Sunday 22 April 2012

Day 71 - The flames at Buchenwald were as high as those at Auschwitz!

"An eerie and dusty atmosphere now prevailed - souls had departed but their sacrifice had not been in vain.  A peculiar rushing noise was now heard over the scene similar to the one that had been heard over the field at "The Battle of Waterloo" - maybe it was just the wind!


The high rise, S.S. building, appeared to be untouched.  For a moment, the injustice of it all overwhelmed us but this feeling did not last long.  We could now see that all their shelters had been destroyed without exception - all plowed over just like after a harvester that had just plowed the land in preparation for seed sowing but at the same time destroying all the vermin sheltering within the earth.


To escape the shrapnel, the S.S. had run as one man from the buildings and vicinity into their quickly covered gangways and mazes.  The waves of judgement rolling overhead had released their heavy loads onto the buildings so that the main carpet bombing had come down exactly in the right area.
There must have been a good bit of planning and preparation put into this bombing and the rest was The Lord's.  Only the best pilots were good enough for this kind of operation.


The S.S. who were in training were killed en masse -  in what I would say they would have liked to inflict upon us and our people.  Justice or retribution  had now taken place on a grand scale. The carnage among the S.S. must have been tenfold to ours.   We will never know the exact figures but it was satisfying to know that the score was being evened out.  Their bodies wouldn't be burned with ours - they would stay buried where they became entombed.


The remarkable, outstanding occurrences we now noticed on the Gothic signs which had previously read, " Right or Wrong My Country", were now being covered by small flames that licked up the beams giving the slogans the illusion of crawling upwards  snake wise in their finality -  like the saying itself!


The guards weren't there and we never looked for them either.  They had probably been in the shelters too which were only twenty yards away from us now.  No "Mutzen ab", or "hats off" now, "Versekwunden".  The top heavy eagle had been taken up and blown fifty yards away from its spot now laying on it's side as if  thrown by a giant.  The totem pole was in a hundred splinters with a "voltreffer" close by which had landed right by its side.  We were in total amazement as we now walked passed!


At this time, we were caring for our wounded and  transporting them in batches.  We were sorrowful and amazed at it all but still more intact and with a new glow of hope burning inside us - we pulled ourselves together quicker than the S.S.


We had our heads raised high and didn't see one S.S. for a while.  It was if the earth had swallowed them up, which it really had done with only the worms having a laid out feast.  The fate of some of the S.S. now was in sharp contrast to the sarcastic poem and inscription that they had written, for our benefit, above the crematorium,  which read as:




         Nicht onhele Wurme soll mein Leib erndhren,
         Die reine flamme, die soll ihn verzehren,
         Ich liebe slets die Warme und das light,
         Denn verbrennt und begrabt mich night.




***My Dad was not sure if his spelling or translation of the above poem 
     are entirely correct.  His translation is as follows:


         Not one worm shall my life approach
         the pure flame shall I make sure of
         I love the state of the heat and light
         Then don't burn and bury me.




That evening we burned our dead and the flames from the ovens in Buchenwald would go as high as those in Auschwitz but not to the glory of the murderous S.S. and the Nazi hierarchy but to our salvation.


This would be our epitaph, "To Each his Own", as we stood looking into the flames in memory of so many good and absent friends and some brethren as if in a last farewell to our misery in arms.




To be continued ..








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