Self-liberation of prisoners in concentration camps

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Self-liberation by prisoners in concentration camps describes the successful attempt by concentration camp prisoners to end their imprisonment by using force.

The liberated prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp greet the soldiers of the US Army (April 16, 1945)

Examples

Buchenwald concentration camp

The best-known example is the takeover of control of the Buchenwald concentration camp by the International Camp Committee of Prisoners in the immediate context of the advance of the 6th US Armored Division on April 11, 1945. At 10 o'clock that day, the camp commandant, SS Oberführer Hermann Pister , ordered the SS from the camp. Half an hour later, the International Camp Committee, which had prepared for the day, trained resistance groups and secretly procured weapons, mobilized these groups and handed them over to them. In the hours that followed, battles broke out outside the camp area between American tank divisions and the SS, from which the Americans emerged victorious. At 2:45 p.m., the armed prisoners gathered on the roll call square. In the hour that followed, they occupied the gate, hoisted the white flag, announced the end of SS rule over the loudspeaker, brought the camp under control and took 76 prisoners. At 5 p.m. the first scouts of the 4th US Armored Division arrived at the camp gate and were greeted by inmates.

In the GDR, the moment of self-liberation of the prisoners was very strongly emphasized, but the role of the American army was rather downplayed. There has always been criticism of this. Volkhard Knigge , the director of the Buchenwald Memorial , assumes that both “liberation from within” and “liberation from outside” have taken place and that “every memory [...] has its right”.

Publications
  • Working group of associations of the East German Board of Trustees at the regional association DIE LINKE .Thuringia in cooperation with the regional board TVVdN / BdA eV (publisher): Against forgetting! - 70 years of self-liberation, Erfurt 2015
  • Lagerarbeitsgemeinschaft Buchenwald-Dora eV (Ed.): 73rd anniversary of the self-liberation of the prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp, Berlin 2018

Rab concentration camp

Another example is the successful self-liberation of concentration camp prisoners on the Croatian island of Rab shortly before the armistice of the Italian army allied with the Germans . A group of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia among the prisoners organized the self-liberation of the prisoners. After September 8, 1943, she disarmed the Italian guards so that the prisoners could escape.

Scientific research / literature

  • The Argentine journalist and politician Luis Alberto Ammann , who is one of the founders of the “ Humanist Movement ”, headed a research group on self-liberation from 1969, which led to the establishment of the Synthesis Institute and the publication of the book Autoliberación .
  • Gitta Günther, Gerhard Hoffmann: Buchenwald concentration camp 1937 to 1945. Small encyclopedia . Rhino Verlag, Ilmenau, 2016, ISBN 3-95560-897-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Buchenwald Memorial : Chronology of the Liberation of Buchenwald Concentration Camp in April 1945 . April 11, 1945. Online .
  2. ↑ Quoted from: Tom Fugwald: Myth or Reality? The self-liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp . MDR , April 11, 2018.
  3. ^ Liberation of Buchenwald. Poignant ceremony of the survivors. In: Kölner Stadtanzeiger from April 12, 2015, online .
  4. ^ Luigi Reale: Mussolini's Concentration Camps for Civilians: An Insight Into the Nature of Fascist Racism. P. 112.
  5. ↑ Luis Alberto Ammann: Autoliberación (self-liberation) . Editorial Altamira 1980, ISBN 987-9017-34-X .