Description
Object description
US Red Cross truck brings food to emaciated survivors, who are disposing of bodies under US Army supervision. Local scenes show context of idyllic setting and complacent, well-fed community.
Full description
EBENSEE [Dope sheet title]. A 4x2 Steyr soft-topped truck with US markings enters the camp and is unloaded by inmates under supervision of US soldiers, some wearing tank crew leather helmets and goggles, through a hut door. A sign above it reads "Häftlings Küche / Eintritt Verboten" (Prisoners Kitchen/ Entry Forbidden). Tall double wooden gates in a high brick wall are opened by smiling inmates in stripes standing in front of a belt of fir trees, who gather round a large hand made fabric banner which reads "Les Français saluent leurs Alliés" (The French salute their Allies) and wave to the camera. A general view of the compound shows a banner edged with fir branch garlands which reads "Wir Grüssen unsere Befreier" (We Greet our Liberators). The camera pans from the top of a tall chimney flying a white flag down to the crematorium hut it serves. At the door inmates, one with a small square of stripes sewn to his coat back, unload emaciated, naked corpses from a handcart and carry them inside; there are tall bare fir trees in the background. US soldiers direct and watch as weakened inmates continue to dispose of the many corpses. The camera makes several tilts and pans which include the spectacular, snow-capped mountain scenery and the wire-fenced camp, its huts and skeletal victims, both dead and alive, in the same continuous shot. The piled up dead have large numbers crudely marked on their naked chests. Local views show a roadside calvary in a grove of fir trees, magnificent mountains and lakes with charming local architecture, inhabited by smiling, healthy, unconcerned people who farm, sew or relax, smoking a pipe on their sunny porches, and chat in the village square with an enamelled Nazi sign adorning the arch of a building. They wear cool summer clothes or lederhosen and tyrolean hats as they cycle through the lanes, or admire the view across the Lake Traunsee to an island church. The camp inmates are shown staring through the barbed wire, with the same mountains behind them, three Germans soldiers in field grey with dark collars and unpointed pre-war "feldbluse" pattern epaulettes, are walking freely down a village street. The degraded and weakened condition of camp inmates is paraded for the camera as naked, skeletal men are filmed held upright by a helper.
Physical description
35mm