US military; displaced Germans; liberation of camp

Identifier
irn1000706
Language of Description
English
Alt. Identifiers
  • 1991.256.1
  • RG-60.0118
Dates
1 Jan 1945 - 31 Dec 1945
Level of Description
Item
Languages
  • Silent
Source
EHRI Partner

Creator(s)

Scope and Content

A caravan of United States Army tanks, trucks, and Red Cross vehicles move along a dusty road. Smoking rubble and desolate buildings line the road and landscape. Four German prisoners walk towards camera, followed by a group of liberated French prisoners cheering tankers and walking along the road, opposite direction as the US vehicles, one with a spearhead. Dark shots of prisoner group walking. 01:06:17 Two Americans attend to a wounded German soldier laying near the road. German troops march in surrender on sidewalk, with hands over their heads. White flags hang from civilians’ windows. A German woman gives some of the men something to drink. Blurry footage of a burning German town. Fires and smoke rise from farms along the landscape and continue to burn into the night. An American officer talks to some German officers as civilians walk around them. Destroyed homes, a crashed airplane is still smoldering. 01:14:01 Victims of a German concentration camp. A survivor talks to an American soldier. Pyre with burned bodies of the victims. Large pile of rubble from destroyed crematorium. Soldiers load and shoot guns from the ground and from a tank on April 8, 1945.

Note(s)

  • Footage is also available on sub-master PD#27: Liberation Color Footage Reel 3.

  • USHMM replaced the online streaming video with a new, higher resolution digital file produced for the VHH project. The 16mm film source from NARA was scanned by the Austrian Filmmuseum in 2021.

Subjects

Places

Genre

This description is derived directly from structured data provided to EHRI by a partner institution. This collection holding institution considers this description as an accurate reflection of the archival holdings to which it refers at the moment of data transfer.