In the summer of 1943, German communists in Buchenwald organised their first secret meeting with like-minded prisoners from other countries. This led to the formation of the International Camp Committee – a communist underground organisation that had no equivalent in any other concentration camp.
To ward off a feared SS massacre shortly before the camp’s liberation, the secret organisation set up military groups. These included prisoners from eleven different countries.
The Italian Renato Bertolini, imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp since January 1944, was one of them. He later wrote:
“In February 1944, a month after the arrival of our group—composed of communists and, for the most part, former fighters in the Spanish Civil War—we were invited by the German leaders to a meeting at which they informed us of the existence of a secret military organisation within the camp and asked us to cooperate, to which we immediately agreed. […] The camp’s secret military organisation had prepared two plans, worked out in minute detail, so that each group was assigned precise tasks […].“[1]
On 11 April 1945, the International Camp Committee mobilised the resistance groups. The weapons, procured in secret over many years, were distributed. After the tanks of the Third US Army had put the SS troops to flight, the military groups of the camp resistance took control of the camp and arrested dozens of SS men.
The washrooms in the Small Camp were one of the secret meeting places of the secret military organisation. It was here that German communist prisoners forged the plans for the takeover of the camp. Since the 1950s, a memorial stone has therefore stood on this spot in memory of the so-called IMO – the International Military Organisation at Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
[1] Memoir by Renato Bertolini, c. 1950 (Buchenwald Memorial Archive)
