“Kinderblock 66” screens at Docutah

“Kinderblock 66” screens at Docutah

By Della Lowe

Docutah brings the compelling documentary “Kinderblock 66” to The Electric Theater July 27 at 7 p.m. The film tells a little-known story of an underground conspiracy led by political prisoners, many of them communists, who made a conscious decision to save the boys who were sent to Kinderblock 66, a barracks for children at Buchenwald concentration camp. It is not only a story of survival but also of how the human spirit and kindness can survive even in the most hellish circumstances. The screening is hosted by producer Brad Rothschild, former director of communications for the Mission of Israel to the United Nations.

The youth in the block did not work and were protected against being sent out of the camp. The block leaders watched over the children and cared for them to the extent possible, seeing in these youth hope for the future. They strove until the last days of the war and beyond to keep them from danger and alive. On April 11, 1945, Buchenwald was liberated. Nearly 1,000 boys survived. On April 11, 2010, 65 years later, several of the surviving boys from block 66 returned to Weimar and to Buchenwald. This is their story.

Established in 1937, Buchenwald was one of the largest and most well known German concentration camps. Early in its history, there had been Jewish prisoners at Buchenwald. Now, in 1944, the Jewish population of Buchenwald rose again as the camp was flooded with some of the remnants of European Jewry. Among these were a large and growing number of teenage boys, many of whom had lost family members in the ghettos and camps of Nazi-occupied Poland or in the more recent Hungarian deportations to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The German Communist-led underground at Buchenwald, which administered the camp on a day-to-day basis, recognized this influx of children and youth as requiring a special response. The underground made a conscious decision to do what might be possible to protect the youth. The children were coming in such numbers that leaders in the clandestine conspiracy decided to establish a new children’s block, block 66. The location of the barrack was farthest away from the main gate and Nazi SS gaze, and the area was so horrible and disease ridden that the SS guards seldom went there.

The films included in the 2018 festival, which runs Sept. 3–8, are listed on the Docutah website. Complete festival information and ticketing will be available in late July. Tickets for the screening are $10 and may be reserved at docutah.com/kinderblock-66.

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