By Jerry Klinger in Boynton Beach, Florida
Saturday, April 11, 2026 is the 81st anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp outside Weimar, Germany. It is a day of solemn memorialization to the more than 56,000 human beings who died there under the Nazis. The East German Communists, who later controlled Buchenwald and East Germany from 1949 to 1987, killed another 7,000 enemies of the State in Buchenwald.
Memory is a complicated and painful experience.
My father was liberated on April 12, 1945, in Buchenwald’s Kleine Lager, the “Little Camp.” It was a separate Camp within Buchenwald, horrific by multiples from the main camp. The Kleine Lager was for the Jews.
He never spoke much of his experiences in the six different camps that he suffered in. Perhaps because he did not want to share the trauma with his family. Yet, little things were shared.
“Prisoner-to-Prisoner Antisemitism was rare.” “The cruelest taskmasters,” he experienced, “were Jews, who became the Ghetto and Camp enforcers for the Nazis over their fellow Jews, the internal Jewish police. To save themselves, in exchange for better treatment and food, they became ‘useful’ to the Nazis.” It was a twisted Stockholm effect.
On April 11, 1945, at 3:15 p.m., the International Committee that rose in revolt against the Nazis and took over the camp broadcast to the 21,000 surviving inmates that they were free. Shortly afterward, the Camp was turned over to the arriving Americans.
It is a dramatic story of self-liberation that remains central to the Buchenwald narrative, but it is not exactly true.
At 10 a.m on the 11th, the Nazi commander ordered all 1,200 S.S. to retreat from the Camp. The Americans were coming. At 10:30 a.m,. the International Committee rose in revolt, captured 76 S.S. stragglers and their weapons. They took possession of Buchenwald. Throughout the day, heavy fighting continued as American armed forces secured the area. Not until late in the afternoon did advance units of the XX Corps enter Buchenwald.
My father remained imprisoned in the Little Camp until the 12th because the International Committee would not free them. They told the Americans that the Little Camp was full of the worst of the worst criminals. It was infested with disease. It is extremely dangerous and must be avoided.
In 2001, I was closely associated with Chairman Warren Miller of the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. The Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation (JASHP), of which I am president, provided significant support for the construction of the Little Camp memorial. It was the first memorial of any significance to the 11,000 Jews murdered in Buchenwald.
Eighteen years later, I began a new effort of memorialization at Buchenwald, looking towards the 75th anniversary of the Camp’s liberation. JASHP designed and was willing to fund the first-ever memorial honoring the American liberators of Buchenwald.
Without knowing it, I had stepped on a political landmine. Despite the full backing and support of the Eisenhower Family, American Veteran Organizations, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, and German supporting organizations, the memorial was rejected by the Buchenwald Memorial Foundation.
The narrative of Buchenwald self-liberation is the only narrative that would be acceptable. The fact that the American army was fighting inches away from Buchenwald and the Nazi SS guards ran away rather than face them did not factor into their consideration.
In the process, I was “honored” with special vilification by the German Communist Party.
The Buchenwald Memorial Foundation recognized they had a problem. They finally agreed that an interpretive marker outside the camp in front of the visitor center for the American armed forces. It was to be dedicated in a formal ceremony that I was invited to until COVID hit, and everything was canceled.
April 16, 2023 a memorial to the Americans at Buchenwald was finally erected by the Buchenwald Memorial Foundation. It was an interpretive table marker in front of the former S.S. Barracks that had been converted into a field hospital. A backhanded recognition of the American “Liberators” was written.
“On 11 April 1945, units of the 3rd US Army’s XXth Corps reached the Buchenwald concentration camp. The SS fled. Political inmates of the International Camp Committee took control of the grounds. Buchenwald was liberated. In the days and weeks that followed, US Army doctors and medical orderlies were primarily responsible for rescuing and caring for the survivors. The Americans also recorded inmate testimonies, opened the camp to international delegations, and informed the world public about the crimes committed there.”
At the memorial’s dedication, American Diplomatic representation, American Military representation, American Veteran organizations, and American Jewish and American Survivors organizations were absent. JASHP was not invited or told of the event.
Controversy is never far from Buchenwald’s annual commemorations. Insensitive to the memory of Buchenwald victims from over 50 different countries, a vocal coalition of anti-Israel groups created an umbrella organization they titled Kufiyas in Buchenwald. They demanded special access to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp site on April 12, 2026. Kufiyas in Buchenwald said it aimed to “commemorate victims of genocide and fascism” and “uplift the fundamental duty to fight against all genocides, particularly the genocide currently taking place in Palestine.”
The Buchenwald Memorial Foundation rejected Kufiyas in Buchenwald’s demand to create a disrespectful political demonstration on the Camp’s grounds. The City of Weimar offered the group an alternative location in Weimar. They rejected the offer.
The Jewish Telegraphic News Agency further reported – “Kufiyas in Buchenwald had support from the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and the German group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East.
Rachael Shapiro, an organizer with the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, said the memorial foundation’s “insistence on the singularity and exceptionalism of the Nazi genocide of European Jews” served to “actively provide cover for Germany’s participation in and funding of the mass murder of Palestinians.”
“As Jewish, queer and other anti-fascists, many of us the children and grandchildren of survivors of and those persecuted and murdered in the Nazi genocide, we wholeheartedly reject the German state dictating conditions around commemoration,” Shapiro said in a statement.”
Kufiyas in Buchenwald took their denial to demonstrate within Buchenwald to the Court. The German Court just banned Kafiyahs in Buchenwald from demonstrating, creating a PR incident, on the Campgrounds.
Ironic, Shapiro’s self-description as a Jewish queer for Palestine would not have had a long life in Gaza.
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Jerry Klinger is the President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.