In Memoriam

Most of us have heard of the brutality of Nazi Germany. The first real education I got about that time was when I acted in a play in my university. In it, I portrayed a German scientist who relished her work in finding a way to burn bodies more effectively in pyres. She was a dispassionate observer, who had no interest in the war or the reasons of it. She marveled in the science of fire.

But it never really hit home. Weimar, 20 kilometers out of Jena, hosts the Buchenwald concentration camp. Home of the SS, and site of the massive death, suffering, and starvation 250,000 political prisoners, Jews, homosexuals, and gypsies. Last Wednesday Julia took me to the camp, a depressing place that settled heavily in my heart.

I did not bring a camera with me, and I would have preferred not to, anyway. The beauty of Weimar was a chilling setting for the nastiness humans can inflct, and continue to inflict, on each other.

After watching a short film about life in the camp (yellow stars for Jews, red stars for political prisoners, and pink stars for homos), we went on a sobering tour of what still remains of the camp.

We went into a hall of 26 bunkers, where political prisoners were kept. They frequently committed suicide, choosing what they felt was a more dignified death than the slow hunger of the that killed the other prisoners around them. Prisoners strangled each other so they can get a bigger share of potato peels. Outside, the SS officers and their families frolicked in a zoo that they forced the prisoners to build.

Buchenwald is a place of memorials. Some of the cells contained photographs and a short biography of the tenants, placed by their families in memoriam. In another room, paper cranes, a symbol of peace, are placed on a bed.

The crematorium was truly disturbing. The entrance contained an autopsy table, where the SS conducted "experiments" on the Jewish population. Jews and homosexuals were fair game in the camp. They were the first picked out for torture, and were consistenly chosen by the SS for the most humiliating, degrading acts. Political prisoners were allowed to become "guards" within the camp.

The basement contained a wooden chute where bodies were slid for storage. An elevator with the width of a human lengthwise carried the bodies up to the crematoriums, which burned 24 hours a day. A storage facility for bodies is filled with marble plates, giving names, and hopefully, a rightful burial for those that perished.

One stood out. From Luxembourg: "To our mother who survived the hell of Buchenwald."

The German legacy is checkered, punctuated by wars, power plays, everchanging borders and anti-semitism. I think that Germany has learned its lesson. Unfortunately, I believe the human race has not.

I was so burdened by Buchenwald that I was very careful to not allow any part of my body to touch the walls. I did not want to take the place's oppresive memories home with me. I slept fitfully that night, haunted by the ghosts of Buchenwald.