STUDENTS AT WAR: PART 2 – The Buchenwald FOG

In January 1944 the second group of the arrested students are sendt to Buchenwald concentration camp. There they are treated like “regular” KZ-prisoners, but after three weeks they are placed in a camp within the camp as civilian internees. They are tutored by professors from the University of Jena, who are shuttled into Buchenwald to teach them about eugenics i.a. In October 1944 they are sent to Alsace, France to be reunited with the first group of student prisoners. As the war develops, they are all forced to return to Germany under the command of SS Ûberscharführer Joachim Wilde, who theatens to shoot them when they refuse to participate in war service. They still carry out a strike, and are sent back to Buchenwald as punishment. How did they still survive this critical phase of the war, with violence, famine, illness and bombardements, and why did they suffer fewer casualties than other prisoner groups? In the documentary’s second part we meet among others Ûberscharführer Joachim Wilde; Arnljot Gaare, the students’ spokesman, and the director’s father, Elling Kvamme, who was a medical student at that time.

DETAILS

Release Date: 1997
Type: Documentary
Length: 54 min

CREW

Director: Elsa Kvamme
Screenplay: Elsa Kvamme
DoP: Jørn G. Broll
Editor: Petter Bønsnes
Composer: Lars Jørgen Bergsund
Production: Alert Film, FMS, NRK