seen again. Well, the concentration