Liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp: Frank

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In front of the art installation »Vanishing Wall«: Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife Elke Büdenbender on Sunday in Weimar

Photo: POOL / REUTERS

On the 76th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Thuringia's Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (left) commemorated the victims of the National Socialist Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimar.

"It's not just the number of deaths, it's the circumstances under which people in Buchenwald have been disenfranchised and exploited, tortured and killed that make up the horror of this place," Steinmeier said on Sunday at a memorial ceremony in Weimar.

"It is the reversal of all values, the perversion of law, morality and humanity," added the Federal President.

“That is why we should not forget and also not want to forget what happened here.” Prime Minister Ramelow added: “We will not be able to transfer the memory to a museum.

It remains a daily task. "

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Inhuman inscription: The Buchenwald camp gate

Photo: Martin Schutt / DPA

Steinmeier recalled that the inscription “To each his own” on the Buchenwald camp gate meant imprisonment, hunger, torture and forced labor for around a quarter of a million people between 1937 and 1945.

"More than 34,000 male camp inmates died in Buchenwald, and more than 300 female prisoners lost their lives in the 27 Buchenwald subcamps," said the Federal President.

Killed at least 56,000 people

At least 12,000 prisoners died on the death marches in April 1945 and hundreds more died in the first days after the liberation.

"In total, at least 56,000 people were killed in one of the largest concentration camps on the territory of the National Socialist German Reich."

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Incredible horror: View into one of the camp barracks of the Buchenwald concentration camp after the liberation by the troops of the 3rd US Army

Photo: A0009 dpa / dpa

With his large number of victim groups, Buchenwald stands "for the entire barbarism of the Nazis, for an aggressive nationalism outside, for dictatorship and oppression within, and for a nationalist way of thinking," Steinmeier emphasized.

"Buchenwald stands for racial madness, torture, murder and extermination."

The Federal President said he was grateful "that the memory of Buchenwald is accepted as a task again and again, by many and with great passion".

He thanked contemporary witnesses from all over the world, "who take on the painful remembrance and thereby leave us a legacy."

He also thanked the heads of memorial sites and curators in Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora, as well as the numerous young people "who volunteer in their free time to do remembrance work."

Art installation »Disappearing Wall«

The Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated by US troops on April 11, 1945.

To mark the 76th anniversary, commemorative events took place on Sunday in the German National Theater Weimar and in the Buchenwald Memorial.

According to the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, the memorial was broadcast online in six languages ​​so that survivors and relatives around the world were able to participate in times of pandemic.

On the Theaterplatz in Weimar, Thuringia, the art installation “Vanishing Wall” also commemorates the horrors of Nazi rule.

163 quotes from 99 survivors of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps have been engraved on 6000 wooden blocks.

Visitors can take the blocks with them, so that at the end only an empty Plexiglas grid remains - symbolic of the disappearance of the last contemporary witnesses.

The interactive art installation is based on an idea by the Russian student Maria Yablonina and the architect Werner Sobek.

A revised version of the digital photo exhibition “Black on White” (first published in 2010) has also been available since Sunday morning.

Over 10,000 historical photographs from the creation of the camp in July 1937 to its liberation in April 1945 can now be seen in a new arrangement.

kik / dpa