Adolf Hitler and Concentration Camps in Germany

.....................................................................................By Hem Raj Bist (Goettingen, Germany)

A person creates history, other records and millions read it. The history may be constructive, destructive or amalgamation of both. I have some knowledge regarding the devastation made by A. Hitler to Germany ; revealed me his manifold miscreant deeds rather than his socalled ontribution when I got chance to visit one of the Nazi concentration camps i.e. Buchenwald Concentration Camp during my Deutsche language course in September 2009.

The extent of pathetic brutal deeds perpetrated by him and his followers reveals there which in general is beyond one’s imagination. The visit made me really depressed for many days. As a human being, one even cannot think such brutal treatment even to hostile animals or enemies in general.

Nepal is probably among the most volatile and unstable nations politically, socially and in recent days ethnically. It seems noteworthy to note here that Nepali people are politically very active at least in theoretical aspects. They can put forward several plans and mechanisms of nation building but almost nil is brought in practice in virtual ground. A. Hitler is most frequently taken as example among politically active people in Nepal. This short paper tries to describe very briefly about his life, activities and about the concentration camp visited recently.

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20th 1889 in Austria in a town named Braunau-am-Inn near to the Austro-German border. His father Alois worked as a customs officer on the border crossing. Adolf attended school from the age of six. His performance in the school was poor and left study soon with an ambition to become an artist. Alois Hitler had died when Adolf was thirteen and Klara Hitler (his mother) brought up him. Between the ages of sixteen and nineteen, young Adolf neither worked to earn his keep, nor formally studied, but had gained an interest in politics and history. During this time he unsuccessfully applied for admission to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. 

Klara Hitler died from cancer when Adolf was nineteen and from then onwards he had no relatives willing or able to support him. So, in 1909, he moved to Vienna in the hope of somehow earning a living. Within a year he was living in homeless shelters and eating at charity soup-kitchens. He had declined to take regular employment and took occasional menial jobs and sold some of his paintings or advertising posters whenever he could to provide sustenance. In 1913, Adolf Hitler, still a penniless vagrant, moved to Munich in southern Germany.

At the outbreak of the First World War, in 1914, he volunteered for service in the German army. Hitler was a soldier that fought alongside everyone else but at the end of world war I Hitler floated from shelter to shelter and this is when Hitler gained his prejudice towards Jews and his interest in politics. The day of the announcement of the armistice in 1918, Hitler was in hospital recovering from temporary blindness caused by a British gas attack. In December 1918 he returned to his regiment back in Munich. 

Between December 1918 and March 1919 Hitler worked at a prisoner-of-war camp at Traunstein before returning again to Munich. Shortly after his return he witnessed a takeover bid by local Communists who seized power before being ousted by the army. After he gave evidence at an investigation into the takeover he was asked to become part of a local army organization which was responsible for persuading returning soldiers not to turn to communism or pacifism. During his training for this task and during his subsequent duties he was able to hone his oratory skills. As part of his duties he was also asked to spy on certain local political groups.

Due to his oratory skill and impressive speech, the founder of German Workers Party, Anion Drexler, was so impressed by Hitler's tirade that he asked him to join their organization. Hitler, after some thought, finally agreed to join the committee and became their seventh official in September 1919.

Given responsibility for publicity and propaganda, Hitler first succeeded in attracting over a hundred people to couples of meetings where he delivered his speeches to a large audience. This campaign was a great success. The name of the party was itself changed to the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi for short) in 1920. Afterwards, he was regular main speaker at party events, attracting large crowds for each meeting. During the summer of 1920 Hitler chose the swastika as the Nazi party emblem. Finally, A. Hitler became the formal leader of the party with dictatorial powers. The Nazi party was fostered to greatest extent by the versatile efforts of the Hitler.

The politics of Germany at that time was mostly volatile and it was running round the Hitler’s activities. Despite couples of losses in elections at the beginning by Nazi, and consequently Hitler’s inability to win the central power, the Nazis become the largest party in 1932 and in 1933 he was appointed as a Chancellor in a coalition government. Furthermore, he became the president after his success of political plots in the next year.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Suppression of Non Nazis:      

After this, the real suppression to opponents inside and outside Germany from Hitler and his party started. Hitler had proclaimed a law stating that the Nazi Party was to be the only political party allowed in Germany. The Nazification of Germany was underway. All non-Nazi organizations were disbanded, including political parties and trade unions. The individual German states were stripped of any autonomous powers they might have had and Nazi officials were installed as state governors.         

