WEIMAR, Germany — Buchenwald survivor Henry Oster recalls thinking that a fellow inmate had “lost his sense of reality” when he said, 70 years ago on Saturday, that the concentration camp was being liberated, bringing an end to the long ordeal of the 21,000 surviving prisoners.
Oster, 86, visited the site near the German city of Weimar for the first time since its liberation April 11, 1945 — one of a group of survivors and veterans who came to mark the anniversary. Buchenwald was the first major concentration camp entered by American forces at the end of World War II.
“What I see here, where the barracks used to be, at every barrack there was a pile of dead bodies, this is in your memory forever,” Oster said. “When someone asks how Buchenwald was, you immediately see the dead bodies again.”
About 250,000 prisoners in total were held at Buch enwald from its opening in July 1937 to its liberation. An estimated 56,000 people were killed, including political prisoners, people dubbed “asocial” by the Nazis, Soviet prisoners of war, Sinti and Roma, and approximately 11,000 Jews.
A minute of silence was held Saturday afternoon at the tree-ringed hilltop site’s former assembly ground, bringing together former inmates and liberators — on whom Buchenwald also left an indelible impression.
James Anderson, 91, of Indianapolis, went in as an army medic on that day and recalled that many prisoners were so weak they could no longer move.
“The devastation was so tremendous,” Anderson said, his voice trembling. “I was a … kid, and to see this it was hard for me to believe this was actually happening, you know, and the prisoners were so glad to see us, they would hug us and everything.”
Gen. George S. Patton
was so disgusted by Buch enwald that he ordered residents of nearby Weimar to march the few miles up the hill to see what had been going on so close nearby.
“The younger generation should get to see this,” Anderson said. “It was unbelievable.”
