Buchenwald

A tough day. We cycled up a big forested hill overlooking Weimar to reach Buchenwald camp which had been built in 1937 for political opponents, gays, the homeless, Jews, Sinti, Roma and Jehovah's Witnesses-amongst others. During the war it served as a concentration camp for people from more than 50 nations. 56,000 people were to die here, either through starvation and extreme conditions or as victims of medical experiments. Many, particularly Soviet prisoners of war, were shot. After the war, the Soviets set up their own internment camp here for some 28,500 people, of who more than 7,000 were to die.

The 40 huts in which prisoners were housed were dismantled in 1950 and the whole area was allowed to get overgrown. Now it has been cleared to reveal a large haunting empty area, with the outlines of the huts marked by stones, with a few minimalist memorials. The gate building remains, as does the largest building which has been turned into a permanent exhibition.

The gates contain a motto forged in iron: Jedem das Seine ( to each what they are due), which reads from the inside looking out and was designed by Franz Ehrlich when he was imprisoned in the camp for treason because he was a Communist.Ironically,, he had studied at the Bauhaus (and his work uses Bauhaus script), decried by the Nazis for being degenerate.

In contrast to the simple way that the camp itself has been left, the East Germans were to build a massive national memorial just outside and overlooking Weimar, which had been the initial seat of the Weimar Republic in 1918. The final image in extras shows the Opera House in which the Government first met, with the statues of Goethe and Schiller outside.