Buchenwald Revisited

the foundation mythology of the German Democratic Republic, the Buchenwald concentration camp played a central role. It was not merely a site whose history was testimony to the barbarism with which the Nazi regime treated its enemies; it was also a birthplace of anti-Fascism, born of the solidarity of the suffering, one which transcended national and even class boundaries. In short, it was a brand of anti-Fascism which the East German state was prepared to endow with exemplary status, as it constructed its own identity as a kind of anti-Fascist phoenix, arisen from the ashes of the Third Reich and driven by the energy of Nazism's staunchest opponents. And praiseworthy though the achievement of the Soviet army was in defeating the forces of Fascism on territory which was later to become the German Democratic Republic, the anti-Fascist resistance movement in Buchenwald boasted the great virtue of being born in the heart of Germany and led by German Communists. For this reason it provided the ideal foundation stone on which to construct a German anti-Fascist state

Programming language · Rewriting · Computer Science · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society