Erfurt/Weimar (dpa/th) – Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (left) will interrupt his vacation because of the destruction of several memorial trees near the former Buchenwald concentration camp. Government spokesman Falk Neubert said on Monday that he would take part in the commemoration for deported Jewish youths in Weimar on Sunday. The “daily newspaper” (taz), which appears in Berlin, had previously reported.
In the past week, seven trees near Buchenwald were sawed off or broken off, and on Saturday another five were snapped off or damaged, commemorating the victims of the National Socialist terror regime. Almost exactly 85 years ago, on July 15, 1937, the first prisoners arrived at the Ettersberg camp near Weimar in Thuringia. The Nazis deported 280,000 people to Buchenwald before it was liberated by US troops in April 1945. About 56,000 of them were murdered or died of starvation, disease and the consequences of medical experiments.
