©Private collection
After the Soviet Special Camp No. 2 was shut down, the Soviet military administration made a recommendation to the Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes (VVN, Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime) in July 1949 that "a national museum be established" in Buchenwald, based on the examples of Auschwitz and Theresienstadt.
However, this "large-scale museum of resistance," in which various nations would have used the barracks for their own exhibitions, was never realized.
Instead, the Politburo, the highest governing body of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) that ruled the GDR, decided in 1950 "to erect a Thälmann Memorial." For Buchenwald this meant that the entire camp with all its barracks was torn down. Only the crematorium, as the site of the murder of the German Communist Party (KPD) chairman Ernst Thälmann, the gate building, and the western and eastern guard towers were to be preserved. A statement on the demolition read:
"The essence of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp is not embodied by barracks or massive blocks. Its essence was the deep comradery, mutual assistance—bound together and reinforced by the struggle against the fascist terror—the organized resistance, and the deep faith in the victory of our righteous aims!"
(Robert Siewert, 1952)
