US military; displaced Germans; liberation of camp
Creator(s)
- United States. Army Air Forces. (Producer)
- United States. National Archives and Records Administration. Motion Picture Reference
- Kelley (Camera Operator)
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
- FIRES
- GERMANS
- SOLDIERS/MILITARY (AMERICAN)
- CONCENTRATION CAMPS (LIBERATION)
- PRISONERS (FRENCH)
- TANKS
- SURVIVORS
- CIVILIANS
- SOLDIERS/MILITARY (GERMAN)
- CREMATORIA
- USHMM (PERMANENT EXHIBITION)
- MILITARY VEHICLES
- CORPSES
- FLAGS
Places
- , Germany
Genre
- Unedited.
- Film