When asked how I feel when I look at a diagram of the Buchenwald concentration camp, my initial
answer would be overwhelmed. A piece of paper, a diagram, does not graze the surface of the
outrageous activities that occurred at Buchenwald. The lives that were taken and the liberty that was
stripped from those that survived the horrific ordeal is simply unbelievable. I have been to the Holocaust
museum and seen the pictures and videos of those that survived, and I cannot imagine living through
such a terrible experience. The feeling that saddens me most when I reflect upon Buchenwald diagram is
that it is not an isolated incident. While the Holocaust is arguably the most horrific mass murder in
modern history, it certainly does not stand alone in the events of blatant violation of human rights
throughout the history of human civilization. Men and women that crave power have proven over the
course of time that they will do anything to gain and retain power. Unfortunately, the majority of these
leaders gain popularity and power by feeding off of fear. These people in power, if they are not
constantly questioned and checked, will chip away at the rights that are entitled to human beings. If
they are given an inch they will take a mile, and when it comes to human rights, an inch is simply too far.
Governments and those in power have the ability to strip liberties which is why they must be watched.
The question then becomes, who will watch the watchman? When the watchman is not monitored then
some of those in power will take opportunities to erode liberty from innocent individuals. One horrific
example of this is Buchenwald and the Nazi Concentration Camps.
Buchenwald:
 The records at Buchenwald are flawed as to how many prisoners actually died
o Many were really listed as transferred
o Prisoners that were executed in mass killings weren’t entered into the camp register
 Opened in 1937 and liberated by the US 1945
 Camp prisoners included Jews, Poles, political prisoners, religious prisoners, criminals
 Estimates of the death toll is between 51,000 and 56,000
o Not technically an extermination
o Death was caused by illness, hunger, malnourishment, and worked to death
 Buchenwald was partially evacuated before it was liberated and thousands of prisoners joined
death marches
o Tried to exterminate them
o 21,000 prisoners were liberated
 Built a zoo for his children where prisoners were forced to stand motionless and silent while the
meticulous roll calls were conducted
 The leader (Karl Koch) was executed by the Nazis and his wife was eventually sentenced ot life
imprisonment and committed suicide in a Bavarian prison
 Women were forced into a brothel initially and then more women, Jewish women, arrived from
Auschwitz.
 The camp was built by the prisoners
 The official goal of Buchenwald was the destruction of the prisoners by work
o Thousands were murdered by work, torture, beatings, or simply starvation and lack of
hygiene -- they were treated like animals
o Thousands were murdered in the infirmary by lethal injections and others died of
medical experiments
o The prisoners had to enter a fake infirmary room and place themselves under a height
gauge and then an SS man killed them by shooting through a small hole placed at the
height of the prisoners neck – the noise was masked by a radio at high volume
 These were soviet prisoners, why were they treated differently?
 Obama may visit Buchenwald in June
It would be easier to cope with the horrors of Buchenwald if I thought that it was an isolated incident.
But unfortunately the same reasoning used to take the lives and liberty of innocent people in Germany
during World War II was used in America. The Japanese Internment during World War II is an example of
stripping the liberty of American citizens, on American soil. There are those that justify this event by
saying that it was a responsive measure and that no one was murdered in the Japanese internment
camps, but the justifications that supported the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Japanese people
into internment camps were the same that were used by the Nazis to open the concentration camps. It
was an example of what happens when fear is allowed to run rampant and control the decisions made
by a country. In this case there was tension between the executive and judicial branches and because of
the terror after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the government eroded personal liberty and jailed 110,000
citizens simply because of their race. No one watched the watchman in this case. No one checked the
power and stood up for those individuals who had their liberties stripped. While not as egregious as the
Holocaust, the United States of America was nonetheless infringing upon people’s rights and completely
abandoning our system of justice.
