The Buchenwald Report

Rating:
Summary: Disturbing, but Important
Review: As a Jew, I feel it is very important to be as informed as possible about the past of my religion and my people. The events of the holocaust, and in turn, the events at the Buchenwald Camp were truly horrific. From the knowledge of what occured there comes a sort of preventative aide-if people know of the tragedy that occured, then it can be prevented from ever happening again. The accounts offered in the Buchenwald Report are harrowing and disturbing. I read the entire book, from cover to cover, and although some accounts are somewhat tedious and repetative, there is nothing more intimate than someone's personal account of their experience at Buchenwald. I highly recommend this book to anyone with slight interest in the happenings of world war II and specifically, how the holocaust was personally effecting people's lives. The reason for four stars is first of all: As much as I find this book important to read, it's not enjoyable, as a book really should be. Such depressing subject matter, but it is important to be disposed to such information, as a sort of (to restate myself) preventative for something like this ever happening again. As for a historian's standpoint, also, I am not sure as to how accurate all of the information provided within this book is. A very valuable read, though.

Rating:
Summary: Nazi depravity at its worst
Review: I had read Eugen Kogon's work titled "The Theory and Practice of Hell" and wondered could this work be any more enlightening as to Buchenwald camp. The reports, listed as personal narratives, are quite graphic and revealing as to the nature of this camp and its staff. This book is a real eye opener to any student of the Holocaust who desires a knowledge of camps inside Germany, as opposed to the death camps in Poland for instance. It reveals the abject corruption of the s.s. when they were exposed to unlimited money, power and control. I do not excuse their actions in any way, but am glad that these villains are portrayed in the cowardly light they lived in. One report of personal interest to me pertains to prisoners sent from Buchenwald to Auschwitz where the activities of Otto Moll, the sadistic beast of Birkenau are chronicled. I would appreciate any titles or information on this elusive person only from an information standpoint. I recommend this book for its educational and personal power...the depths that men sink to are truly bottomless.

Rating:
Summary: HACKETT'S BOOK LOADED WITH ERRORS AND DISTORTION!
Review: In the sales pitch made by the publishers of "The Buchenwald Report" on that book's jacket, a big deal is made out of the fact that most of the contents of that publicaton are "eyewitness accounts" given by some of the survivors shortly after their liberation at which time "they were still behind the barbed wire that had held them for so many years".

However, instead of being a plus, that particular aspect of "The Buchenwald Report" is its greatest flaw considering that it has been my experience, during my 31 years of research about Buchenwald, that the accuracy of any report based too soon after the fact is seldom reliable since, at that time, most of the official documentation is not yet available and, by the same token, many of the details have not yet been verified and authenticated.

Furthermore, personal accounts should always be considered as being at least somewhat suspicious and concentration camp survivors' statements should be found particularly questionable since, several days or even months after their liberation, these former inmates had not yet regained all the mental faculties of normal and healthy human beings and many of them suffered from hallucinations, delusions and at least partial memory loss.

Except for David A. Hackett's introduction... which, incidentally, is loaded with errors and inaccuracies starting with four of them on Page 1... "The Buchenwald Report" is exclusively based on personal accounts made 50 years prior to the book's publication and, after the original report was dug up from wherever it had been buried for half-a-century, it was translated and, without any further research or at least some verification of the facts, dates, numbers, etc.,was published with warts and all.

The number of discrepancies which I have found is unbelievable... not only in the "Main Report" (Pages 27 through 104) and the "Individual Reports" (Pages 109 through 374) but also in David A. Hackett's "Introduction" (Pages 1 through 24) and in his footnotes which, in fact, contain a proportionally greater number of inaccuracies than the rest of the book... a situation which clearly indicates that the research made by David A. Hackett was rather cursory and shallow.

There are also several contradictions such as, for instance, Hackett's statement which appears on Page 5 and according to which "the courageous actions of the prisoner militia on the afternoon of April 11 would eventually lead to the postwar myth of the prisoners' 'self-liberation of Buchenwald" and his additional comment... in the very same paragraph... that "there is of course some truth to this legend; the prisoners' actions are well documented".

In contradicting himself in the same paragraph, David A. Hackett does not seem to know if he is coming or going and, needless to say, his readers must have been utterly confused when they read the above gibberish.

