Two bricks from Buchenwald

By John Brennan

BUCHENWALD, Germany — The unspeakable horror, the ignored cries of pain, and the unimaginable suffering. The final resting place for more than 50,000 innocent souls. This was Nazi era Germany: This was Buchenwald, the death camp infamous for performing medical experiments on its inmates. Its place in history marked by being the first camp liberated by Allied Forces.

On a recent driving trip through the scenic countryside of the now unified Germany, we two Americans born after World War II gathered our courage to visit Buchenwald. Despite our each having twice before traveled to Germany, neither had mustered the psychological strength to witness the reality of the death
camp tales we had heard all our lives.

Buchenwald lay on our planned route to the historic town of Wurzburg, which houses the Headquarters of U.S. Army, First Division. There we were to meet for Thanksgiving a long-time U. S. Army friend, now a Lt. Colonel stationed at the base. We stopped to see Buchenwald on the Tuesday before the American
holiday.

Between us, we had parents that served in the military during the war: My father, a Marine Corps fighter pilot in the South Pacific, and my traveling companions parents, both army psychologists. Like many post war babies, our families had taken part in America’s fight against the cruel lunacy that seemed to define that war.

At twilight , we arrived at picturesque Weimar, a city noted for its countless contributions to art and literature-and for being a half-mile from the death camp. Rather than check in to the hotel straightaway, we instead found the open gate of Buchenwald and drove in as the sun was dropping behind the Bavarian hills.

Nestled in a thickly forested countryside, the barren camp appears like a scar on a beautiful face. The road wound past a accurately restored lookout tower that is now a memorial. After a few turns, we came to the first ruins of Buchenwald Camp itself.

Seeing an information plaque and spotting the remains of a building foundation, we stopped the car. We read that this was the ruins of one of the many special smaller camps within the camp at large. Like children, we huddled together as the sky darkened, realizing we were alone at the camp. But we were adults,
not children. And because it was the year 2011, not the devastating 1940’s, we could leave whenever we wanted. We pushed on.

Soon it became completely dark. We used a flashlight to read the plaques that pointed the way to the almost destroyed Camp Commander’s house. Lighting our way on a forest trail, we stood in the basement of the home of the SS officer who dispassionately dispensed death. In this very basement, one of the sane
Nazi generals who, was found guilty in one of many attempts on Hitler’s life, was held until his execution.

Reality began to roll over us and first we felt weak, and then angry. Simultaneously, we picked up small rocks and threw them hard against the rubble.
It is sometimes difficult to understand the utter cruelty man is capable of . “How could one man have held such power over a nation?”, I wondered. I shivered, sighed and kept silent, knowing that Maria was Jewish on her father’s side and that she could have very possibly ended up here at Buchenwald during
Hitler’s reign.

On the trail leading back to the car, old bricks and other debris were piled high, probably the remnants of the commander’s house. They formed a huge pile of rubble. Then presently, about ten feet away, there appeared a beam from another flashlight. Initially we presumed it was a caretaker coming to question our
presence and to chase us off. We were wrong. The beam came from the flashlight held by Ewald Bacher, a worker on the grounds. A man of about 65 years, Bacher proved to be a wonderful, kind-hearted man who spoke excellent English. Rather than ask us to leave, he offered to lead us around. We declined, wanting to
get to the hotel room for the night. We stood near the pile of rubble talking with the man for a few minutes more. And then, for some reason, we asked Ewald about the pile of bricks and other debris, and he was eager to explain. Our assumption was correct, the rubble was from what had been the commander’s brick
house. Ewald continued, explaining that these bricks had been made by the prisoners and used to build the very buildings that became the camp and would eventually imprison them. Upon hearing this, I picked one brick up and tried to feel the history it represented, and perhaps even feel the soul within it. Someone made this by hand, someone who was held here and , most likely, died here. I turned and looked at Maria and could tell she was thinking the same thought. “Ewald, may we have two bricks?”, I asked without deliberation. Without asking why, he nodded his head cheerfully. We thanked him, said goodbye, and
returned to our rental car.

I placed the two bricks on the rear floor of the car. We were taking these back to America as touchstones, indeed, headstones to graves that were never prayed over nor even dug. It was time to get to the hotel . Tomorrow morning we would return to bear witness again and to view the rest of the camp
complex.