Japanese Internment:
 Forcible relocation and internment of 110,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans to
War Relocation camps
 US citizens were snatched from their homes and carried to internment camps
 It is not until 1988 that Congress and President Reagan apologized for the internment
 Anti-American prejudice during WWII
 After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the beginning of the internment began to move slowly
o The Justice Department wanted permission to seize operations to prevent alien
Japanese from making radio transmissions to Japanese ships
o Public opinion were suspicious of a Japanese attack
 The internment thus began
o Deterred Japanese as well as German and Italian citizens b/c of fear that the population
might commit acts of espionage or sabotage for the Japanese military
Civilian and military officials
This example of a severe erosion of human rights did not end with the devastation caused by the atomic
bomb and the end of WWII. I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that the same country that dropped the
atomic bomb and still insists upon using the death penalty uses torture as an “interrogation technique,”
but the United States of America showed it’s true capability for an erosion of liberty when it opened
Guantanamo Bay as a prison for “enemy combatants.”
“Who will watch the watchman”
 Present in societies around the world for centuries
 An abandonment
 While not as overt and agregious...infringing upon people’s rights and abandoning our justice
system
 Lawyers were used as pawns to manipulate and twist justice to encompass blatant violations of
the Geneva convention and the US constitution
 While the Supreme Court eventually did step in, it took almost 8 years and countless lives ruined
for it to do so.
 The argument is there that Guantanamo Bay and the Japanese Internment were responsive
measures
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Three camps: Camp Delta (Camp Echo), Camp Iguana, and Camp X-Ray (now closed)
President George W. Bush asserted that detainees were not entitled to any of the protections of
the Geneva Conventions
o US Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfield that detainees were entitled to the minimal
protections listed under Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions
o Article 3: Noncombatants, combatants who have laid down their arms, and combatants
who are hors de combat (out of the fight) due to wounds, detention, or any other cause
shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, including prohibition of outrages upon
personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment. The passing of
sentences must also be pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the
judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. Article 3's
protections exist even though no one is classified as a prisoner of war
2001 Guantanamo Bay was reopened after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the War
in Afghanistan began Halliburton received a 1 billion dollar contract to build detention center
1. 775 detainees have been brought there
2. 420 were released without charge
3. As of Jan 2009, 245 detainees remain
4. Only 3 people have been convicted of various charges
They had Adminstrative Review Board hearings
Facilities
1. Camp Delta
 Detention camps 1-6
 Camp Echo; where pre-commissions are held
2. Camp Iguana; much smaller; low-security
3. Camp X-Ray; temporary detention facility closed in April 2002, prisoners transferred to
Delta
4. Camp 7 – separate facility and is considered to be the highest-security jail on the base
Torture
1. Sleep deprivation
2. Prolonged constraint
3. Exposure
The Effects
1. Makes Victim Dependant on Interrogator
2. Reduces Prisoner to Animal Leven
Conditions
1. Bush declared that the protections of the Geneva convention do not apply al-Qaeda or
Taliban fights claiming that the Geneva convention only applies to uniformed soldiers and
guerrillas who wear distinctive insignia, bear arms openly, and abide by the rules of war
2. Abuse of religion
3. Detained essentially b/c of their religion and their heritage
a. Flushing Qur’an down the toilet
b. Defacing the Qur’an
i. Writing comments tearing pages out
ii. Denying detainees the copy of the Qu’ran
c. People are punished for leading prayer
4. Red Cross inspectors and released detainees
a. Sleep deprivation
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b. Beatings
c. Locking in confined and cold cells
d. Indefinite detention
e. Sexual degradation
f. Forced drugging
g. Pepper spray
h. Tortured w/broken glass, burning cigarettes, sexual assaults
i. Exposure to loud noise or music
j. Prolonged extreme temperatures
k. beatings
5. Forced to withdraw complaints of torture as part of a plea bargain
Suicide attempts:
o Four suicides and hundreds of suicide attempts
o Classified as “manipulative self-injurious” behaviors b/c it’s alleged by camp physicians
that detainees do not genuinely want to end their lives
There was not a military commission until 2004; no one to determine if the prisoners were
actually prisoners of war
