Description
Object description
Unedited newsreel of German civilians of Weimar being escorted to visit Buchenwald Concentration Camp under the supervision of US Army personnel on 16 April 1945. Former inmates ensure that they miss no details of the regime's effects. The liberated women of Penig concentration camp on 17 April 1945 are attended by a US Army doctor. Burgomasters of towns around Gardelegen barn are shown on 18 April 1945 the victims of the massacre there.
Full description
CIVILIANS VISIT DETENTION CAMP [Dope sheet title] Many German civilians move past US Army Military Police and lines of inmates in Buchenwald Concentration Camp, near Weimar, Germany, 16 April 1945. Many German women stare at what is being pointed grimly out to them by an inmate, one looks shocked and gags into her handkerchief. An inmate is having a dressing removed from his foot, the toes have rotted off. German visitors are shown hut interiors and piles of naked emaciated bodies on a `Moorexpress' cart, their reactions are recorded by a film camera positioned on a tripod near the cart, and watched by inmates craning over the top of a fence. German civilians in large groups are escorted by US Army jeeps along a wooded road being passed by the cameraman's jeep, some women hide their faces from the camera, others smile or glare. All are well dressed and fit and arrive at the camp as a bus stops for ex-inmates to alight. A bungalow with neat garden and two World War One Light Field guns on the grass outside is in the background. The compound is shown to be large with columns of German civilians moving in orderly groups as they tour round. German women coming through the gatehouse arch smiling and laughing are watched by inmates. The gatehouse has floodlights, a square arched entrance and a balcony, the stars and stripes flies above it. German women are shown shrunken heads of recaptured Polish escapees and preserved skin of prisoners with tattoos, one is carried away unconscious. US Army Jeeps escort German civilians along the wooded road to the camp.
Full description
CONCENTRATION CAMP [Dope sheet title]. Liberated women inmates of a concentration camp at Penig (?) near Wermsdorf, on 17 April 1945. Emaciated and thin women, some Hungarian Jews from Budapest, smile into the camera from their camp hut doorways and through the windows. They show varying states of debility. Colonel J W Branch, 6th Armored divisional surgeon, attends to an ulcerated hip. The electrified camp fence and watch towers are seen. Two women carry blankets, one blows a kiss to the cameraman, another sits outside her hut with her feet up, spots the camera and waves happily. A group stand in the gateway, others are shown in bed in their very dark huts.
Full description
MURDER INC (GERMAN ATROCITIES) [Dope sheet title]. In flat open country a group of German Burgomasters are shown on 18 April 1945 the victims of a massacre at Gardelegen. They line up outside a large brick built barn by a trench with heaps of spoil beside it. US Army soldiers stand nearby as one of them addresses the Germans. The Germans are sent inside the barn to look at the burnt and suffocated victims, to kneel beside their remains for the camera. They have to jump over the bodies piled in the doorway to exit the building. Bodies are shown sitting and lying, their tattered clothes and charred skin stirring in the breeze.
Physical description
35mm