The self-liberation of Buchenwald is indeed "well documented" and, if Hackett had taken the trouble of going through the G-2 and G-3 journals of the units of the U.S. Army which were in the Buchenwald area on April 11 and 12, 1945, he would have found numerous confirmations to the effect that Buchenwald was indeed liberated by the 900 members of the camp's underground organization.

"The Buchenwald Report" is therefore, under the guise of a serious publication, a misleading book loaded with inaccuracies, distortions and even fabrications.

Pierre C.T. Verheye Buchenwald Political Prisoner No. 126637 ----- July 5,2000

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Book
Review: This book is not for the faint of heart. It is the United States government report on the Buchenwald concentration camp that was liberated by American forces during the end of the Second World War. The book covers the state of the camp when it was liberated, the types of prisoners, the methods used to subdue and kill the prisoners, and the fate of the camp administration and guards once the camp was over run. The book also has a number of camp diagrams and black and white photos.

To say that this is a moving book only scratches the service the powerful emotions that the reader will face going through the text. Although this was designed to be a government report, there is no way to document this period and situation without your emotions coming through in the writing and these author's prove that point. The issue is a stark look at one of the worst examples of the inhumanity one people can inflict on another. If you are interested in learning about the holocaust this is a good way to start, because it will give you an up front, no spin view of the actual conditions.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Book
Review: This book is not for the faint of heart. It is the United States government report on the Buchenwald concentration camp that was liberated by American forces during the end of the Second World War. The book covers the state of the camp when it was liberated, the types of prisoners, the methods used to subdue and kill the prisoners, and the fate of the camp administration and guards once the camp was over run. The book also has a number of camp diagrams and black and white photos.

To say that this is a moving book only scratches the service the powerful emotions that the reader will face going through the text. Although this was designed to be a government report, there is no way to document this period and situation without your emotions coming through in the writing and these author's prove that point. The issue is a stark look at one of the worst examples of the inhumanity one people can inflict on another. If you are interested in learning about the holocaust this is a good way to start, because it will give you an up front, no spin view of the actual conditions.

Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating Official Documented History of A Death Camp!
Review: With the publication of this official report after some fifty years, the Allied attempt to comprehensively document the damning specifics of life in a German concentration camp has finally reached the public as was originally intended. Buchenwald was among the first of the camps to be liberated by the Allies in the final days of the war in Europe, and the authorities wanted to have firm and indisputable proof of the atrocities and barbarism perpetrated on the defenseless and noncombatant prisoners of the camp by the Nazi regime. Thus, an amazing and almost protean attempt was made by the Allies to capture, for the record, every conceivable aspect of life within the concentration camp before the prisoners, guards and other witnesses to the horrors vanished into the mists and confusion of post-war Germany.

This is truly a startling document to read. There is frank and open discussion about mind-boggling horrors, from the crematoriums and execution rooms to gruesome and bizarre medial experiments carried out at the medical facility within the confines of the camp. Treatment of the prisoners by guards, capos and other officials is described in detail. Little is left to the imagination, for the ultimate purpose of the documentation was to use as evidence against the Nazis in the planned war crime trials at Nuremberg. The report is in two principal parts; Part One presents the findings of the Allied investigation team and consists of a complete history and description of the camp and its nefarious activities. Part Two consists of the eye-witness reports of the prisoners, describing a plethora of experiences ranging from starvation, slave labor, mistreatment in the way of denial of medical treatment, exposure to the elements, denial of sleep, torture, medical experimentation, and wanton murder.

The history of the report itself is also quite interesting. Evidently most of the copies were lost in the chaos and confusion of Allied postwar activities. Not until the middle 1980s did one badly faded carbon copy emerge and come to the attention of English scholar David Hackett, who had it translated, edited, and reorganized to prepare it for publication. This is not easy reading, and it takes some effort to exercise the patience required to muddle through some rather dry and seemingly endless coverage of tangential materials, but it provides the serious reader an opportunity to take a first-hand look at a quite unique eye-witness report on absolute madness and insanity as practiced in this century by a supposedly sane, sophisticated and civilized culture. Truly this is a look over the edge of the chasm into evil incarnate.