After a somewhat restless night, we awoke to a cloudy overcast morning, appropriate for both the visit and our moods. Once again, we drove through the camp’s front gates. As the morning sun began to break through the clouds, it revealed what the previous night’s darkness had kept hidden. The fences around the
camp were topped with barbed wire. In the dark, we had been unable to see the foundations to the POW barracks, but now daylight brought them all into focus. Where we saw foundations in the center of the camp there had once been shoddy buildings crowded with thousands of men, women and children. They
worked, suffered and were ultimately exterminated at the hands of soldiers and doctors.

Like opening a camera lens, we viewed a bigger picture and realized the camp’s enormity. Everywhere surrounding the barracks we saw buildings or the remains of structures. Seemingly out of place, a gas station and truck depot once used by SS troops, are still operating, the bays filled with men working on
vehicles. A friendly flower pot perched on the stations windowsill. The entire scene struck us as odd. Nonplussed, we walked-where thousands before us had trudged- down the path to the “Sanitation Center.” Here, people-stripped naked, heads shaved- were sprayed with disinfectant and issued threadbare
uniforms. We guessed that this is where the camp guards tattooed numbers on people’s arms, all part of the massive depersonalization process that led to the final solution.

In a display here, shoes are heaped in piles, all sizes and styles. Humans once walked in these shoes. Piles of clothes and personal belongings, like children’s dolls and photographs, made us pause to stare. We felt such grief we halted to catch our breath. In fact, the overriding orderliness we observed was almost more shocking than the slaughter.

Leaving the “Sanitation Center” behind, we walked uphill across a wide expanse of foundation ruins toward a guard tower and another ominous looking building. We felt as though we were walking a Trail of Tears. In the debris, we saw numbered concrete blocks which represented the barracks that once stood in
these very spots. The barracks, like the people , are long gone, only these markers remain. One block recognizes the many British POWs held at Buchenwald.

Not only do the British have memorials here, an entire memorial wall stands in the building that housed Buchenwald’s pathology rooms, its tiled morgue tables adjacent to a display case filled with medical instruments, presumably used in many of the horrid procedures that took place. Overwhelmed, we stepped
outside and prayed for the people who had lain on that cold, tiled table, having gold yanked from mouths, as others were used as human guinea pigs. Just as our prayer finished, we looked up and spotted a tall dark chimney structure a few hundred yards away. We held each other, intuitively knowing what that chimney
was. At its base was the crematorium, tangible proof of the evil that characterized the Nazi regime. No plaques were needed here, although the sign there asked for silence for those thousands that died without ceremony.

With some hesitation, we headed into the crematorium building; a building that once again demonstrated the orderly methodical way the Nazi regime approached the mass disposal of human beings. It could not be true that these rolling iron carts were used to dump human into burning furnaces, but it was. It gave us both
shivers knowing that these eight elegantly constructed ovens incinerated so many people. At one side of the building, a freight elevator brought up the dead and the dying to be turned to ashes. Those not quite dead were sometimes returned to the cellar of the building to be hung on large steel hooks. Until they expired.

We descended the steps to that cellar and found a group of present-day , German Army soldiers on tour, with hats over their hearts, silently acknowledging the ghastliness that took place within this rather small area. German and American, we all stood silent. To myself I said, “God bless all who suffered here.”
After seeing the building that defined the horrors of Buchenwald, we both felt no desire to see much more. These ovens were the tools that turned people into ashes that were then heartlessly thrown to the wind. The finality that these ovens represented made us thankful to be alive and free.

Thanksgiving was the next day and our friend was expecting us. This was bound to be a celebration that would lend itself to counting blessings very easily. We drove through Buchenwald’s gate again and headed south through Bavaria to the U.S. Army base in Wurzburg. Neither of us spoke for the first hour; our
meaningless words couldn’t describe the sadness and suffering experienced by those who lived through the madness that Buchenwald meted out.

We eagerly looked forward to sharing a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with our friend on an American military installation here in Germany. It was to be a unique experience. The meal served in the mess hall was delicious. We ate with gusto and a gratefulness we’d not felt before at gatherings in the United States.
Instead of being with our families, we were with the families of American servicemen and women: Soldiers not unlike the troops who marched into Buchenwald; a place of misery built of bricks handmade by the very prisoners destined to die there.

Two of those bricks we brought home to America for sanctuary- a reminder of the suffering that so many were to endure. These two bricks now occupy a special place in our home. A candle now sits on top of one of the bricks. We light it often in memory of those who lost their lives in a place that can never be forgotten.

These two bricks from Buchenwald will always remind us of what can happen when evil is allowed to reign supreme and humanity is cast to the wind.

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Brennan is an actor and freelance writer who now lives in Mexico.