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Former Disinfection Building

Initially used to house the museum and the Ernst Thälmann Memorial, today the building holds the exhibition "Means of Survival – Testimony – Artwork – Visual Memory."

The flat former disinfection building as it looks today. The right wing has glass walls. In the background the former depot building.
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Former Disinfection (Today art exhibition), 2006. Photo by Noami T. Salmon.

©Buchenwald Memorial
The front view of the disinfection building can be seen. The flat building is open. The chimney is scaffolded and is being dismantled. The right part of the building has no exterior walls at the time of the photo.
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Former disinfection under renovation, 1954. Photo: Ernst Schäfer.

©Buchenwald Memorial
The picture shows one of the old exhibition rooms in the former disinfection. The room deals with clients and profiteers of the concentration camp Buchenwald. On the far right is a photo of the broadly grinning Hanz Globke, who at the time of the exhibition opening was Secretary of State of the FRG under Konrad Adenauer. On the left are photographs of 5 other people. The captions reveal that they are Friedrisch Flick, Alfried Krupp, Wilhelm Zangen, Dr. Otto Ambross and Dr. Fritz Ter Meer.The picture shows one of the old exhibition rooms in the former disinfection. The room deals with clients and profiteers of the concentration camp Buchenwald. On the far right is a photo of the broadly grinning Hanz Globke, who at the time of the exhibition opening was Secretary of State of the FRG under Konrad Adenauer. On the left are photographs of 5 other people. The captions reveal that they are Friedrisch Flick, Alfried Krupp, Wilhelm Zangen, Dr. Otto Ambross and Dr. Fritz Ter Meer.
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The interior of the original exhibition inside the former disinfection, 1954. Photo: Ernst Schäfer.

©Buchenwald Memorial
In the center of the picture is a drawing of Ernst Thälmann under which a decarative curtain was hung from right to left. To the left of the drawing is the inscription: "Immortal victims you sank there" painted on the wall. In the foregroACund of the picture a golden wreath is to be seen between two fire bowls standing on individual pedestals right and left.
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Memorial room for Ernst Thälmann in the former disinfection, 1954. Photo: Ernst Schäfer.

©Buchenwald Memorial

Slated for demolition in the early 1950s, like the barracks, this building was then preserved. After renovation, the building was opened as the museum in 1964.

In 1971 an Ernst Thälmann commemorative site was established in the basement, where a secret funeral service had taken place in 1944 for the former chairman of the German Communist Party (KPD). This memorial was redesigned in 1986 and closed in 1990.

After the opening of the new "Museum of the Anti-fascist Resistance" in 1985 in the storage building, the disinfection building was restored to its original state. The National Buchenwald Monument opened an art exhibition here, which is the first and only of its kind in Germany. 

The exhibition organized in 1998 as "Means of Survival – Testimony – Artwork – Visual Memory," shows works of art created before the liberation of Buchenwald as well as artworks produced by inmates after they had been freed. It concludes with works by artists, who have dedicated themselves to contemporary examinations the crimes committed here. The exhibition is continuously updated.

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