MP's visit Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1945

Newspaper report about the day MP's visited Buchenwald Concentration Camp in 1945.​

They will never forget Buchenwald, the eight MP's and two peers who went there.

"The memory of what we saw and heard will haunt us ineffaceably for many years," says their report, published yesterday.

Their unanimous opinion is this: "That a policy of steady starvation and inhuman brutality was carried out at Buchenwald for a long period of time, and that such camps as this mark the lowest point of degradation to which humanity has yet descended.”

The report gives abundant confirmation of atrocities at the camp. Inmates were in three main categories, political internees and Jews from Germany; political internees and Jews from Austria, Czechoslovakia. Poland. Etc; and men and youths imported for forced labour from occupied countries. There were few Britons at any time in the camp; probably a few dozen, almost all of them civilians. Many prisoners were unable to speak; they lay in a semi-coma, or following us with their eyes. Others spoke freely, displaying sores and severe scars and bruises which could have been caused by kicks or blows. They lay on the floor on and under quilts. All were in a state of extreme emanciation."

A British Delegation visiting Buchenwald Concentration Camp

​

The usual clothing was a ragged shirt, vest or cotton jacket, beneath which protruded thighs no thicker than normal wrists. The medical members of our delegation expressed the opinion that a percentage of them could not be expected to survive, even with the treatment they were now receiving, and that a larger percentage, though they might survive, would probably suffer sickness and disablement for the rest of their lives.

There were 800 children in the camp. Like adults, they were forced to work eight or more hours a day seven days a week. In the yard, near a pile of white ashes, was a gibbet. In the basement there were strong hooks at a height of about 8ft. from the floor and another gibbet. The walls of the laboratory and other medical rooms were decorated with death-masks of, we were told, the more 'interesting' prisoners, many with features of remarkable nobility and refinement.

On newsreels

Newsreels next week (from tomorrow in the West End) are showing details of the camps of Belsen and Buchenwald. So important are these considered that their length has been slightly extended from normal. The M.O.I. have expressed the hope that squeamishness will not prevent anyone from the duty of witnessing these terrible indictments.