June 12, 2008; Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that the Guantanamo captives were
entitled to the protection of the US constitution
o The Tribunals are an inadequate substitute for habeas corpus
o US District Court Judge ordered the release of five Algerians for lack of evidence
o The detainees were denied the right to produce evidence
The entire world denounced Guantanamo Bay as illegal
Holding children that were ages 13-15 and returned to Afghanistan
This torture resulted in false confessions
Some claim that they have
Waterboarding:
o Classified documents approving waterboarding, sleep deprivation, exposure to hot and
cold, bright lights, and loud music
Beatings that caused brain injury and seizure
“The Constitutional rights of the individual are our most cherished and most important
possessions. The rights of an American citizen, and all those who dwell with us, are guaranteed
by the Federal and State Constitutions. They are what we live by and what we must continually
fight for. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” depend entirely on the recognition and
maintenance of these rights -Boumediene v. Bush:
o The Supreme Court initially addressed the topic of the Guantanamo detainees in Hamdi
v. Rumsfeld when it determined that detaining individuals captured while fighting
against the US in Afghanistan was fundamental and accepted incident to war
 After Hamdi, the Defense Department established Combatant Status Review
Tribunals to determine whether individuals detained at the Naval Base were
enemy combatants
 These tribunals were supposed to be a way for the Bush administration to side
step the appeals process
 These prisoners sought writs of habeaus corpus in the US District Courts who dismissed the
charges for lack of jurisdiction since Guantanamo Bay is outside of US territory.
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US Supreme Court stated that statutory habeas jurisdiction did in fact extend to
Guantanamo Rasul v. Bush
o The district courts then began to hear the cases
 The Court held in Boumediene that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay had the constitutional
privilege of habeas corpus and they were not barred from seeking the writ b/c they have
been designated as enemy combatants
o Habeas Corpus is a “vital instrument” for the protection of individual liberty and it
may only be suspended when public safety requires it in times of rebellion or
invasion
o It is a “time-tested device to maintain the delicate balance of governance”
o Separation of Powers
 These citizens were snatched sometimes literally off of the street and
imprisoned without any way for them to present evidence as to their innocence
 They were tortured for confessions
 Involuntary confessions
 Bush reverted back to the ways of the 14th and 15th centuries with his
tactics for information and confessions. The justification is that of “It
matters not by what means the truth has been obtained, so long as it
has been obtained.” N. Eymeric
 AND, “Slight torture is no torture” H. de Marsilliis
 Scalia, Alito, and Thomas dissented sharply stating that the Constitution does not ensure habeas
for aliens held by the US over which our government is not sovereign. It is certainly not
surprising that Justice Thomas dissented in these cases since he criticizes the entire concept of
habeas corpus.
o But they are subject to the criminal tactics and procedures of this country – we don’t
abandon our structure simply because it is aliens that we are prosecuting
**In Ten Rillington Place, Lord Kennedy expressed extreme disapproval in the way that police
question witnesses stating that “The fault to be looked for today....is the tendency to press
interrogation too hard against a man believed to be guilty.”
 Police, just like the guards at Guantanamo, push suspects to give information so hard
until they crack. It is a barbaric technique that has been used since the beginning of
time. Our society professes “innocent until proven guilty” but it isn’t, it is really “guilty
until proven innocent.”
The Bybee Memo:
 CIA wanted legal advice on detainee interrogation
 CIA wanted to aggressively interrogate suspected high ranking Al-Qaeda members captured
outside of the US and wanted an interpretation of the word “torture”
 This memo described the limitations on the behavior of the US interrogators and defines
torture as “acts inflicting severe pain or suffering whether physical or mental”
o Physical pain must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious injury
 Organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death
o Mental pain must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration eg
lasting for months or even years
 Threats of imminent death, threats of infliction that would amount to physical
torture; psychological torture use of drugs to deeply disrupt the senses or
fundamentally alter the individual’s personality
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Who will watch the watchman?
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Witchhunt for child molesters
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End with who will watch the watchman