Dr. Volkhard Knigge, born in 1954, is a historian and lives in Weimar. He has been director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation since 1994. Previously, he was a member of the study group 'Iconography of the Political' at the Institute for Cultural Studies of the Wissenschaftszentrum NRW in Essen. In 1995 he realized the first large Szajna exhibition in Germany at the Buchenwald Memorial and the German National Theater in Weimar. He is honorary professor for 'History and the Public' at the University of Jena and has published literature on historical consciousness and memorial history in Germany.

The catalogue to the new permanent exhibition at the Buchenwald Memorial. The Buchenwald concentration camp was located less than ten kilometres from the Weimar city centre. Operated by the SS from 1937 to 1945, it was one of the Nazi regime’s most important instruments for the racist reconstruction of Germany and later of Europe. Every day, the inmates had the inscription in the camp gate – »JEDEM DAS SEINE« (»To Each His Own«) – before their eyes. This cynical reinterpretation of the expression’s original meaning legitimized the ostracism and violence to which »strangers to the community« were subjected. The new permanent exhibition analyses what this meant for the more than 270,000 persons deported to Buchenwald. Drawing on the current state of research based on archival studies carried out worldwide, the accompanying catalogue also presents hitherto unknown historical documents and photos. Fundamental essays by such notable historians as Ulrich Herbert, Frank Bajohr or Johannes Tuchel and a contribution by the writer and former Buchenwald inmate Ivan Ivanji moreover offer concise discussions of the Nazi crimes committed in the concentration camps and place them in context.