Description
Object description
Unedited scenes of the British Parliamentary delegation, Sir Henry Morris Jones, Mrs Mavis Tate, Sir Graham White, Lord Stanhope, Lord Addison, Sir Archibald Southby, Lieutenant-Colonel Wickham, Ness Edward, E. Silverman and Tom Driberg being conducted round liberated Buchenwald Concentration Camp on 21 April 1945, by US Army commander. They inspect the camp, see the dead bodies and talk to surviving inmates. German civilians from Gardelegen disinter some bodies under US Army supervision. Other victims are lying beside the barn and are strewn through the open barn doors.
Full description
BRITISH M.P.s AT BUCHENWALD [Dope sheet title]. Several thin inmates resting under quilts on the floor of a narrow room with a radiator, washbasin and framed print on the wall, are spoken to by the visiting delegation, who take notes. The group which includes British officers, and two US Army stills photographers with Speed Graphics with flash attached, is conducted round the compound by US Army officers, including a doctor, and military police. Inmates in stripes stand behind the wire fence smiling slightly at the camera. A group, oblivious of the visitors, brew something up over an open fire in a corner of the compound. The tour includes hut interiors and moves in a jeep convoy through a square arched gatehouse to parts of the camp complex, watched idly by groups of inmates. A large pile of emaciated bodies on a cart is partially covered with fir branches. The jeeps pass a demonstration dummy in stripes on a whipping block. The visitors are filmed by a movie cameraman as they inspect the piles of dead bodies. The inmates are explaining matters with much gesturing. Mrs Mavis Tate, in hat, fur coat and court shoes, takes a small vinaigrette from her bag, takes out the stopper and holds it discreetly to her nose. The crematorium ovens, a heap of partially crushed human bones which the visitors pick up and inspect, and the gibbet are all examined and noted carefully. One delegate reaches up to test the height of the gibbet.
Full description
POLITICAL DEPORTEES, VICTIMS OF NAZIS (Dope sheet title). In flat open countryside German civilians dig in lines with rows of recently disinterred corpses wearing striped camp clothing lying nearby. More bodies, some badly carbonised and grotesquely angled, lie beside the substantial brick and plaster wall of the large, tall barn. A head and arm is uncovered by the diggers who have strings stretched as guides to keep the six trenches straight. As they go down to eight feet they toss the earth out above their own heads. A victim's head and arm protrude from the base of the barn wall, he has tried to dig his way out. A swathe of bodies spilling out of the barn doorway is inspected by US Army personnel, through the doorway the interior of the barn is dark, opposite another open doorway shows diggers working in the daylight beyond. US Army jeeps are surrounded by many US soldiers who watch the activity. The barn doorways show the scorching left by the fierce heat of the fire, ignited in the locked barn by the Germans, to kill the prisoners they had herded inside. Bodies lie in the straw, and one is hauled out of the diggings by the German civilians.
Physical description
35mm