Eiden Hans

Eiden, Hans Hans Eiden was a member of the Communist party and an active anti-Nazi. Shortly after Hitler came to power, Eiden was arrested and incarcerated until 1936, when he was brought to trial, accused of treason. The court sentenced him to three years in prison, but immediately upon the end of his sentence, he was arrested again and taken to Buchenwald concentration camp. In the camp he became a leader of the Communist underground. At the end of 1944, Hans Eiden was nominated Lagerälteste (camp elder), the highest position in the inmate rank. The so-called prisoners’ self-administration was designed by the SS to help run the camps by pitting victims against victims, but Eiden used this position to help prisoners as much as possible. Eiden assumed this position at a time when the prisoner population of Buchenwald grew with the arrival of the death marches of inmates, many of them Jews, who had been evacuated from the camps in the east in the face of the advancing the Red Army. On April 4, 1945, the American army was very close to Weimar and Buchenwald, and the SS began planning the evacuation of the camp. The camp commander ordered Eiden to get the 6,000 Jews in the so-called big camp out of the barracks, ready to set out on a death march. Eiden and his comrades in the underground got together and decided not to comply. “There was no doubt in our minds what this order signified,” testified Emil Carlebach, a Jewish inmate and member of the Communist underground. “Following a short debate, it was decided that we would not organize a revolt of the entire camp. This would have been suicide. But we decided that when the order would be given, no one would report. Hundreds, perhaps thousands joined their non-Jewish comrades, and the SS had to postpone.” Consequently, Eiden went to the camp commander and said that the Jews were frightened and suggested that they wait until morning. Having negotiated a delay, Eiden then arranged for the Jews to take off a star sewn to their clothing and merge with the non-Jewish inmates. The following day the barrack elders, acting under Eiden’s instructions, announced that they were unable to identify the Jewish inmates. Between and April 7 and April 10, 1945, some 28,000 inmates were marched on foot or taken in cattle cars from Buchenwald to Dachau, Flossenbürg, and Theresienstadt. Thanks to Eiden’s endeavors, there were only 3,000 Jews among them. The remaining Jewish inmates stayed in the camp and were liberated by the American army on April 11, 1945. After the war Eiden returned to his hometown, Trier, and continued his activity in the Communist Party. He was elected to the parliament of the federal state of Rheinland-Pfalz. He died in 1950 at the age of 49, as a result of his years in prison and concentration camp. On June 30, 2014, Yad Vashem recognized Hans Eiden as Righteous Among the Nations.