Flossenbuerg liberated; POW hospital in Florence

Identifier
irn1004537
Language of Description
English
Alt. Identifiers
  • 2010.479.1
  • RG-60.1268
Level of Description
Item
Languages
  • Silent
Source
EHRI Partner

Creator(s)

Scope and Content

(LIB 6223) Probably April 30, 1945. Camera pans from left to right showing an overview of the Flossenbuerg slave labor camp, barracks on hillside, trees and mountains in BG. German civilians gathered at entrance to camp. Inscriptions on concrete gate post. Sign: "Vorsicht! Hochspannung Lebensgefahr" and "Arbeit Macht Frei". CU, electrified barbed wire around top of fence and guard towers. Makeshift handwritten banner on picket fence, "Prisoners Happy End! Welcome!". INT, CU, four naked male survivors: two Jewish, one French, one Polish, with numbers tattooed on their chests. Multiple takes. Pan down to feet (2 have striped uniform pants pulled down). CU survivor's emaciated backside. 02:44:59 SEQ: Former French prisoner in the camp conducts U.S. soldier through underground crematorium (entrance to underground through metal grate). View of camp. Survivors (in regular clothes) splitting and stacking wood. CU "Disinfektion" painted on brick wall. Disposing of hot ash from crematorium into nearby pit. Americans and civilians dig up dead bodies of slave laborers, killed during the death marches, all are clothed. VCU, dead. Three older male civilians talk to soldier. More corpses are dug up and laid side by side in rows. Various CUs, including a bloody chest and a prisoner uniform with a triangular patch and a necklace with a cross. 02:47:51 (LIB 6334) MS Truckload of liberated POWs arrive at a German POW hospital near Florence, Italy. Back of shirts say "PW". Sign: "PBS Prisoner of War Enclosure 334". MS, prisoner of war meets a supply sergeant, reads papers posted to a board, including a Geneva Convention pamphlet ("+ Genfer Convention!"). POWs are supplied with bedding, clothing, and bandages. German prisoners of war going through the food line, eating. INT, liberated American POW lying on his bed reading a U.S. newspaper. CU, another sits on his bed writing a letter. (LIB 6334) MSs, large group of liberated American POWs arrive at Gruna, Germany (?) to find their buddies who greet them and give them K-rations and cigarettes. Good close shots of them eating and talking. They climb into U.S. Army trucks and ride away, passing civilians on the streets.

Note(s)

  • For many similar and longer shots, see RG-60.0854, Film ID 831 where the handwritten cameraman slates say "Flossenbg".

  • Throughout the American campaign in Italy sick and wounded prisoners had been hospitalized in base installations in or adjacent to prisoner-of-war enclosures. Long-term cases had been evacuated to the German POW hospital near Oran or, until the end of October 1944, to the United States, but the bulk of them had been hospitalized in the Peninsular Base Section (PBS). The German-staffed POW hospital had been moved to Florence in March 1945. The installation primarily devoted to care of German prisoners were the 334th Station Hospital (German) at Florence, Italy.

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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.