Former Crematorium

Today the former crematorium is a central site of mourning and commemoration for all those who died or were murdered in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. The existence of the original incinerators provides the most visible and strongest evidence of the industrialized and annihilative nature of NS crimes.

On the wall of the memorial room hang several memorial plaques in different languages and different designs — 1/2

Memorial plaques in the anteroom of the Crematorium, 2012. Photo: Claus Bach.

©Buchenwald Memorial

Six crematory ovens in an otherwise empty room. They are open. Small rails lead to the doors. In front of the oven on the far left, one of the rolling racks is still standing on the rails. — 2/2

The oven room of the crematorium is now accessible to visitors as a memorial room, 2012. Photo: Claus Bach. ©Buchenwald Memorial

The earliest reports recorded after the liberation of the camp describe the crematorium as a "Nazi horror mill." The photos taken in Buchenwald give the world a picture of how this "horror mill" functioned: in front of the crematorium were the bodies; inside the crematorium the incinerators with half-burned corpses; and behind the crematorium mountains of human ash.

Although plans were considered in the 1950s to redesign the building as a memorial to Ernst Thälmann, ultimately the idea won out, as expressed by artist Lea Grundig, that "a design for merely a consecratory site would diminish the brutal impression." The crematorium was thus preserved as a vestige of the machinery of death.

Reconstructions nearby the crematorium date to the 1950s: the execution facility in a building close by and the stake and cart intended to embody the everyday terror of the camp. These displays stem from the traditions of the earliest tours of the liberated camp, in which mannequins and staged situations were used to show the German population just how far outside any acceptable norm the SS had operated.

Since there are no graves where family members can mourn, the crematorium serves as a symbolic gravesite for those who were murdered. There is space in an adjacent room where families can have memorial plaques installed for the dead.