Colin Burgess

 Destination Buchenwald

by

Colin Burgess

It was the summer of 1944 as liberating Allied forces surged towards Paris following the D-Day landings. For a large group of downed airmen being held in that city’s infamous Fresnes Prison, they were about to face evacuation into the blackest, bloody heart of Germany and experience the most acute evil of the war. Amid great secrecy, those 168 airmen – including several from Australia and New Zealand – were transported on a filthy, overcrowded nightmare train journey which ended at the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp, accompanied by orders for their execution. At Buchenwald they witnessed extreme depravity that would haunt them to the end of their days. Yet, on returning home, they were confronted by decades of denials from their own governments that they had ever been held in one of Hitler’s most vile concentration camps.

A riveting yet deeply harrowing account of the Allied airmen sent to one of Germany's most infamous death camps. However, this story extends far beyond their experiences alone. Alongside them suffered Poles, Russians, Gypsies, and countless others, all trapped within a system built on brutality and dehumanisation.

What unfolds is a stark and confronting record of torture, starvation, and cruelty almost beyond comprehension. The conditions endured by the prisoners were inhumane in the extreme, and all the more shocking because every event described is true.

This is a well-written and meticulously researched account, but it is not an easy read. The sheer scale of the suffering and barbarity depicted in these pages can be difficult to absorb. Yet I found myself compelled to keep turning the pages, driven by a need to understand how human beings could inflict such unimaginable cruelty upon their fellow man.

Powerful, disturbing, and unforgettable, this book serves as a sobering reminder of the depths of human brutality and the resilience of those who endured it.

A strong 5/5.