Viktor Vyshesłavsky was born on February 13, 1927 in Nikolayev, Ukraine
. He came from a Russian family, was of Orthodox faith and
worked as an electrical engineer. After the German occupation of Ukraine, he came to Suhl as a
forced laborer.

He was arrested as a teenager in Suhl for listening to foreign radio stations.
had eavesdropped – a political accusation in the Nazi state that often led to immediate
incarceration in a concentration camp. After his arrest, he was sent to the
Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was given the prisoner number 24 797. When he was registered at
, he was described as slim, 165 cm tall, with dark hair and
described as having a narrow face.

On November 27, 1944, he was transferred to subcamp S III / Ohrdruf and
registered there under prisoner number 106 762. This made him one of the
youngest prisoners to be used for forced labor in this camp.

Viktor Vyshesłavsky survived the death march back to Buchenwald.

The following memories are taken from a speech he gave at the commemorative event at
7. November 7, 2004 in Espenfeld on the 60th anniversary of the start of construction, recorded by Klaus-Peter
Schambach:

“In November 1944, I was transported from Buchenwald to Ohrdruf to Kommando S III.
This was the name of the Buchenwald sub-commando in which 3500 people were killed
in five months. During this time, the prisoners had to build a large
underground factory in a mountain. The living conditions were inhumane. For 5
months, we couldn’t wash ourselves in the camp. There was no bathroom. It was crawling with lice, the
typhus was raging. Sick people were taken to separate blocks where they simply lay naked on the
straw and died an agonizing death. The work was carried out from November to
April under the harshest climatic conditions in Thuringia. Hungry
people, scantily clad and barefoot, had to hoe the stony ground under the blows of the SS men’s sticks and pistons
. We had to work non-stop
all day until late in the evening. It was quite a long way from the camp to the work site. We had to travel to the work site on the
small train we had built. The prisoners traveled in small iron wagons. There had to be 24 men ineach wagon and the people lay one on top of the other. When
driving, sometimes 3-4 trolleys were knocked over and many prisoners broke their legs and
arms – some were killed instantly.
Many prisoners wanted to escape from this terrible place. But they were all caught again and
then hanged. One evening after a roll call, we had to be present at the hanging of a
death penalty. All our comrades died steadfastly. They all cursed fascism beforedeath. Not far from the northern camp, barely four kilometers north of Ohrdruf, a pithad been dug in which 3500 bodies were buried: Germans, Russians, Poles,French, Jews, Hungarians and prisoners from other nations. Beforehand, however, theSS ‘processed’ the corpses. If there were golden teeth in a dead person’s mouth, they were pulled out with pliers.And if the jaw was frozen, they simply smashed it with an axe.When the American troops approached Ohrdruf, the SS executioners dug up the bodiesof the prisoners to burn them on pyres. But they could not hide the traces
of the atrocities. Mountains of excavated corpses remained lying on the surface
. The evacuation of the camp began. Malnourished, exhausted people were chased to
Buchenwald and those who stayed behind were shot. It was a death march. Only an
insignificant number of us reached Buchenwald. I walked the last few kilometers with two sticks,
because I was very ill and had a large ulcer on my right leg. We reached
Buchenwald and my German comrades had saved me. How I survived – I don’t know myself
.
The surviving eyewitnesses
will never forget this gruesome story of the S III satellite camp! That was 60 years ago and I was just 17 years old at the time. That’s whyI want to address the youth today: Dear friends! The future belongs to you and you
must fight decisively against fascism, Nazism and terrorism so that there will never again be war on this
globe! You must keep the peace! But the danger exists
just as it did in the past and we must all be vigilant at all times.”

Ignac Abrahamowicz was born in Hungary on March 11, 1921 and worked as a tailor before his arrest. On November 13, 1944, he was arrested by the Vienna Security Police and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp as prisoner number 99501 as a “Hungarian Jew”. Shortly afterwards, he was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was given prisoner number 102008.

