Dutch ex-prisoners of Buchenwald camp

On the Ettersberg, a large wooded hill eight kilometres north of Weimar in Germany, the Nazis established the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1937. It quickly became one of the largest concentration camps of the Third Reich. Of the estimated 240,000 people imprisoned at the camp, 34,000 officially died. Nowadays, however, the death rate is estimated to be much higher, at 50,000.

After the Netherlands was conquered by Germany in May 1940, Dutch people were also quickly transported after Buchenwald; an estimated 3,300 people. These included hostages, Jews, resistance fighters, Jehovah’s Witnesses and those who refused to work. How they fared in Buchenwald can no longer always be traced. What is certain is that 497 Dutch people died in Buchenwald, and that when the camp was liberated there were still 384 Dutch people there.

In the period 2000-2001, the former Association of Former Buchenwald Prisoners interviewed 38 Dutch former prisoners. The interviews were made possible financially by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport within the framework of the project ‘World War II Relics’. With this interview project the Vereniging Oud-Buchenwalders seized one of the last opportunities to record the experiences of these eyewitnesses. In 2001, the Association was dissolved and replaced by the Buchenwald Memorial Committee, which primarily focuses on the progress of the commemorations.

In 2002, the filmed interviews of Dutch former prisoners of Buchenwald camp were transferred to the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. The NIOD has made the interviews digitally accessible and searchable. This was financially made possible by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport within the framework of the project ‘War Heritage’ (2007-2009). Commissioned by the NIOD, filmmaker Emiel Bakker made, based on the interviews, the documentary ‘Vooral niet opvallen. Nederlanders in Buchenwald’ (2008).

Oorlogsverhalen Buchenwald from Oorlogsverhalen on Vimeo.