Between Appropriation and Taboo (1950 to 1989)

In early 1950, the Soviet authorities dissolved the Special Camps. In the GDR, those who had been released were sworn to silence. Many of them were monitored by the police and the Stasi. The SED leadership initially used the dissolution of the camps for a propaganda campaign. When this proved unsuccessful, however, they prevented any further discussion of the Special Camps in the GDR.

Many West Germans saw the Soviet Special Camps as a sign of communist oppression. Politicians and anti-communist groups such as the “Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit” (Fighting Group Against Inhumanity) described them as communist terror. They often equated the special camps with Nazi concentration camps. From the 1960s onwards, social interest in the subject declined.

"Neue Berliner Illustrierte", Berlin (East), February 1950. ©Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

In early 1950, the GDR media published various articles about the release of prisoners from Special Camps. They portrayed the dissolution of the camps as a concession by the Soviet Union and glossed over the poor living conditions in the camps. However, the population found the reports implausible. The SED therefore soon discontinued the campaign.

Information panel at the Soviet Administration Barracks in Buchenwald, ca. 1960. ©Buchenwald Memorial

After the dissolution of Special Camp No. 2, the GDR converted Buchenwald into a national memorial site. There, the focus was on the anti-fascist resistance in the concentration camp. The Special Camp was never addressed. This information board incorrectly identified the Soviet administration barracks, built after 1945, as the “political department” of the concentration camp. The actual Gestapo barracks had been located a few meters away and were destroyed in an air raid in 1944.

Internal memo to memorial director Klaus Trostorff about a bone find, October 9, 1986. ©Buchenwald Memorial

Repeated discoveries of human bones around the grounds were kept secret and the bones were removed without further investigation, as in this case of bones found by a mushroom picker in 1986. “Camp period” refers to the Buchenwald concentration camp, while “subsequent period” refers to the Special Camp.

Many West German media outlets equated the Special Camps with concentration camps. Two years after the dissolution of the Buchenwald special camp, the magazine Stern reported on the release of Werner Ricklefs from the Waldheim prison. He had been sentenced to imprisonment there after his internment in Buchenwald.