KEL: There was blood on the ground

(The original gate at the Buchenwald KZ)

Yesterday, the group and I went to Buchenwald.  It was an Order I concentration camp in Germany during World War II.  Order I means that it was classified as a "work camp."  This means that the living conditions were supposedly "livable."  It was an Order II camp, which means the same as an Order I, just worse living conditions.  Towards the end, they tried to change the order rank of the camp, but I pretty sure, from what I've seen and heard, they failed.  The only other order (Order III) were death camps, where people were taken to die.

The day was the perfect day to go to a concentration camp: Wet, muddy and raining on and off.  When we were on the train towards the city where the camp sat, I got this sudden sick feeling in my stomach.  I felt like one of the people who was taken there years ago.  It's hard to describe this sudden fear that came up inside me from no where and then the turning in my stomach as I realized I was completely safe, when all those others hadn't been..

No one was really talking on the way there, and I'm not sure if it was because it was early, or if they all felt the same way I did.  When we got there, we walked down to the gates.  They still had the barbed wire and fence still up, so walking up to the front gates was like walking into the actual camp.  Some buildings still stood and if you looked at from the right angle, it looked like it could still possibly function.

We split up.  Everyone went straight, and I went left.  I saw the monument where Obama had laid flowers, and saw where the brothel use to stand.  I read about how the Jews and the Homosexuals had it the worst, and I saw a movie where they said that if you were a Jew or a Homosexual, they could beat you for no reason other than they wanted to.

(The Crematorium at Buchenwald)

The Crematorium still stood.  There was a place where the inmates would be brought in to have their height taken, and then they would be shot in the back of the head.  There was an a place where inmates had experiments run on them.

There was a small camp towards the back were the sick and others were placed.  Staying there was worse than the large camp.  At one point, 100 people were dying each day from disease and starvation.

There was a memorial for all the Jews who died, and different ones for the homosexuals, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Gypsies.  After I walked around for awhile and watched the movie, I went into the book store and bought a couple of books.  One of them, "The Theory and Practice of Hell," talked about the set up of the camps and how they worked from someone who survived Buchenwald. 

There isn't much that needs to be said about Buchenwald, but I'll leave you with two facts from this book:

1) The Jehovah's Witnesses were lined up as a group on a regular basis.  The would be asked to denounce their beliefs for their freedom.  The Nazis really didn't mind them, but the Witnesses are against war and fighting, which was what the Nazis needed.  Every time someone refused to sign the papers, the Nazis would shot ten other witnesses.  They did this four times before stopping.

2) The children were placed in their own bunk and not forced to work. They were rationed food and educated by other inmates who were assigned to them, but they got over crowded.  One day, the Nazis rounded up all the Jewish and Gypsy children, who were crying and screaming for their fathers, and sent them to Auschwitz to be gassed.

And this was all completely normal.