Medical Block Buchenwald

by Walter Poller

Book Overview

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0818404485
• ISBN13: 9780818404481
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: Carol Publishing Corporation
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Uncomfortably authentic

This one is a somewhat atypical "concentration camp" tale. These are the detailed recollections of a non-Jewish political prisoner, held at Buchenwald, 1938-1940. This was during the period when America was not yet in the war, and Germany and Russia were still waltzing with various non-aggression pacts. In Germany, the Nazis were already in power, under Hitler, and were waging war against Poland (after having already steamrollered over Austria). Author Walter Poller does just a wonderful, detailed job of taking you inside the camp. This is rather strange reading for a modern day American, as Poller speaks fluently in the vernacular of the politics and personalties of the time. Poller was apparently a vigorous politcal activist in that era, so no doubt had an axe to grind regarding the Nazis. His political connections served him well in the camp, not only securing him a preferred work assignment, but even saving his life. The reader is solidly convinced that the Nazis were indeed criminal murderers, liars, and thieving brutes. Poller methodically sets the scene and provides detail and names names (he withheld the names of some innocents for their own political protection). From his position as a prisoner-nurse and clerk in the camp medical office, Poller had something of an insider's viewpoint. I was intrigued by his accounting of politics and pecking-order within the camp. Conditions were brutal. There were requirements on documentation, but these were clearly and regularly falsified, as expedient. There was inhumane corporal punishment and torture, even unto death. The camp doctor even played a role in facilitating covered up executions. Poller recounts it all. My previous reading regarding the subject of the Nazi concentration camps has almost always been authored by surviving Jews. This tale is quite different. Poller was a non-Jew and his story is told from his viewpoint. It shows that there was more to the Nazi persecutions than just the infamous anti-Jew activities. These camp inmates were there for reasons political, or criminal, or homosexual, or for being tagged as simply sluggards - not turning in their required share of work in the society. Scary stuff. There was a Jewish block in the camp however, and Poller does describe the lot of those unfortunates. They were at the bottom of the pecking order and were subjected to the worst of the conditions. In one hellish chapter, the author recounts the "camp within a camp" that was set up inside of Buchenwald (which translates as "Beech Wood") to receive the Jewish deportees from Poland . . . men, women, and children. There was not much story to tell. From the author's perspective in the outer camp, the Jews were locked inside their own camp area and allowed to starve to death amid their own excrement and rot. The conditions inside there would have been horrific beyond anyone's ability to describe. There are minor flaws in the translation, and the syntax is a bit s

Atrocities in Buchenwald

This is a survivor's pitiful recollection of the human experiments perpetrated by the BUTCHERS OF BUCHENWALD (formerly published as MEDICAL BLOCK, BUCHENWALD).If you think that "it will never happen again" you are wrong!If you want to know what it may well be like again, then you must read the ghastly story of the concentration camp that was "home" to Walter Poller for many years. Interned as a political prisoner, and therefore slightly more privileged than the rest, he had a bird's eye view of the camp's daily from his post as doctor's clerk in surgery. He witnessed the camp's daily routine of floggings, tortures, unrelenting degradation -- and wrote the falsified death certificates that were intended to legitimize these heinous crimes.He saw them all: "The Protesting Jew" who refused to voluntarily apply for castration by signing an order "to rid myself of my perverted sexual instincts"; the Jewish member of the Prussian Parliament who was taight to bark like a dog at passers-by; the gypsies; the work-shy Nazis; the imbeciles . . .Written immediately after his liberation, we get a burning impression of what it was like to hear the camp band play marches while the slaves dragged on to their quarries; what it was like to hear the voices of tens of thousands of prisoners serenading the Senior Camp Officer with the Buchenwald Song; what it was like after an assassination attempt was mad on Hitler's life; what if *felt like to pity* again -- when a new way to torture was discovered by . . .THE BUTCHERS OF BUCHENWALD

Well written account of Buchenwald

Translated from the German, Medical Block, Buchenwald is a well written account by Walter Poller, a German polical prisoner incarcerated in Buchenwald. Very informative about the prison politics in the camp as well as acurate descriptions of the nazi atrocities carried out in Buchenwald. Mr Poller explains how luck and the help of other inmates were invaluable to his survival. Highly recommended reading.