| Original caption: “German Atrocities. Nazis ran out of coal and were unable to cremate bodies of dead at camp Buchanwald near Weimar before it was taken by a fast-moving spearhead of Gen. Patton’s Third Army. Weimar Civilians were placed under Military Police escort and forced to witness the results of atrocities in Nazi horror mill.” Buchenwald Hospital Kapo Walter Kramer (June 21, 1892 – November 6, 1941), and his closest collaborator Karl Peix (March 27, 1899 – November 6, 1941) were shot by the Schutzstaffel (SS). The post of head of the infirmary did not go to a doctor, but was given to former Communist deputy to the Reichstag, Ernst Busse (November 24, 1897 – August 31, 1952), who, with his Communist assistant Kapo Otto Kipp (November 12, 1903 – May 30, 1978) from Dresden. Busse initially concerned himself with the purely administrative side of the hospital, whose activity never ceased growing, and played a large part in the greater stabilization of living conditions through 1943. A medical specialist put at the head of that service might have brought catastrophe on the camp, because he never would have been able to dominate all the complicated and far-reaching intrigues as Busee did, the outcome of which was very often fatal for the Kapos. The last year of Buchenwald was marked by death transports from the east, from Ohrdruf, and from subsidiary camps like Wille (Berga/Elster) and Schwalbe (Tröglitz]. Neither Buchenwald nor the hospital was able to deal with the flood of mostly half-dead prisoners. As a solution to the catastrophic overcrowding, the camp doctor turned to injections. At the station, in the bath, in the tents, and in the anteroom of the death block, Block 61, hundreds and hundreds of prisoners met their deaths at the hands of SS-Hauptscharführer Friedrich Wilhelm (March 6, 1890 – November 26, 1948). A letter from SS headquarters that arrived in the Summer of 1944 and demanded better treatment of prisoners; nevertheless, the letter ended this criminal practice in camp for a time. The SS resumed lethal injections for the prisoners in Block 61 at the end of January 1945. The SS saw no other solution to the catastrophic conditions when the Red Army overran Auschwitz and other camps in the East. SS-Hauptsturmführer Gerhard Schiedlausky, Buchenwald Commandant (January 14, 1906 – May 3, 1947), assigned Sergeant Wilhelm to go into Block 61 every morning. Here Wilhelm examined the patients who had been admitted and gave them lethal injections according to his own judgment. Under these conditions the hospital and the prisoners attempted to save what was humanly possible. Since there were many children in these transports, the orderlies gave them special attention. As soon as there was room in the other sick quarters, young people were quickly taken out of Block 61. In Block 61 itself special cubicles were erected to help the sick who still had a chance to live. Prisoners who were to be hanged or executed in another manner were also admitted to Block 61, where they were provided with the personal identification of dead prisoners and their lives thus saved. In March 1945 a letter came from the SS administration in Berlin stipulating that the sick receive better treatment. Despite this letter, no additional means were put at the hospital’s disposal to provide better treatment. The letter also contained an order forbidding lethal injections. Thus, from this day on no more lethal injections were performed. In early April 1945, as American forces approached, the Germans began to evacuate some 28,000 prisoners from the Buchenwald main camp and an additional several 1,000 prisoners from the subcamps of Buchenwald. About a 3rd of these prisoners died from exhaustion en route or shortly after arrival, or were shot by the SS. The underground resistance organization in Buchenwald, whose members held key administrative posts in the camp, saved many lives. They obstructed Nazi orders and delayed the evacuation. Ernst Busse and Otto Kipp were 2 of the 46 anti-fascists who were to be liquidated by the SS on April 6, 1945, which was prevented by hiding these people within the Buchenwald barracks. On April 11, 1945, in expectation of liberation, prisoners took control of the camp. Later that afternoon, American forces entered Buchenwald. Soldiers from the United States 3rd Army, 6th Armored Division, found more than 21,000 people in the camp. On the orders of General George S. Patton, who had inspected Buchenwald the previous day, 1,000 citizens of Weimar are taken on a tour of the concentration camp. Major Lorenz C. Schmuhl (1898 – September 2, 1988) is appointed commanding officer of the camp. Armed with a camera, Signal Corps photographer Walter Chichersky (December 6, 1924 – April 14, 2008) documented their trip on foot on April 16, 1945, from Weimar to the ovens in the Buchenwald Crematorium. News correspondents from all over the world visited the camp and made verbal and visual records of the conditions there. Throughout the rest of April and well into May, they were joined by a seemingly endless stream of delegations of the International Red Cross, the American Congress, the British parliament, American publishers and individual public figures. The Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED; “Socialist Unity Party of Germany”) conducted its 1st investigation against Busse in October 1946 – he had been denounced by former fellow prisoners who felt he had treated them badly. Similar party proceedings were repeated, with Busse being accused of working too closely with the SS and not doing enough to save the Soviet prisoners of war in Buchenwald. Busse probably became involved in a power struggle between the former Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD; “Communist Party of Germany”) members who had immigrated to the Soviet Union and those who had remained in Germany. In any case, the interrogation records show that the investigators made no attempt to understand the predicament of the “red Kapos.” Busse was subsequently given increasingly unimportant tasks. In May 1947, he resigned as minister and was appointed 4th Vice President of the German Administration for Agriculture and Forestry, Head of the Office for Land Reform and, from August 1948, Supervisory Board member of the Association of German Consumer Cooperatives. On April 18, 1950, he was summoned to a meeting with Soviet authorities in Karlshorst, from which he did not return. On February 27, 1951, he was sentenced to life imprisonment as an alleged war criminal by the military tribunal of the garrison of the Soviet sector of the city of Berlin. He died in the special camp Number 6 RetschLag (“River Camp”) in Vorkuta, in the autonomous republic of Komi. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0542.jpg |
| Image Size | 835.33 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2920 x 2338 |
| Photographer | Walter Chichersky |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Signal Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 16, 1945 |
| Location | Konzentrationslager Buchenwald |
| City | Weimar |
| State or Province | Thuringia |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NRE-338-FTL(EF)-3134(4) |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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