Hitler believed Jews were inferior and threatened Germany's great existence. He believed that Germany lost WWI because of the Jews and blamed them for Germany’s economic trouble. Therefore, Jewish population was increasingly persecuted and ostracized from society. Jews were no longer considered to be German citizens and therefore no longer had any legal rights. Jews were no longer allowed to hold public office, not allowed to work in the civil-service, the media, farming, teaching, the stock exchange and eventually barred from practicing law or medicine. Hostility towards Jews from other Germans was encouraged and even shops began to deny entry to Jews. The Jews and other opponents were forced to labor in concentration camps to death and there was not any option. The severe brutality and insanity of Hitler regime was apparent in many concentration camps established for this purpose. One of the major concentration camps of that period was Buchenwald.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Buchenwald concentration camp:   It was a Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimer in 1937, and one of the largest and first camps on German soil. In German language, Buchen stands for beech (tree species) and Wald for forest which reveals that there was a beech forest and still there is beech forest around some parts of the camp. Buchenwald was built as a punishment camp for political opponents of the Nazis. Hitler's aim was to place all Jews into concentrated areas camps to segregate them from the German public and eventually kill them all.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Causes of Death in the Camp:    

The main way to kill people in the concentration camps was to gas them in the gas chambers. They could hold up to 2000 people at a time. However, this was not practiced here. A primary cause of the deaths in this camp was illness due to harsh camp conditions, with starvation - and its consequent illnesses. Many were killed through malnourished and suffering from disease. Camp prisoners worked primarily as forced labor in local armament factories They were forced to work in harsh conditions without sufficient foods literally "worked to death” i.e. extermination through labor. Inmates had only the choice between slave labor or inevitable execution. Many inmates died as a result of human experimentations or fell victim to arbitrary acts perpetrated by the guards. Other prisoners were simply murdered—the two primary methods of execution were shooting and hanging.       

  A Canadian airman’s recollection of his arrival at Buchenwald: As we got close to the camp and saw what was inside….a terrible, terrible fear and horror entered our hearts. We thought, what is this? Where are we going? Why are we here? And as you got closer to the camp and started to enter the camp and saw these human skeletons walking around-old men, young men, boys, just skin and bone, we thought, what are we getting into?                                                                                                                                                                                                                  The end of Hitler:

To sum up: Why Hitler was so? It’s really a difficult to find the solid solution. However, it is true that he had a determined sense of mission. He was very different from conventional politicians. He had promises of jobs to overcome the high rate of unemployment and promised to restore Germany's prestige. His policy was ‘Germany first', 'Germany for the Germans'. He seemed uncompromising hostility to Communism.

Hitler never killed anybody, except possibly one of his 'girl friends'. It was his 'teams' that did the killing. Many leaders were fainted when they saw mass killings, and were ill for some weeks afterwards. The main leaders never kill anybody themselves, they ordered others to do the dirty work!!! This is the historical trend.

There are controversial reports regarding cause of his death. One source explains that he fell at his command post in the Reich Chancery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany. The other source describes his last moment as: Adolf Hitler, and his wife Eva Braun, were just enjoying a beautiful day at their German summer house. There was a knock at the door, and Adolf went to answer it. He opened the door to a mysterious figure. Right as Adolf made eye-contact with the figure; he fell over and died in 1945. The figure went inside the house and raped Adolf's wife up the ass, so hard that she puked out blood. She died a slow and painful death. They got married one day before they died.     

Till this day, no one quite knows who the figure was. It will forever be a mystery of "who killed the Hitler?" Because of the brutalities and the very crimes associated with his name, it is not likely that Hitler’s reputation as the incarnation of evil will ever change.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Related Photographs:            Photo plate. #1: Forced laborers in Buchenwald : almost dead or waiting for killings   

Photo plate #2: An emaciated Buchenwald survivor drinking from a bowl following liberation.   

  Photo plate #3: Pathetic condition of Buchenwald inmates    

  Photo plate #4: US Senator Alben W. Barkley looks on after Buchenwald's liberation. Barkley later became Vice President of the United States.      

Photo plate #5: Listening horrible description from audio guide about the concentration camp site in Buchenwald. Pillars of one destroyed C. camp (block) are at the hind.    

Photo plate #6: Prisoners in the barracks at Buchenwald after liberation (Source: website)    

    Photo plate #7: Corpses stacked behind the crematorium in Buchenwald.(corpses look like insects killed by powerful insecticides!!???)  

 Photo plate #8: Corpse Cellar: Corpses were thrown down the chute into the cellar, where they were collected and dragged to the lift for transport to the cremation room. The hooks seen were for hanging innocent people.  (Photo: by Hem Raj)

Photo plate #9: Cremation Chambers: where inmates were partially burnt and piled away (Photo: by Hem Raj)   

 

    

Photo plate #10: U Photo #  Display shows shrunken head (SUKUTI...!) of prisoner     

Photo plate # 11 Shops allegedly made from human fat         Photo plate # 12 Survivors of the camp after liberation