The Liberation Of Buchenwald Concentration Camp, A Journey Through Horror
On April 11, 1945, the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated by the 6th Armoured Division of the United States Army, marking the first of the major Nazi concentration camps to be freed. The scenes that greeted the liberators were unlike anything they had ever witnessed, and the stories that emerged from those days are a reminder of humanity's darkest hour. Buchenwald, located just outside the historic city of Weimar, had been a place of unimaginable suffering, where tens of thousands of men, women, and children met their deaths or endured horrors beyond description.
“You couldn’t grasp it all,” said Andrew Kiniry, a member of the 45th Evacuation Hospital attached to General George S. Patton’s Third Army. His words, recorded during an oral history interview with The National WWII Museum, underscore the difficulty faced by even those who arrived at Buchenwald after its liberation. Kiniry was not among the first to enter the camp, but what he saw there, between April 28 and May 11, 1945, was burned into his memory. “I can’t really describe it, to tell you how horrendous it was to see these people treated like animals. Even worse than that,” he added, expressing his disbelief at the scale of the atrocities.
What Kiniry and other medical personnel encountered were the remnants of a system of brutality and murder. Bodies, strewn across the camp grounds, piled in trenches and carts, and the overwhelming stench of death greeted the liberators. Kiniry recalled the shock of realising what they had walked into: “I don’t think they told us what we were getting into.” The soldiers and medics worked swiftly, arranging tuberculosis tests, and providing soup to the starved prisoners whose shrunken stomachs could barely handle food. Maintaining hygiene in such dire conditions was a challenge, as many of the prisoners initially refused to shower, haunted by memories of the SS gas chambers disguised as shower rooms.
To help clean the camp, Kiniry and his comrades supervised local Germans from nearby Weimar, who claimed they had known nothing of the camp’s horrors. Yet the stench of decay, the smoke from the crematoria, and the constant flow of trains carrying prisoners must have made such ignorance impossible. As Kiniry observed, the very smell of death surrounding Buchenwald made any denials implausible.
The Discovery of Buchenwald
Seventeen days before Kiniry arrived, on April 11, 1945, Buchenwald had already been liberated by the men of the 6th Armoured Division. Commanded by Major General Robert W. Grow, the division had been in continuous combat since July 1944. Their campaign had taken them deep into Nazi-occupied territory, but nothing could have prepared them for what they discovered at Buchenwald.
In the days before the camp's liberation, American forces had already witnessed Nazi cruelty firsthand when they overran the Ohrdruf subcamp on April 4. The corpses at Ohrdruf and the near-total destruction wrought by the Nazis had provided a chilling prelude to Buchenwald. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, along with Generals Omar Bradley and Patton, visited Ohrdruf on April 12. The scene was so appalling that Eisenhower famously remarked,
“We are told that the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, he will know what he is fighting against.”
The liberation of Buchenwald itself, however, was a turning point in the war’s final days. As American forces approached, the SS initiated a mass evacuation, attempting to move thousands of prisoners to other camps. Historian Dan Stone reports that around 23,000 inmates were forced onto trains bound for camps like Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Theresienstadt. By the time the Americans arrived, 21,000 prisoners remained, including 4,000 Jews and around 850 children.
Amazingly, it was the prisoners themselves who took control of the camp in the hours before the Americans arrived. Armed with weapons they had secretly acquired over time, the prisoners captured more than 70 SS guards. Led by Hans Eiden, a communist who had been one of the camp’s elders, the prisoners managed to maintain order amidst the chaos, hoisting a white flag of surrender and securing the camp.
The Horrors Revealed
What the American troops found inside Buchenwald was beyond imagination. Medical experimentation, including vivisections and grotesque research on typhus and phosphorus, had been conducted on healthy prisoners. The crematorium, where the bodies of countless victims had been incinerated, still held human remains, a grim testament to the scale of the Nazi genocide.
