Histories of the Holocaust: Buchenwald 1937-42

Filmmaker John Moore's disturbing documentary follows the tragic decline and fall of the German city of Weimar, which went from being an epicenter of culture and scholarship—home to Bach, Goethe, Nietzsche, and the Bauhaus movement, among others—to becoming the location for the Buchenwald concentration camp, some 8 kilometers from its center. Weimar, which gave its name to the much-maligned post–World War I republic of Germany, also enabled the rise of Hitler when the region's feuding Social Democrats and Communists split the left-wing vote in the 1932 election, thus giving the Nazis an electoral edge. Although Buchenwald was originally designed for hard-labor incarceration and not as an extermination camp, the severity of the Nazi work policies almost immediately led to disproportionately high numbers of deaths among its prisoners, who numbered 14,000 by 1942, although the facility was designed to accommodate only 8,000. The documentary presents a wealth of rare archival footage and photographs (including color newsreels) capturing the miseries of life in Buchenwald. Recommended. [Note: a separately available sequel, Histories of the Holocaust: Buchenwald 1942–45, continues the account, ending with the liberation by Allied forces in 1945 and the trials of camp officials and guards.] Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)