In the winter of 1944–45, countless children and young people, mostly Jewish, also arrived at Buchenwald on so-called ‘evacuation transports’. Many of these boys were orphans whose parents had been murdered by the SS. Their chances of surviving on their own in the misery of the ‘Small Camp’ were slim to none. Political and Jewish prisoner functionaries were not prepared to stand idly by – and they took action.
In mid-January 1945, they persuaded the SS to set up Children’s Block 66 here on the very edge of the ‘Kleines Lager’. It offered protection from arbitrary violence, abuse and hard forced labour.
Robert Büchler, then aged 16, arrived in Buchenwald from the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp at the end of January 1945. He was one of the boys housed in Block 66. Later, as a historian, he devoted himself intensively to the history of Children’s Block 66. He wrote:
“Around 500 children and young people were rescued from Block 66 in Buchenwald. The rescue of these 500 young people, who were in a catastrophic physical and mental state after so many years of persecution and abuse, was no accident. When one considers the conditions prevailing in the camp, it must be said that it was a heroic act by individual prisoners who saw the rescue of the children as a sacred goal. […] We already knew in Buchenwald that it was not so simple, but the dedication and the danger our rescuers took upon themselves only became clear to us later. […] Amidst the cruelty that claimed hundreds of lives every day, a unique haven emerged where humanity could be preserved even in the hell of Nazi rule.”[1]
As early as the summer of 1943, prisoner-officers in Block 8 of the Main Camp had set up initial accommodation for children and young people. Initially, it housed mainly boys from the Soviet Union; later, Jewish prisoners and young Sinti and Roma were also accommodated there.
In total, more than 900 children and young people experienced liberation here on the Ettersberg on 11 April 1945. Most had survived in the two children’s blocks, 8 and 66. Their rescue was the result of a joint effort by prisoner-officers and the men of the camp resistance.
[1] Robert Büchler, Am Ende des Weges. Kinderblock 66 im Konzentrationslager Buchenwald, in: Dachauer Hefte 6 (1990), pp. 104–117, here p. 117
