Neo-Nazi hackers vandalize web page of the Buchenwald memorial

Yesterday hackers broke in to the web page of the memorial to the site of the former Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald in Germany. They managed to remove the list of the camp’s victims (called the Book of the Dead), replacing it with neo-Nazi symbols and slogans. The hackers also erased pages about the former auxiliary camp of Dora-Mittelbau.

The slogan “Brown is beautiful” (in English) – a reference to the color of the shirts worn by Adolf Hitler’s SA units – turned up on the web pages. The hacker also left a warning message in German: “We’ll be back….”

Reuters quoted Volkhard Knigge, the head of the foundation that manages the monument, as saying, “By destroying the documentation and services we provide, such as the Book of the Dead from the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, the perpetrators are trying to erase the memory of the victims of the crimes of Nazism.” The foundation has reported the hacking to police.

The web page now carries a statement announcing that access to the foundation’s internet services has been restricted because of the attack. It is unknown how long repairs will take. The foundation says the attack on the web pages of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora memorial, which are visited daily by several thousand people, and the insertion there of statements supporting the Holocaust constitute an unprecedented crime against the work of the memorial.

The Nazis imprisoned almost 250 000 people at Buchenwald, one of the largest concentration camps. Most of those imprisoned were Jewish people who were forced to work in German ammunition factories. An estimated 56 000 of them died there of exhaustion, hunger or illness. Some were executed. At the Mittelbau-Dora camp as many as 60 000 people were imprisoned, an estimated one-third of whom did not survive.