Trees dedicated to Buchenwald concentration camp victims vandalised

Seven trees dedicated to victims of the Buchenwald concentration camp in east Germany have been chopped down, the foundation running the memorial has said.

The trees were part of the 1,000 Beeches project and were planted on a route outside the camp along which prisoners were taken.

One of the trees vandalised was dedicated to the children killed at the concentration camp in what the foundation called a “deliberate attack on remembrance".

It tweeted: “We are appalled at the deliberate attack on remembrance.”

The concentration camp was established in 1937.

More than 56,000 of the 280,000 inmates held at Buchenwald and its satellite camps were killed by the Nazis or died as a result of hunger, illness or medical experiments before the camp’s liberation on April 11, 1945.

Last April, some of the last remaining survivors gathered for a ceremony to mark the moment the site was liberated by western forces.

Only 16 survivors from the Buchenwald prison camp are alive.