Camp Gate and Fence

On October 9, 1950, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED decided that only the camp gate building should be preserved as a symbol of "self-liberation" along with the watchtowers to the left and right, the camp fence connecting these buildings, and the crematorium, as site of Ernst Thälmann's murder. These structures formed the starting point for the design of the memorial.

View of the gate building from the former prisoners' camp area. The gate building has two wings. In the center of the building is the wooden-clad main watchtower with public address system, floodlights and clock. — 1/4

Gate Building, 2017. Photo: Danielle Weisheit. ©Buchenwald Memorial

Seven round searchlights mounted above the watchtower platform of the gate building. On the left of the picture you can see the clock above the camp gate. It is set at 15:15. — 2/4

Searchlights above the watchtower platform of the gate building, 2022. Photo: Lukas Severin Damm. ©Buchenwald Memorial

The camp fence consists of concrete pillars, barbed wire and electric lines and is separated by a narrow gravel strip from a wide lower barbed wire fence. In the background one of the watchtowers. — 3/4

Camp fence with barbed wire, 2012. Photo: Claus Bach. ©Buchenwald Memorial

View of the white camp gate with the inscription "To each his own" in red letters, which can be read from the inside — 4/4

Camp gate inscription "To each his own", 2016. Photo: Claus Bach. ©Buchenwald Memorial

In the view of the GDR officials, the camp gate was not seen as a "gate to hell" but as a triumphal arch, in combination with the site of Ernst Thälmann's martyrdom. The tower clock is symbolically kept at 3:15, the time when four German political prisoners raised the white flag over the camp on April 11, 1945, to signal to the American troops that the SS had evacuated the camp. This simultaneous liberation from within and without was portrayed in the GDR as the "storming of the camp gate"—as described in the novel "Nackt unter Wölfen" (Naked among Wolves, 1958) by Bruno Apitz and in the eponymous film directed by Franz Beyer (1963)—and as a "self-liberation." The resulting myth served as historical legitimation for the SED's claim to power.