Just a few days later, on November 24, 1944, he was transferred to the newly established subcamp S III / Ohrdruf. There he was given the prisoner number 116088, which is clearly documented in several original prisoner cards. His personnel, effects, work and district cards provide complete evidence of his registration and his stay in the camp complex.

The surviving documents make Abrahamowicz a verifiable prisoner of Subcamp S III today. His biography is representative of the late deportations of Hungarian Jews in 1944 and of the history of the camp complex in the Ohrdruf and Jonastal area.

Fred Wander (born Fritz Rosenblatt, January 5, 1917 in Vienna) was an Austrian-Jewish writer and one of the most important witnesses to National Socialist persecution. He was arrested in 1942 and deported to several concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen. In the last months of the war, on March 7, 1945, Fred Wander was transferred to subcamp S III of Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was given the number 134110 according to the prisoner card. Wander survived the camp and later wrote about his experience. In his well-known work “The Seventh Well”, he vividly describes the conditions of deportation, everyday life in the camps and his time in the Crawinkel/Ohrdruf area. Today, these memoirs are among the most important literary testimonies about the Nazi forced labor camps.

Fred Wander is of particular importance for the “Path of Remembrance” project because he is one of the few survivors who has explicitly reported on the conditions in Subcamp S III, Crawinkel and the final weeks of the war. His accounts turn the historical sites of today’s MUNA into central places of remembrance and give the pupils a direct connection to the history of the place.

Ernest Pollak was born on March 5, 1892 and was a Hungarian Jew who was classified as a political prisoner by the National Socialist authorities. On January 20, 1945, he was admitted to the S III / Ohrdruf subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was given the prisoner number 110 443. The documents record that he was carrying a pocket watch when he was admitted.

Benjamin Gelhorn was born on December 10, 1922 in Łódź, Poland. He grew up in Łódź and experienced the German occupation of Poland as a teenager. He and his family were deported to the Łódź ghetto as early as 1939. The living conditions there were extreme: Everyday life was characterized by hunger, cramped conditions and forced labour. Almost his entire family perished in the Shoah; Gelhorn was the only survivor.

After several years in the ghetto, he was sent to various labor camps, including one in Poznan, where he had to drain fields and build canals. At the end of 1942, he was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was given the prisoner number 142 906. He was forced to work there for two years, constantly endangering his life through selections.

He was later transported to Stutthof concentration camp, Echterdingen concentration camp, Natzweiler concentration camp and the Ohrdruf / S III and Crawinkel satellite camps, which were part of the Buchenwald concentration camp complex. In the Crawinkel concentration camp, he suffered a fractured lower leg during hard forced labor with heavy sacks of cement, which left him disabled for life. On January 25, 1945, S III and the number 86 067 are noted on his prisoner card, a decisive proof of his affiliation to this subcamp.

Benjamin Gelhorn reported that the work in the subcamps was characterized by hunger, cold and constant exhaustion. Prisoners had to dig bomb craters, recover the dead and work on farms in the surrounding area – often they were only given thin soup as food. His testimonies provide a rare insight into the reality of life for the prisoners of subcamp S III and show the personal fates behind the historical figures.

Benjamin Gelhorn was liberated by the US Army in Buchenwald on April 11, 1945. After the war, he initially worked for the US Army in Landsberg, emigrated to Israel, but returned to Germany due to health problems. He lived in Munich, sometimes in great poverty, but remained spiritually lively and ready to bear witness.

Andrej Sikalo was born on July 11, 1913 in Sosow and was a tailor by trade. He was Russian and was sent to the S III / Ohrdruf satellite camp of Buchenwald concentration camp on January 15, 1945, where he was given the prisoner number 110 932.He died after the end of the war on May 18, 1945. His grave is located in the cemetery at the Bismarck Tower near Buchenwald, row grave D, where he is documented by name as a victim.