»Kinderblock 66 - Return to Buchenwald«

In the winter of 1944/1945, clearance transports brought thousands of people to Buchenwald who had survived the extermination camps at Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen in the East under terrible hardship. These included many Jews and these in turn included numerous children and youths. As a consequence, the number of children and youths in Buchenwald increased significantly in the final year of the war. In order to give them a chance of survival, political kapos arranged with Jewish prisoners to establish a second children’s block in barrack 66. This “block 66” primarily accommodated Jewish boys from Hungary and Poland. Many of those among them were orphans. For them the block was a space where they were protected from random violence, abuse and heavy forced labour. When the camp was liberated on 11 April 1945, there were 904 children and young people there, among them Naftali Fürst. The film tells the stories of four survivors and also accompanies them 65 years after the liberation, when they return to Buchenwald in April 2010. The film screening will be followed by a conversation with the eyewitness Naftali Fürst and Volkhard Knigge, formerly the long-serving Director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorial Foundation. The film was last shown on 4 April 2025 as part of the 80th anniversary of the liberation at the mon ami cinema in Weimar and returns to the programme due to its substantial and local significance and popular demand. Naftali Fürst will also make the welcoming address at the traditional Buchenwald Memorial Concert in the Herder-Kirche on 21.8.2025.

The screening will be followed by a discussion with Naftali Fürst and Volkhard Knigge.