A few weekends ago, the NU IPD program in Berlin took a trip to Weimar to celebrate the end of the first session of classes. Weimar is a quaint city a few hours south of Berlin by train, and according to our host, Prof. Michael Dreyer, it was also one of Hitler’s favorite towns. It’s a bit unsettling, but it was not difficult to see why anyone, even Hitler, would love Weimar because it looked like something straight out of a fairytale.
A view of one of Weimar’s streets. There were horse-drawn carriages everywhere and an ice cream shop on every corner.
Although Weimar was beautiful, its only vice was that there was not much to do. What made Weimar so quaint also made it quite boring — especially for us college students. In fact, most of our time was filled with excursions and museum tours. I found most of the museum tours a bit dry, so when we had the choice to go to an optional excursion to the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial, I was very tempted to join my friends and just go back to our youth hostel to nap.
Ultimately, I ended up downing a cup of coffee to brace myself for the cramped bus ride to the camp. When I stepped onto the former concentration camp grounds, I was taken aback. I was expecting to see gray, grungy buildings surrounded by barbed wire fences, but instead I found myself looking across acres of land in the middle of vibrant greenery. It was chilling to think that a place now so beautiful and serene was once the place of great suffering and death.
This was the gate house to enter the Buchenwald concentration camp. The clock above the guard watchtower is stopped at 3:15 pm — the time of liberation on April 11, 1945.
On the camp’s main entrance gate is the phrase “Jedem das Seine,” which means “To each his own.”
There was a barbed wire fence surrounding the camp grounds and a guard watch-tower every few feet.
The sectioned off rocks show where the prisoners’ barracks once stood.
Prisoners’ bodies were cremated in these brick ovens at the Buchenwald concentration camp’s crematorium.
After Prof. Dreyer gave us a tour of the camp, we had some time to wander around ourselves. I stumbled across an isolated area of rocks where a barrack once stood, and the information plaque read that this barrack was specifically for the youths at Buchenwald. The other prisoners essentially isolated the youths so they would have the best chance of survival against the quickly spreading diseases that plagued the rest of the camp.
More than the crematorium and the morbid pictures of dead prisoners piled on top of each other, this barrack is what stuck out to me most. Despite all the pain and suffering that occurred in such a horrible place, compassion and humanity still remained.