The task of documenting these atrocities fell to American investigators and journalists. Edward R. Murrow, the legendary CBS reporter, arrived at Buchenwald shortly after its liberation. On April 15, 1945, he broadcast his shocking report to the American public, his voice filled with the emotion and horror of what he had witnessed. Murrow described rows of bodies stacked "like cordwood," a phrase that would become synonymous with the discovery of the Nazi death camps. He recounted how the former prisoners had crowded around him, expressing their gratitude to President Franklin Roosevelt, unaware that the president had died just hours earlier. In his broadcast, Murrow pleaded with his audience:
“I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard but only part of it. For most of it, I have no words.”
The liberation of Buchenwald and other camps revealed the full extent of Nazi barbarity to the world. The ovens of the crematorium, the mass graves, and the skeletal survivors were the horrific evidence of the genocidal policies carried out in the name of the Third Reich. American forces began to compile the evidence for future war crimes trials, while the survivors faced a long road to recovery from the physical and psychological wounds inflicted upon them.
Patton's Decision to Bring Local Germans to the Camp
General George S. Patton, known for his fierce and uncompromising leadership, made a crucial decision in the aftermath of Buchenwald’s liberation. He ordered that local German civilians, especially those from the nearby cultural hub of Weimar, be forced to tour the camp. His intent was clear: to confront them with the atrocities committed in their own backyards, to make them see and acknowledge the human suffering they had allowed to unfold. For too long, the German population had claimed ignorance, but Patton, like many of the American commanders, knew that such claims rang hollow.
As Patton himself wrote in a letter to his wife, he was adamant that the German people understand the full scope of Nazi atrocities:
“We brought some 1,000 citizens from Weimar, including about 300 women, to see the sights. I made the SS men who had run the camp do the burying of the dead.”
Patton’s reasoning was rooted in a belief that seeing the horrors firsthand would leave no room for denial and would be a fitting punishment for those who had turned a blind eye.
Lieutenant Colonel George Lynch, another American officer present during this period, described the reaction of the local population:
“They started out by saying they didn’t know about it, but they changed their tune when they got there. Men and women passed out, screamed, fainted, vomited. They were in shock, but it was necessary for them to see it.”
Eisenhower shared this sentiment. After his visit to Ohrdruf, he insisted that both the American public and the German population needed to see these camps to fully comprehend the depths of Nazi depravity. "The things I saw beggar description," Eisenhower stated, urging journalists and Congressmen to visit the camps to ensure the horrors would not be dismissed as propaganda. The decision to force local Germans to witness the aftermath of the Holocaust was not about retribution but rather education and acknowledgment. It was an attempt to prevent future generations from claiming ignorance or innocence about such atrocities.
The Legacy of Buchenwald
Buchenwald was not just a place of death but also of resistance. Political prisoners, particularly communists, played a significant role in organising resistance within the camp. Their bravery in the face of unimaginable hardship is a testament to the human spirit’s resilience. Yet, Buchenwald remains a symbol of the industrialised horror of the Holocaust.
The liberation of Buchenwald was a moment of both horror and hope. It was a horrific realisation of the depths to which humanity could sink, but it was also a moment of redemption, when the forces of good prevailed over evil. The stories of survivors and liberators alike ensure that the lessons of Buchenwald will never be forgotten. Andrew Kiniry’s simple but profound words resonate still: “You couldn’t grasp it all.” Indeed, the horrors of Buchenwald may be too great to fully comprehend, but through remembering and telling these stories, we strive to ensure that such atrocities are never repeated.
Patton’s decision to force local Germans to face these horrors underscores a fundamental truth: acknowledging the past, no matter how horrific, is essential to preventing its recurrence.
To give you a sense of the scale of the camp, I've included these figures from the Buchenwald Memorial website -
400,000-m² prisoner camp
3,500 metres of electric barbed-wire fence
139 satellite camps
277,800 prisoners
30,000 minors
28,230 women
249,570 men
from more than 50 countries
56,000 deaths
1,944 men, women and children sent with death transports to Auschwitz
February 1938: 2,728 prisoners
February 1945: 112,050 prisoners
Prisoners’ ages: from 2 up to 86 years old
7-10 April 1945: 28,000 prisoners evacuated on a Death march
11. April 1945: 21,000 prisoners liberated
9.000 SS-guards and female wardens, only 79 condemned post 1945
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