Identifer: CJF R 0351

Medium
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Topics
Buchenwald

Collections
Buchenwald Concentration Camp, Cincinnati Judaica Fund Research Collection

Description
The Buchenwald Memorial was built on the southern slope of Ettersberg hill overlooking the city of Weimar.  The construction of this elaborate monument required four years, starting in 1954.  It was finally dedicated on September 14, 1958. 
 
The memorial is intended to describe a path from death to life, adhering to the motif of  "triumph through death and struggle."


The descent to the ring graves begins at the entrance gate by way of a path lined with steles. (The seven steles are symbolic of the seven years of the concentration camp's existence; sculptors: René Graetz, Waldemar Grzimek and Hans Kies; texts on the reverse sides: Johannes R. Becher). The graves consist of natural depressions in the earth in which the SS had approximately three thousand corpses buried in March / April 1945. Three of these burial pits became elements of the memorial in the form of ring graves. The "Avenue of the Nations," flanked by masonry pylons bearing the names of eighteen nations, connects the ring graves. A wide stairway paved with stones of a light hue leads to the Tower of Freedom and a sculpture by Fritz Cremer showing Buchenwald resistance fighters. This sculpture is dedicated to the resistance struggle carried out within the camp.
In the tower's interior, a bronze slab covers earth and ashes from other concentration camps; at its top the tower houses a bell which rings every hour on the hour.
 
Throughout the Buchenwald Memorial site, there is heavy emphasis on the Communist and Social Democrat political prisoners with virtually no mention of the Jews or other victims. One of the first monuments to be erected at a former concentration camp, the Buchenwald Monument is a political statement by the Communists, not a Holocaust memorial.