The Buchenwald Report

Book excerpt: One of the most remarkable and important documents to emerge from the Holocaust and World War II, The Buchenwald Report is a deposition against the monstrous crimes of the Nazis.. In the closing weeks of World War II, advancing Allied armies uncovered the horror of the Nazi concentration camps. The first camp to be liberated in western Germany was Buchenwald, on April 11, 1945. Within days, a special team of German-speaking intelligence officers from the U.S. Army was dispatched to Buchenwald to interview the prisoners there. In the short time available to them before the inmates' final release from the camp, this team was to prepare a report to be used against the Nazis in future war crime trials. Nowhere else was such a systematic effort made to talk with prisoners and record their firsthand knowledge of the daily life, structure, and functioning of a concentration camp. The result was an important and unique document, The Buchenwald Report . Divided into two parts - the Main Report and the Individual Reports - The Buchenwald Report details the camp's history, how it was organized and how it functioned, and describes how the prisoners lived and died. This priceless eyewitness acc